Holiday woes

You’d think that, during the holidays, I’d have found time to watch High Hopes. Alas, no. So far, my holidays have been as congested as my job days.

Today was the least taxing day in recent memory. Even so, I kept having to get in and out of the car. Karin & I traveled to:

(a) the doctor, for the removal of Karin’s stitches;

(b) the barber, for my haircut;

(c) Karin’s friends’ new house, for a tour; and

(d) Goodwill, for no good reason.

Yesterday, we drove to Michigan to go to church with Karin’s family members. They never showed up. It turned out, they’d gone to church in Indiana.

We were reunited with them at night. After the meal and the gift-giving, they asked us to stay for a quick game of Phase 10. This game did not end until three hours later. Phase 10 is supposed to be brief, like Uno or Skip-Bo, but last night it was more like Monopoly.

Between each hand of Phase 10, I loaded up a new plateful of crackers, cheese, and Christmas ham, in keeping with the seasonal gluttony. … Karin also has eaten a great deal these last few days. She has shattered her personal record of fatness. Today she began to address this plight. At Goodwill she bought a vinyl record of aerobics music, and, right now, she is marching in place while she watches the TV show My 600-lb Life.

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R.I.P. Carlos Muñoz. It’s the twenty-third anniversary of his death. I never will look much like “El Frentón,” and so today I decided to dress like Julio César Rosero, “El Emperador.”

High hopes

Please, all of you, don’t watch it at the same time – I don’t want YouTube to take it down – but Mike Leigh’s High Hopes was uploaded a couple of weeks ago. There are precious few movies anymore that I’ve been waiting for years to view. High Hopes is the foremost of them.

The movie features the great Mike Leigh regular, Ruth Sheen; and, even better, the great Mike Leigh occasional, Philip Davis. Young, woolly Philip Davis. Sheen and Davis star as Thatcher-era hippies.

(Leigh depicts hippies brilliantly in Nuts in May, also viewable on YouTube.)

Philip Davis is one of the world’s best actors, along with, oh, David Gulpilil, Noah Taylor, and Robert Mitchum. You may have seen him in “A Study in Pink,” the first episode of Sherlock (he plays the cab driver). He’s also in the TV show Whitechapel and Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake.

Here’s another still of him in High Hopes. See how sadly he regards the kettle.

I plan to watch this movie tomorrow, first thing after work.

A visit to the E.R.

When I woke up today, it was minus-thirteen degrees F. There was no school, thank goodness. When Karin left for her job, she had to struggle to open her car door because it was frozen shut.

At this moment, I’m at home, figuring out my Bethel students’ grades, which are due tonight. The kitties are glad I’m here. We snuggle together. Right now, though, they’re fighting.

Karin & I were away most of the weekend. From Saturday afternoon to Sunday morning, we celebrated Christmas with Karin’s father’s family. Then we went home; but, a little later, we had to go to the hospital because Karin had stabbed her arm with a knife. She’d been using the knife to dig food out of a pan. The stab-wound looked about the size of a nickel, and it bled plenty, and, inside it, we could see a ghastly white tendon (at first we thought it was a bone).

Mary – rather jubilant, having just received an “A” in her Anatomy and Physiology course – drove us to the emergency room. We waited until it was Karin’s turn to be sewn up. The waiting room was quiet. Then someone began to play a TV show on his phone. There was a faint odor of marijuana.

I read in the South Bend Tribune that my students on Bethel’s basketball team had been robbed while deep-sea fishing. Those students had taken their exams early, I recalled, so that they could travel to Miami.

At last, Karin was sewn up by a doctor and a youngish nurse who cracked jokes that were full of medical jargon. Then the doctor left the nurse to finish things. The nurse asked Karin where she worked.

“At _____,” said Karin.

“Which branch?” said the nurse, and Karin told her. “I worked at that branch for nine years,” said the nurse. “I was the manager.”

How miserable, I thought. To be at the mercy of some healer; and then to find out that this person not only could do your job as well as you do it, she actually has done your job, and probably better than you do it, and for nine years.

But Karin took it in stride. Karin is much humbler than I am.

“En España critican el trofeo que el United dio a Antonio Valencia”

He was named the best player of the month at Manchester United.

Here he is with his little trophy.

As El Universo points out, this trophy is not being treated kindly in the European presses.

They say that it looks like a Christmas ornament.

Also, that it can be bought on the Internet for £12.99.

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This morning, due to the snow, the high school where I work was closed. I went to Bethel and trudged around to various departments, looking for blue books for the exam that I’m going to administer on Wednesday.

The students whom I talked to didn’t know what blue books were.

I suspect that the departmental secretaries whom I talked to didn’t know, either.

Blue books seem to have gone out of fashion at Bethel.

At last, I found a sympathetic professor. “I have a secret stash of blue books,” he told me.

And so my preparations for this semester have been completed. I would’ve been disappointed if I hadn’t been able to use the blue books. Giving a blue book exam is one of the few joys that remain in the academic profession.

A brave couple of games

South Bend is powdery now. Jasper, who used to run out into the yard every time he could, has been staying well away from the front door. Karin & I’ve been doing seasonal errands – retrieving my coats from Martin’s & Mary’s house; buying salt for the outdoor staircase.

Yesterday, I walked to Bethel in the snow. It wasn’t a difficult walk, but in the classroom the melted snow dripped down from my curly, long locks.

I’m on Cloud Six or Seven because all of my course prepping is done. What remains is to give exams and to grade.

Today, I allowed myself a break and watched two soccer games. In the first one, Leicester City demolished Manchester City with some fine counter-attacking and less than thirty percent of the total possession. The British announcers enjoyed skewering Pep Guardiola, the possession guru, manager of Man City. “He won’t win the League this way,” they said. It was a proud moment for British soccer. And, truth be told, on the counter, Leicester looked lovelier than Man City ever did.

Then I went to Stephen’s and we watched B.S.C. play the last game of the season – the “victory lap” game (the championship had been clinched the week before). Though I’d watched plenty of games this year, I’d yet to see Barcelona take the lead in a game and win. In the first half, our lead was 3 to 0. Even our goalie, the brave Máximo Banguera, scored. Then, in the second half, the game fell apart. An offside goal was wrongly given, our opponents scored twice more, and I had to settle for watching a draw.

Karin has just come into the house. When she opened the door, both kitties rushed out onto the snowy porch. The goose-brains (Karin calls them).

I dream of hippos

My health is improved but does not, shall we say, sparkle. Tonight a winter storm is forecast. I’m hoping that tomorrow my high school workplace will be closed, or at least that its classes will be delayed for two hours; and that Bethel will not be closed. It’ll be the last day of regular classes there. I want to finish watching The Two Escobars with my students. It was gratifying, yesterday, to listen to them gasp at René Higuita (his famous escorpión play) and at Carlos Valderrama (his mere physical appearance).

Reflecting on Colombia, I am pleased to think of its wild hippos, whose ancestors escaped the finca of Pablo Escobar. Sadly, this article reports that the authorities have set out to castrate those hippos. Happily, this article suggests that it will not be easy to subject them to the knife.

Karin put up our Christmas tree last night, and while we slept the kitties knocked it down, which surprised us zilcho. Now we’re home from work. The tree is still upright. The kitties seem to have accepted the tree. I have two or three chapters of John Charles Chasteen to read this evening, and ten study questions per chapter to write, or else my students will get off easy when they take their final exams. As I said, the semester is nearly ended. I’m making a mental list of holiday readings for myself. I hope that over Christmas I’ll enjoy a respite from illness so that I can lie on the couch and read and watch TV.

Awake

It’s three-something a.m., the fourth night of a painful cold. I’ve switched from bedroom to livingroom because I don’t want my coughing to wake up Karin. The twerps, Ziva and Jasper – who’d been sleeping peacefully, obeying the human timetable – now wrestle at the fringes of my blanket and compete for my attention.

It’s distressful to be awake at this hour, but sleeping is worse. Asleep, I can’t stop thinking about tedious details of Spanish grammar. Awake, my mood is OK. I remind myself that I’m married now and that being sick and married is immeasurably better than being sick and single, which was how it was for me in grad school.

Lately, at the high school where I work (and from which I’ll be taking tomorrow off), certain English teachers have been assigning Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder.” In that story the carelessness of one man leads to the disastrous, apocalyptic election of a ruthless president named Deutscher.

People are taking this Trump business very hard.

Trump’s actions so far have not been to my liking. But I refuse to give in to despair. I’ll continue to think kindly of Trump, if only by dwelling on how lousy the opposing candidates were. For example, they did nothing to check the lie that America is great. Trump at least acknowledged the falsehood of that belief with his slogan “Make America Great Again.”

What? Trump the most honest of the field? Doesn’t the sheer frequency of his lying disqualify him from that?

It doesn’t. The other day, I read this passage by Mark Twain that puts the idea rather well:

When whole races and peoples conspire to propagate gigantic mute lies in the interest of tyrannies and shams, why should we care anything about the trifling lies told by individuals? Why should we try to make it appear that abstention from lying is a virtue? Why should we want to beguile ourselves in that way? Why should we without shame help the nation lie, and then be ashamed to do a little lying on our own account? Why shouldn’t we be honest and honorable, and lie every time we get a chance? That is to say, why shouldn’t we be consistent, and either lie all the time or not at all? Why should we help the nation lie the whole day long and then object to telling one little individual private lie in our own interest to go to bed on? Just for the refreshment of it, I mean, and to take the rancid taste out of our mouth.

A tragedy

The day’s sad news is the plane crash in Colombia that killed most of the players and coaches of Chapecoense, a modest team from southern Brazil. Like Independiente del Valle, the darlings of the previous major South American tourney, Chapecoense had bested expectations and qualified to play in a continental final (this time, the final of the Copa Sudamericana) against Atlético Nacional of Medellín. Indeed, the crash occurred near to that city, where the final’s first leg was to have been held.

Atlético Nacional have requested that Chapecoense be awarded the title.

Some archival material

Karin & I have begun eating a diet mainly of beans. Thanksgiving week, we ate three meals at Karin’s grandpa’s house: turkey, once; Dominican food, twice. Señora Máxima cooked the two Dominican meals.

I talked a good while with sra. Máxima about Bosch and Balaguer, ex-presidents of the Dominican Republic.

In Cuba, yesterday, Fidel Castro died.

My Uncle Tim brought over to Mary’s house several boxes of letters written by my father during his missionary career. Uncle Tim wants to put this material into the denominational archives. “A treasure trove for future historians of the Missionary Church,” was how he put it. The three children of my father’s who were present (I, Mary, and Stephen; David was out of town) each glanced through the letters for mentions of themselves. I found a booklet – Animales en peligro, or Animals In Danger – that I must have written and illustrated in the second grade.

“People hunt leopards for their skin” (para su piel), the booklet said.

“Elephants are hunted for their tusks.”

“Some animals are hunted by other animals.”

“Some endangered animals are not in danger of being hunted. Fish are in danger of swimming in poisoned waters.” (The illustration for this caption showed a fish swimming above a bottle of poison on the riverbed.)

Tonight, with Stephen, I watched Barcelona take on Emelec, hoping that B.S.C. would clinch this year’s title. Due to the refereeing, this did not occur. To clinch the title, B.S.C. will have to win one of the two remaining games.

Interpreting a funeral

Antonio Valencia poses here with the medics of Manchester United, thanking them for quickly healing his broken hand. He came back from his layoff earlier than expected. He was the “man of the match” last weekend, versus Arsenal.

On Friday, Karin’s grandma died after a long illness. The funeral was held this afternoon, and I played a large part in it: I interpreted, into English, the speech given by one señora Máxima, whom Karin’s grandparents had known when they were missionaries in the Dominican Republic.

It was a lovely and very long speech. It included:

(1) Stories of how the dead woman liked to bake. (A bake shop, named after her, is now operated in the Dominican Republic by sra. Máxima’s niece.)

(2) Accounts of the dead woman’s unfailing cheer, and of her submissiveness. (“Who is this person who is being talked about?” wondered Brianna. Indeed, my own memories are of a sassier, stronger-willed woman.)

(3) An acrostic of the letters D-U-L-Z-U-R-A which, sadly, was not translatable.

(4) Detailed greetings from quite a few members of the Dominican church.

Afterward, my interpreting was praised by many of the mourners. It was nice to be recognized, but I felt like collapsing onto a sofa. Translating a half-dozen single-spaced, typed pages in front of so many people was like shoveling a mountainload of bricks.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Martin & Mary have flown to Houston to spend Thanksgiving with Ana & David. While they’re away, Karin & I will look after Bianca.

More soccer results

As expected, we beat the Venezuelans – no great feat, especially since the margin of victory, three, could easily have been seven or eight. ‘SUFRIDA’ GOLEADA, headlined the newspapers. The visitors “closed up shop” in front of their goal and stalled whenever play was interrupted. They did this until our central defender, Arturo Mina, burst forward and headed in a cross (our whole team was playing very high up the field).

This occurred early in the second half. Our next goal was from a counterattack, and the third came from an even simpler counterattack after the Venezuelans had no choice but to send their players forward.

Again our most dangerous attacker was Renato Ibarra. He and the “Hormiga” were devastating along the right wing. But neither of them could shoot. (My grandpa likes to tell how, decades ago, he arrived in Ecuador unable to speak Spanish. The evangelicals prayed: O Señor, suelta la lengua del hermano Pablo. In the same spirit, I’d like us to pray: O Señor, suelta las patas de la “Hormiga” y de Renato.)

As I’d predicted, we climbed up into third place, because the Colombians lost against the Argentinians in this week’s duel of desperate teams. Which proud team will miss the World Cup is the question that grips the continent. It’ll be either the Argentinians, the Colombians, or the Chileans. We might miss the World Cup, but we are not especially proud. The Paraguayans, also humble, were hopeful until these last two matches, when they lost against two of the cellar-dwellers: at home, 4 to 1, to Peru, and away, 1 to 0, to Bolivia. This last result has “cooked their goose.”

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In the CONCACAF, the gringos also are in crisis mode. They followed their home defeat to Mexico with a 4 to 0 defeat in Costa Rica. I was very happy about this, and I gloated about it to my Spanish students – most of whom didn’t care – until Mary told me that Martin has been very sad about it. That tempered my glee a little bit.

Optimisms

PART ONE: The Optimism of Fools

PART TWO: The Optimism of the Wise

Ecuador lost. But I’d like to point out:

(1) This is the best Uruguayan team in several decades.

(2) Until we Ecuadorians managed it, no other team had been able to score against the Uruguayans in Montevideo.

(3) Felipe Caicedo’s was a real golazo.

(4) Renato Ibarra, who assisted him on that golazo, was a terror all game long.

(5) Ibarra is a mere substitute. Our regular starter, Antonio Valencia, is an even greater terror (when healthy).

And (6) we’re still in the top half of the standings.

So: there’s no cause for alarm. I was quite happy when the whistle blew, because we were playing well.

On Tuesday we’ll be at home against the Venezuelans, whom we whipped soundly the first time around. I expect the Colombians to fail to win against Argentina, and so we’ll climb back up to into third place.

Please pray for Ecuador to win.

PART THREE: Trumpie, Again

My sincere hope is that Trumpie will turn out to be a good president. Regarding all the outrageous things he’s said, one writer at the Atlantic suggests: “Take Trump Seriously, Not Literally.” (This article, and the SNL video of Part One, I got from the Facebook wall of the same professor whom I criticized in my previous post. I don’t like everything about that professor, but at the same time I like quite a lot about him. One must take the bad along with the good.)

A BONUS

Mexico defeated the U.S.

The election, pt. 2

This photo was taken right after Mary and I voted. We didn’t plan to wear these shirts; we didn’t consult each other. To each of us it simply seemed the proper thing to do.

Ecuador’ll play a World Cup qualifier in Montevideo at 6:00 tonight. The Uruguayans are without Edinson Cavani. The Ecuadorians, also, are stricken with injuries and suspensions.

Just as this week many U.S. citizens prayed for a favorable electoral result, I now pray for Ecuador to win this soccer game (and I ask you to, too).

Speaking of the election, my preferred candidate lost. Certainly, there will be some awful consequences. And yet this result is not wholly ungratifying. The mighty have fallen; the cocksure have been slapped in the face. And by “the cocksure” I don’t mean Trump, who wears his insecurities on his sleeve. I mean, more polished people.

I recall how, early during the Republican primaries, a former professor of mine would post “Go, Trump, go!” on his Facebook wall, sardonically eager for the Democrats to contend with a “weak” opponent in the general election. It’s this sort of arrogance – this dismissal of those who don’t approximate certain standards of “decorum” and “enlightenment,” standards reachable for only a limited number of people – that has fueled the anger that lifted Trumpie into office.

I’ve long been more dismayed by this arrogance than by any of Trump’s transgressions.

The election

For my birthday, I’ve been asking for books by G.K. Chesterton.

Today at Bethel I spent one class session making the students read Borges’s “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” and the other making the students take a quiz. I was able to sit quietly at my desk. Such are the sessions that I truly love to teach.

Tomorrow, due to the election, I’ll enjoy six hours off from work. Whom shall I vote for? Not Trumpie, and not Hillary. I’d vote for Hillary if Indiana were a “battleground” state; but, according to the polls, Trump is certain to win here, rendering my vote causally irrelevant. And so I plan to use my ballot to declare my preference for a decent human being.

In Ecuador, the people simply stage a nice coup if the president turns out to be a knucklehead. (Setting aside the “coup” that was held against him in 2010, the fact that our current president has been in power so long is one indication that he isn’t such a knucklehead.) Our military is obliging in this respect. It allows coups to proceed against the unrighteous. Not so in the United States, or in any country where a rebellion would be put down by the invincible and loyal guardians of the regime (and where, moreover, the civilians would be at a loss as to how to rebel). I quote from Chesterton’s essay about Rudyard Kipling:

Now, Mr. Kipling is certainly wrong in his worship of militarism, but his opponents are, generally speaking, quite as wrong as he. The evil of militarism is not that it shows certain men to be fierce and haughty and excessively warlike. The evil of militarism is that it shows most men to be tame and timid and excessively peaceable. The professional soldier gains more and more power as the general courage of a community declines. Thus the Pretorian guard became more and more important in Rome as Rome became more and more luxurious and feeble. …

In the U.S., no institution is more important than the local Pretorian guard, which is constituted by the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and so on. This guard was built up ostensibly to defend citizens from aggressors and would-be aggressors (the British, the Native Americans, and the Spanish; and, later, the Germans, the Japanese, the Soviets, and the terrorists). But its chief function, which no one discusses, is to be so big and powerful and disciplined that civilians could never overthrow the likes of Trumpie or Hillary – or any knucklehead who should be elected.

Rosaura; born in blood and fire; monsters’ offspring; Leibniz; I know what you did last summer; down a dark hall

I haven’t had much time for blogging, but during the last few weeks I’ve managed to read good-sized portions of several books. They haven’t been difficult books (not even Leibniz’s Political Writings have been very difficult; for one thing, Leibniz digresses at key moments to promote the use and development of microscopes). Nor have they been lengthy books. But they’ve all been “top quality.”

Some more titles:

(1) Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America, by John Charles Chasteen. My Spanish “beginning” students will be tasked, after Thanksgiving, with reading this. It’s the liveliest general history of Latin America that I know of.

(2) Rosaura a las diez, by Marco Denevi, with notes and cuestionarios by Donald A. Yates. This is an Argentinian mystery novel, in the fashion of Wilkie Collins. (Yates’s introduction goes so far as to say that Denevi’s only literary influence was Wilkie Collins.) Rosaura was recommended to me by my Uncle Tim, who read it in high school. Right now I’m forcing my Spanish “intermediate” students to read it. How they struggle.

(3) I Know What You Did Last Summer, by Lois Duncan. Until recently, I only knew this as the lousy slasher movie that came out when I was a youth – the movie with the hook-handed killer known as the “Fisherman.” Lo and behold, the tale began as an early-’70s novel. The novel has no “Fisherman.” It does have narcissistic teenagers in a hell of their own making, a hell of regret, of jealousy, and of fear. This is not a merciless book, but it is a deeply unsettling one.

Duncan was quite prolific, quite expert at writing this sort of thing. I’ve started reading another of her grim offerings, Down a Dark Hall.

(4) Children of Monsters: An Inquiry into the Sons and Daughters of Dictators, by Jay Nordlinger. Each chapter treats a different dictator and his offspring. Hitler – did he have children? Mussolini. Stalin. Mao. The Ceausescus. Castro. Gaddafi. Saddam Hussein. Mobutu. Bokassa. Amin. Pol Pot. It reads a little like Kings and Chronicles, especially when it covers the dynastic dictatorships (the Kims, the Duvaliers, the Assads). Though it’s wryly written, it’s still a bit of a chore to get through. The chapters are nevertheless worth reading in the given order, because they set the stage for one of the most compelling characters: Idi Amin’s son, Jaffar, who manages to be both a peace advocate and a “chip off the old block” (many dictators’ children have tended to be one or the other, but not both). With Jaffar it’s as if the psychological pieces almost fit together, and it’s poignant. (If only the dictators had been more like Jaffar, instead of, you know, murderers.)

Nordlinger has written a book which is “on the other side of the looking-glass” to this one. It’s about the recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. I intend to read it soon.

When it comes to empathizing, we are the world beaters

Social scientists have determined that we Ecuadorians are the most empathetic people in the world. The Saudis are ranked just after us, and the bronze medal, so to speak, is for the citizens of Peru.

(The link was sent by my dad.)

The fall holidays

Three immanent fall breaks:

• the high school’s (Fri. of next week, and then Sat., Sun., and Mon.);
• IUSB’s (Mon. and Tues. of next week);
• Bethel’s (tomorrow).

Yesterday’s Spanish session wasn’t very well attended, and so it went much better than usual. It may’ve been the best session I ever taught. (Afterward, the student in front of whom I tore my pants stayed awhile to tell me that my lecture was crystal-clear. She’s a very kind, encouraging student.)

I began the session by showing soccer replays. “Look at how rapidly the ball travels in the high altitude,” I said. I taught about the elevation of La Paz. Then I showed photos of that city. The students gasped. Then I told them about El Alto, La Paz’s suburb, which is even higher and more populous.

I continued lecturing about the soccer replays. “Here is Ecuador’s first goal. See Antonio Valencia’s perfect first touch. The player who ends up scoring the goal is Énner Valencia, who almost got arrested during the previous game for not paying his child support.

“Here is our tying goal, scored, near the end of the game, by the same player.”

“One question,” interjected an athlete in the back row. “Ronaldo or Messi?”

“Messi plays better,” I replied (to his disgust).

“Can we watch replays of the Cubs?” asked a skinny young man in the back row.

“No.”

Then I taught about the impersonal se (as in: se habla español en Bolivia) and about the se which disavows responsibility (se me olvidó la tarea). This was the most crystal-clear part of the lecture. I was very pleased with how well I taught that day.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The previous day, little Ziva’s uterus was removed. The surgery was completed by mid-afternoon, but Ziva was groggy all evening: her jumps were too low for their intended surfaces, and her head kept on bobbing sleepily.

Now her belly has a large, shaved patch where the surgery was performed.

Despite these ignominies, she recovers more of her strength every day.

The woes of Énner

By now, you must know that Ecuador “mopped the floor” with the Chileans, 3 to 0. The first two goals were tallied before the 25th minute. The third goal was scored in the initial moments of the second half. Commentators agree that many more goals could have been attained.

Énner Valencia, in particular, put himself into scoring position again and again, only to waste chance after chance.

Shortly before the game was concluded, Énner was substituted out with an “injury.” He was taken in an ambulance to a clinic. The police jogged several yards behind Énner, putting on a show of chasing him. He was not arrested inside of the stadium.

Since then, Énner’s legal troubles have been resolved: at least, he’s been allowed to board the plane to El Alto (tomorrow, Ecuador will play against the Bolivians, in La Paz). Meanwhile, Énner is using Twitter to defend himself to the public. He maintains that he already has paid lots of support to his child’s mother (who is an inadequate parent, he alleges). He’s trying to obtain custody of the little girl so that she can go to school in England, where he resides.

All of this may yet lead to a happy ending. Please pray for Énner and his family, and pray for Ecuador to defeat Bolivia.

Here are replays from the game against the Chileans. One silver lining of Walter Ayoví’s absence is that Christian Ramírez, his twenty-two-year-old understudy, performed superbly. (I’d been worrying about Ecuador’s vulnerability at Walter’s position, left-fullback.) Ramírez even scored the second goal, flying into the box from well outside of it, expressing a shrewd sense of what was required at that time.

A prayer for Ecuador

Karin’s birthday was on Monday. She & I were too tired to go out. But yesterday we did go out, to the laundromat; and, while the clothes were washing, we left to get some ice-cream. Karin put some of it into a styrofoam container and brought it back with her to the laundromat. But she didn’t eat it there, because dead bugs were falling from the ceiling.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Tonight, again, we went out. We bought mountains of groceries. Then we stopped at a used-media store called Disc Replay. Karin bought an old Nintendo game, Crash Bandicoot, as a present to herself. I bought Seasons 1 and 2 of King of the Hill for very cheap.

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Mary now works with me at IUSB, tutoring students in the writing of papers. The baroque requirements of the First-Year Writing program are driving her nuts. (That was how it was for me, too, the first couple of years that I worked at IUSB.)

I’m finally making good on my promise to write an IUSB-style First-Year Writing paper. And I’m doing it the way that IUSB wants its students to do it: I’m writing the body paragraphs before I write the thesis statement. (This is one of the program’s features that drives Mary nuts.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Ecuador will play against Chile tomorrow (Thursday). The situation is dire: several players haven’t been playing regularly with their clubs; our captain, Walter Ayoví, is injured; Antonio Valencia is accused of having cheated on his wife; and Énner Valencia is compelled to sneak in and out of the stadium to avoid being arrested for failing to pay his child support. Under these circumstances, I’m reluctant to ask God for victory over the Chileans. But I believe that our God is a merciful God: that he is with those who call out to him in repentance. Repent, compatriots! Repent, and reclaim God’s favor!

Learn ’em up good

At last the dreary fall weather has arrived, which has put me into a very good mood. Also, my Spanish students – both groups, the Beginners and the Intermediates – have figured out that to get decent grades, they must memorize when to use the different verb tenses. And so their quiz scores are becoming more respectable.

For that matter, my command of Spanish grammar is becoming more respectable. I can now tell you what the pluscuamperfecto is. Before, I couldn’t have done so, though I would’ve had no trouble using that tense.

Having run out of episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit to watch (I’ve now seen most of them two or three times), I’ve been casting my net wider. Karin & I tried out and rejected CSI Miami. It was rather soulless. Last night, on YouTube, I watched an episode of the long-running German/Austrian/Swiss police-procedural show, Tatort. It was very good: it had some vacant buildings in it, and a lot of rain, and the detectives themselves were adequately weathered. But I realized that scenery and weather weren’t enough for me. I also needed to understand the dialogue. This particular episode had English subtitles, but I would need to learn German to view all of the 900+ episodes.

Trump syllabus

The U.S.’s presidential election is just around the corner. Trumpie has been lavishing us with the spectacle of himself. But I believe that he’ll lose, and that Clinton will maintain a “business as usual” regime for at least four more years.

The academic folks at The Chronicle of Higher Education also believe that Trump will lose. Though the election is yet to be held, they’re treating Trumpie as a seminar topic – as a puzzle to be leisurely studied – rather than as a plague to be dealt with. They’ve recruited some of their all-stars to write a “syllabus” in order to “explore the phenomenon that is Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.” The items on the syllabus include utopian and dystopian writings (Plato’s Republic; Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here; Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America); very, very old historical writing (Thucydides); thinly-disguised, fictional portraits of real-life demagogues (Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men); and exposés of how Trump rose to prominence. A lot of these items are for lulling one into a comfortable sleep in front of the fire, not for lifting one’s ass up by lighting a fire (under it). Well, that’s to be expected, I guess. Professors would have everyone just sit and read.

Last night there was a debate between Clinton and Trump, but I didn’t watch it – it began at 9:00pm or some such hour when schoolworkers ought to be in bed. The truth is, though, I love to watch Trumpie in the debates. I read that last night he had a good line about a “400-lb. guy lying in his bed.” Brilliant. If only Clinton would talk like that. … No, it wasn’t because I listened to any of the debates that I decided that Trump was incompetent. My mind was made up by a short documentary from 2009 – an entry in ESPN’s 30 for 30 series, on Netflix – Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL?

Not that the CHE would’ve asked me, but that movie is what I would have put on my Trump syllabus.

Basically, Trump is the guy who shows up at the playground and insists on everyone playing according to his schedule and rules, at his house, and with his toys; and who gets enough suckers to join him so that he is able to ruin the game for everyone. Trust me, sports lovers: you don’t want this guy calling the shots. Watch Small Potatoes – which was broadcast years before Trumpie decided to run for the presidency – and you’ll want to stop whatever you’re doing and go stand in line for the next month, so that you can be sure to have a place at the polling station to vote against Donald Trump.

Quiz

The grammar quizzes that I write have been getting more and more ridiculous. This week’s quiz questions were about Condorito. Here is an excerpt (with the blanks already filled in):

Don Cuasi and doña Treme write a letter to their daughter, Yayita, to warn her about her rakish boyfriend. We’ve always been proud of you, daughter, they say; we expect that you haven’t hidden anything from us; we don’t believe that you’ve dissimulated. But we fear that Condorito has been playing us all for fools. Though he’s promised to lift weights every night, that lousy bird hasn’t been eating an adequate dosage of protein (meanwhile, every week, he has smoked). His arms have been turning thinner and weaker. We don’t believe that he’s been trying to do any exercise. … Love, Your Parents.

This passage is very strange, says Mary.

Well, that’s what happens when one must work from a very puny vocabulary list.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

For the second time since she moved in with us, Ziva is “in heat.” With one arm, she drags herself all over the carpet. Jasper is sometimes responsive to this, sometimes not, but never (so far as we can tell) *consummately* responsive. … Fortunately, Karin has scheduled an operation for Ziva, to take place a few weeks from now.

A conspicuous tear

A quick note to say that last week I was extremely busy teaching Spanish.

My favorite quiz answer so far: “A Melanie le gusta jugar el hammer y shotput.”

I wrote it on the board. “What’s wrong with this sentence?” I asked.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

At the college library, whilst I was talking to a student who’d come to my office hours, I leaned forward in my armchair to write on a piece of paper, and my pants loudly tore open from the back to the very front. I wasn’t super pleased about it. It must have been terrible for my poor student. … However, I carried on like a pro, teaching about syllabic stress. I wonder how well my student was able to concentrate on that lesson.

Let me record that of all the people with whom I’ve discussed this so far, Stephen has been the nicest. “I’m sorry that that happened, John-Paul,” he said.

The pale horse

First, my skin-spot. Is it a malignant cancer?

I don’t know. The doctor never looked at it. When I went in for my checkup, I was told that my health insurance was not acceptable.

“But when I made my appointment,” I told the receptionist, “I said that I had insurance from _____, and I asked if there was any way that it might not be accepted, and you assured me that it would be accepted since it was _____ insurance.”

“What you have,” she blandly replied, “is not _____ insurance but _____ _____ insurance” (the extra blank doesn’t denote a different insurance company; rather, it indicates that the coverage is funded by the state). “And although we do take _____ insurance, we don’t accept _____ _____ insurance. Did you not know this?”

No, I hadn’t known it, though I’d tried to ask her about it when I made the appointment.

Long story short, I’ll have to make an appointment to be seen by a different doctor. (I feel obliged to continue trying not to die, so young, of cancer.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’m re-reading Agatha Christie’s novel The Pale Horse, in which the victims sicken and die – apparently because of the cultivation, in them, of a “death wish” – while, miles away, their murderers safely wait. This will be the first Christie novel I’ve read three times. While its gloom is most appealing, it also tosses out such light barbs as this one:

We all went to church, and listened respectfully to Mr. Dane Calthrop’s scholarly sermon on a text taken from Isaiah which seemed to deal less with religion than with Persian history. …

Indeed, this morning, Karin & I hear such a sermon. (Our pastor has resigned, and, while the Search Committee deliberates, we are preached to by volunteers.) The text is from the book of Joshua. The story is the crossing of the River Jordan. What were the four difficulties of crossing the Jordan?

• First, the river’s width: one mile.
• Second, its depth. How deep was it? (“One mile!” Karin whispers.) Twelve feet.
• Third, the mud. Even if the Israelites had been able to touch the bottom, twelve feet down, they would’ve sunk knee-deep into the mud. (My brother David would’ve liked this sermon.)
• Fourth, the current. (Behold a photo of our visiting preacher, leading a church tour at the River Jordan. Look at that awful current.)

All of this, on PowerPoint. We also are given a handout with blanks to fill in and biblical text to underline. “I want you to underline every time the word ‘ark’ is printed!” says the visiting preacher. There are five iterations on the handout; and elsewhere in Joshua, the word ‘ark’ is written sixteen times. Doubtless it’s an important word.

The lesson: However impossible your own situation appears to be, God is able to lead you through it, as he was able to lead the Israelites across the River Jordan.

I want to cry out: Yes, yes, we know this; we knew it when Moses crossed the Red Sea. But when are we going to talk about the genocide? Isn’t that what’s at the troubling heart of the book of Joshua? Isn’t that what we believers must come to terms with? That, and the Israelites’ constant betrayal of God – even as, with his help, they triumph?

Dreading

Ecuador and Peru will play in Lima tonight, at nine- or ten-something. You can look it up. I’m trying not to think about it. I’ll probably watch it, though, and I’ll fall further behind in my sleeping. … What’s good is, tomorrow I won’t need to wake up very early; I’ll miss the beginning of work to go to the doctor; it’s time for my shoulder-spot to be examined (I’m trying not to think about that, either).

Karin got a job promotion, to Assistant Manager. Neither of us is very pleased about it. She will now work in Collections, which means that she’ll be calling people and yelling at them to pay their debts.

A turn for the worse?

Typical:

The kitties are in another room, entangled together in a fierce struggle, emitting hideous sounds. … Panting, Jasper staggers out to us. He settles into his favorite laundry basket. I get up to search for Ziva, to make sure that she hasn’t been killed.

Probably she’s fine, says Karin. Jasper hasn’t got any blood on him.

(True enough.)

Ziva cautiously emerges. I advise her: Remain on the other side of the room, little Ziva.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

On Thursday night, the kitties fight for control over Jasper’s laundry basket. Let’s bring out a different basket for Ziva, I suggest to Karin. But when we do put Ziva into a different basket, Jasper climbs into it; they fight even more alarmingly in the tinier space.

My feelings on this particular night are raw already, due to Ecuador’s defeat against Brazil …

and due, also, to my having taught poorly the previous day’s lesson of Spanish. …

(Why don’t the kitties give me a break? Why don’t they just be nice to each other?)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

In the small hours, Ziva crawls all over my body, rests her side against my nose and mouth so that I can’t breathe. The little dear is smothering me.

Jasper, who never used to do this, imitates his sister. It’s worse when he does it. He’s heavier, and he has longer fur.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

At Bethel, waiting to teach, I sit, haggard, in the empty classroom, my feet up on the desk. A student comes into the room.

I’ve been talking to the other students, he says. We all have a lot of sympathy for you.

Oh yes?

I mean, he says, what you’re trying to do – teaching a foreign language – it must be really, really hard.

What exactly are you saying?

Just that we have a lot of sympathy for you.

OK.

The other students file in.

Before I re-teach the previous lesson, I say, I want to thank you for your sympathy. But know that things aren’t all that bad for me. I have three jobs, and two of them are going very well. What’s bothering me more is that Ecuador lost last night against Brazil. We’d been playing better than Brazil these last five years. With this defeat, my world came crashing down a little. Now, the lesson.

I re-teach it. This time the students follow what I’m trying to say. They leave more satisfied. In the afternoon, six of them come to my office hours. As long as they keep doing this, the class should go all right.

Ziva and Jasper continue to fight, but, I now notice, the fighting has a distinctly playful quality. Karin shoots this precious video of them:

A turn for the better

The kitties are becoming friends!

They fight a lot less than they used to … they groom (i.e., they lick) each other … they sit peaceably together in the tub.

Here Jasper cools himself in the fridge, as is his way. Ziva sits as close to him as she can get. See how she looks up to her older brother.

I hope that we will be able to keep them both.

The kitties

Not only has Ziva been climbing out over the barricade; yesterday, Jasper knocked the whole thing down. So, again, we’re confining them – one at a time, and mostly Ziva – to the bathroom. They’re behaving better. Now, when they’re both out, they take as long as ten minutes to start fighting one another to the death.

This morning, Karin sprayed cheese on two crackers and put the crackers next to each other on the floor, and the kitties peacefully licked the cheese off of their respective crackers; only afterward did they fight.

Karin talks to a vet who says to give them more time to get used to one another. So we’ll see. Maybe we’ll end up keeping Ziva.

Yesterday I went to my high school job, and then I briskly walked for 40 minutes to Bethel and taught two consecutive classes of Spanish, and then I walked to my IUSB job. This will be my routine for much of the semester. It’s been three years since I last taught. I’d forgotten what it’s like to stand in front of a room and command attention from everyone. And I wasn’t even saying anything interesting: I was just going over the syllabus. It went to my head a little bit. I think I now project more authority than I used to, because I’m older and fatter and I have a professorial mustache. Also, I was very sweaty from the brisk walking, and I wore baggy, brown, corduroy pants and a tight, yellow, soccer shirt. I don’t think the students were bored.

The (self-)defenestrations of Ziva

Ziva and Jasper are still together in the apartment, though we’ve been keeping them in different rooms. For a while we kept Ziva in the bathroom. We’d take her out sometimes, and she and Jasper would fight, and then we’d return Ziva to her confinement. At first she didn’t seem to mind, but eventually she started meowing in protest.

Last night I felt so sorry for her that I insisted she be kept in our nice bedroom. Easier said than done – the bedroom hasn’t got a door.

We solved this problem by blocking the doorway with a bookcase. The space at the top of the doorway remained exposed, so we stacked things above the bookcase. Although a small window of space was left open, we figured Ziva couldn’t jump high enough to reach it; the barricade seemed formidable.

We also stacked books on top of a nearby dresser so that Ziva couldn’t jump onto it and then jump out over the barricade.

Alas, these book stacks proved not to be high enough. Here’s a video of Ziva getting out:

Karin & I had to tear down the barricade, go out into the livingroom, catch Ziva (who again was fighting with Jasper), and bring her back into the bedroom. After several rounds of trial and error, we made the book stacks high enough that Ziva couldn’t escape.

(We shot more video of Ziva leaping onto – and bouncing off of – the book stacks. But I’m not going to post any of that. It would be cruel.)

We were crawled upon by Ziva all during the night. Worse was when we had to wake up to use the toilet. (We’d drunk a lot of water before bed-time; constructing the barricade made us thirsty.) We had to dismantle the barricade and build it up again … and again, in the morning, when I got up for work … and again when Karin did.

Since then, we’ve been making Jasper and Ziva take turns being confined inside of the bedroom. It hasn’t helped their relations. They still hiss and swat at each other through a crack in the barricade.

Karin & I have agreed that although Ziva and Jasper are both very nice kitties, they’ll never get along. We’ve begun looking for somebody else to adopt Ziva.

Ziva, pt. 2

Again Ziva is visiting. Jasper is still wary of her – and she of him – but while she explores the premises, he plays with his toys, not minding too much that she’s in the apartment. This is a good sign.

Hmm … Jasper just cornered Ziva under a chair … now, under a bookcase.

If we do adopt this second child, I won’t have an unworried moment until they truly get along.

It’s been decided that Ziva will spend the night in our bathroom. She and Jasper will be able to smell each other under the door, without harming one another. (We really should’ve kept them separated like this since the beginning: we’ve been doing this all wrong.)

Please pray for us to decide wisely about keeping Ziva, and for Ziva and Jasper to love each other.

Ziva

To prepare to teach Spanish at Bethel, I’m listening to “Banano’s Bar” and “Monster Truck” by Plastilina Mosh. I might teach the whole course upon the topic of Plastilina Mosh. (I might design the other, more advanced, course around the topic of Los Tigres del Norte.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Ziva, a kitten, has been brought for a visit to our apartment. Karin & I wish to see how Ziva and Jasper get along. If they do well enough, we might adopt Ziva to be Jasper’s little sister.

So far they’ve been stalking each other and growling, and Jasper’s hair has been standing on end. This is the best he’s gotten along with another cat.

Does anyone know, how good are their chances? How likely is it that two strange cats will become friends?

Jasper has just swatted at Ziva’s head. Not a good sign.

Here is a photo of Ziva.

Here is a photo of Sadie, a very mean, grown-up cat whom Karin & I like to visit at the Humane Society.

The Humane Society put up this photo to advertise Sadie to the people who might wish to adopt a cat. Sadie looks angry pretty much all of the time. She is so mean, she has her own room, away from the other cats. It took weeks before she warmed up to us. Then, one day, she allowed Karin to stroke her.

“Sadie,” I said, “would you like to come home with us to be Jasper’s wife?”

Sadie clawed Karin and ran away.

Ziva has better adoptive prospects. We may arrange another visit between her and Jasper, and then decide whether to bring her into our family.

Wayde van Niekerk

I said I wouldn’t follow the Olympics, but this news did catch my eye: Wayde van Niekerk smashing the 400m world record, running in Lane 8.

This video will likely be taken down.

Our age-gap; no rest for me; the spot

I go with Karin to Constantine, MI, to help her to pack up her grandparents’ belongings so that they can move to a different house. Karin allows me to choose the music for the car ride.

I choose songs from when I was a youth.

“What’s this?” says Karin, who is ten years younger than I am.

“This is ‘Miami’ by Will Smith.”

“Oh, yes. The early Will Smith.”

“I guess so.”

“What’s this?” says Karin.

“These are the Goo Goo Dolls. This song [‘Iris’] was very popular when I was in high school.”

“Oh, yes.”

The next song, she doesn’t ask about. I headbang to it and play the air guitar. After a while, I ask: “Do you like this song, Sweetie?”

“It’s fine. What is it?”

“It’s ‘Self Esteem’ by the Offspring.”

“Yes, it’s good. It’s like Nirvana.”

“Yes. But much funnier.”

“Oh, yes.”

Next is “Lucky Denver Mint” by Jimmy Eat World, whom I never listened to until I moved to the United States.

“I feel like this music was popular in the 2000s,” says Karin.

“Actually, this song is from the late ’90s.”

“I think I like the Smashing Pumpkins. They’re from the ’90s, right? Are they the ones who sing, I used to be a little boy …?”

“Yes. David and I refer to that song as ‘The Killer in Me Is the Killer in You.’ It’s very good.”

“What is it really called?”

“‘Disarm.’”

“Oh, yes.”

We listen to “Disarm.” I wail along with it: The killer in me is the killer in you …

“I like songs like this one,” says Karin. “The ones that are a little gloomy.”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

IUSB’s summer term will end on Monday. I’d been looking forward to having a few days off. But, last night, Martin told me that work will begin again at the high school on Tuesday morning.

On the one hand, it’s a bit of a shock.

On the other, being oblivious to the calendar has spared me from dreading about going back to my high school job.

I have a strange spot on my back, near to my right shoulder. I made an appointment for a doctor to check it out (September 7). Right now, I feel all right about it, just a little uneasy, but for a couple of days this week Karin & I were very conscious of our mortality. Which is a fine thing, up to a point. The ideal amount of consciousness of mortality is somewhere in between what I have now and what I had a few days ago.

Mary isn’t very worried. Without having seen it, she thinks that the spot is a regular mole that was stretched out when I got too fat.

A promising return

This afternoon, in contrariety to my recent tendencies, I played pick-up soccer. (I hadn’t expected to play again until next year, due to my fatness.) It didn’t go very badly. I lasted a little longer than an hour. I ran exactly two sprints. The first sprint, I fell on my face with no one near to me. The second sprint, my timing was perfect, and I provoked a defender into conceding a throw-in (though if he’d just left the ball alone, I would’ve been too tired to do anything with it). My throw-in led to a corner-kick. My corner-kick was … uninspired.

Nominally I was a defender, but in reality I just walked up and down the sideline and received and gave passes. I didn’t chase down any through-balls. I didn’t try to clog any dribbling or passing lanes. I didn’t shove anyone off of the ball. I avoided pretty much all contact. Defensively, I was a non-factor.

Offensively, my teammates granted me lots of touches, because I was always in the empty spaces. All five of my shots were on target. I gave passes that should have been converted into goals (one particularly brilliant one was so converted). Toward the end I played center-forward. I ghosted into empty space in front of the goal, received a pass, turned with lots of time, and shot low and away from the goalie’s body for an easy-peasy score. On the sideline, Karin didn’t see the goal because she was reading Harry Potter. I yelled across the field – “Sweeeeeettttiiieee” – and the other people told her about the goal, and so she looked up from her book. Then I quickly made another goal (a mirror-image of the first one) so that she could see it. Shortly thereafter I bowed out.

Gracias a Dios, my performance was in line with what I had prayed for and expected.

Parade

Karin is briefly out of town. Martin & Mary and I watch the Parade of Nations, which takes place in the Maracanã.

“This is your favorite thing to watch, John-Paul,” Mary says.

“What do you mean?”

“You know. The female athletes.” She is referring to the manner in which I admired the Sochi 2014 Parade of Nations. (I was single then.)

I observe that these athletes aren’t as beautiful as those of the winter olympiad.

“Well, of course not,” says Mary. “The summer athletes aren’t as rich.”

Countries large and small parade their delegates. The TV commentators are absolute d-bags. Of Djibouti they say, “Once every four years, someone is forced to pronounce this country’s name.” Mary and I loudly boo this remark. The commentators read from their notes: “The U.S. has a military base in Djibouti.” Really? This is all they can think to say about Djibouti? Booooo! Booooo!

Of Eritrea they say, “We bet you don’t know where this country is.”

“It’s right next to Djibouti, you d-bags!” we yell at the TV.

Mary is worried that the Ecuadorians won’t be shown; the commercial breaks are too frequent. But the Ecuadorians are shown. The commentators make some respectful remarks about the great speed-walker of 1996, Jéfferson Pérez.

Mary complains: “That’s exactly what they talked about in the London Olympics.”

I don’t mind. I’d be relieved if they only talked about Jéfferson Pérez until kingdom come.

The alphabetization is in Portuguese, and so the athletes of the Federated States (estados) of Micronesia are paraded out right before those of the United States (estados) of America.

“Need we talk about this country?” the commentators say of Micronesia. They chuckle. “Well, all right. This is the country that comes right before you-know-who” (i.e., the USA).

Again Mary and I are indignant.

Martin mutes the TV while the 500 U.S. athletes come into the stadium. It takes so long for them to march in, the TV goes to a commercial break.

“What!” I say. “They cut out the athletes of their own country!”

“Business commitments are very important to them,” says Mary.

And that’s all I wish to see of these Olympics. If anything occurs that’s worth watching, I’ll find it later on YouTube.

The end of camp-time

Brianna is quite the little Queen Bee. She has so many friends at Brown City Camp that they have to compete for her attention. Sometimes she and just one or two of her friends come into our cabin; but then the others locate her, and our cabin is filled with teen-aged girls (the boys are too polite, or too shy, to join us).

Inevitably, feelings get hurt. There’s only so much of Brianna to go around, and she doesn’t always distribute herself most equitably and lovingly.

This is a difficult thing to manage. It’s difficult for adults. It’s even harder for the young. They’re only beginning to grasp that personal relationships come with duties as well as benefits – that more is expected than a spontaneous reaction of the heart. It’s painful to watch Brianna charm people but not fully embrace all who are charmed.

Still, her uninhibitedness serves her well during a Q&A session about creation vs. evolution.

“Good Christians disagree about this subject,” begins the pastor, and then he spends the rest of his time explaining why Young Earth creationism is clearly the right – the righteous – option.

Brianna is his sole dissenter.

“My name is Brianna,” she says, “and my grandparents are _____ and _____, who have been coming to this camp for many years” (there is a murmur of approval). “And I just want to say that I don’t believe in Young Earth. But when I get to heaven and see Jesus, if he says, ‘The world was created in six days,’ I’ll say, ‘Praise God!’ And if he says, ‘The world was created through evolution,’ I’ll say, ‘Praise God!’” (The pastor glares.)

Her mother and Karin & I are very pleased. I’m reminded of myself, of my own youthful outspokenness. (Whether I was equitable and loving, I don’t recall.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The next day, Karin & I return to South Bend. We listen to the Twin Peaks soundtrack, to Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and to my playlist-in-progress, “Stalker Songs,” which has melodic, soft music and vaguely unsettling lyrics. (And not all of its songs are about stalking: some are about mugging, or about being mugged.)

When we go into our house, Jasper is very happy to see us. He meows and meows and eats half of Karin’s sandwich and dashes around the house for about an hour.

Karin goes to the Social Security office and changes her last name. It’s her decision. I’m glad she’s doing what she wants, not what I want.

I love Karin better all the time. It’s a delight to wake up next to her.

And I love Jasper, who this morning did the waking up.

Brown City Camp, pt. 2

On our first morning, Karin & I sleep in. We skip the church service. Around lunchtime, we leave the cabin, and I see what the camp is really like.

There are no barracks, no neat rows of same-styled cabins. Rather, the camp is a dense jumble of tents and cabins and trailer-houses, each one uniquely decorated by its tenant (who returns to the same plot of land year after year).

Golf-cart traffic proceeds along the dusty streets. Some of the carts are used by the security guards, but most of them are rented by the tenants.

We stroll. Karin takes me to a section of the camp where there are only trailer-houses. “This was the last area to be built up,” she tells me. “You can see that the trees here are younger and shorter than in the front of the camp; there’s hardly any shade.” Indeed, this back area is like a squatters’ village appended to the better-established “main” section of the camp.

In the “main” section are the great civilizing buildings: the tabernacles (separate ones for grown-ups, youth, and children); the cafeteria; the general store; the bookstore; the ice-cream shop. The line at the ice-cream shop is longer than an airport security line. Karin & I stand in the line for half an hour on Saturday night (ice-cream is not sold on Sunday, and each person is gathering a double-portion). We move up five feet in the line before we quit.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Our own cabin, in the camp’s posh section, has a pink exterior. It has a large sitting-room, a kitchen, a bedroom, and a loft. Karin & I sleep in a double bed curtained off from the sitting-room.

Karin’s mom and Brianna arrive at the camp. Brianna is reunited with her friends. They roam in packs of five or six.

One night, Brianna and her friends come to our door and sing Christmas carols to us.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

It rains. The streets are turned into mud.

The nights are cold. I am getting sick.

The church services occur twice daily, two hours at a time. Usually I arrive late. A famous Jamaican is the main speaker. Ruthlessly he cuts out the heart of prosperity theology, propounds the spiritual necessity of suffering.

Leg 2; “Esio Trot”; Brown City Camp; a new job

IDV lost 1–0 to Atlético Nacional, which was respectable enough to attract some more kudos from the continental and global journalists.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Last night Karin & I drove to Brown City Camp, a church camp in eastern Michigan where Karin’s mother has a cabin (she’ll soon join us, along with Karin’s little sister, Brianna). The trip was tedious. I perked up when we got near to Lansing and Flint, which I wanted to see a bit of, but we zoomed past those cities. We listened to novellas and short stories by Roald Dahl: Fantastic Mr. Fox; “The Enormous Crocodile”; and a cynical piece called “Esio Trot,” which I’d never heard of. This story was brutal even by Dahlian standards. I think even Dahl must have felt uneasy about it, because he gave it a redemptive ending that was out of step with the rest of it. (I’m also reading The Stranger Beside Me, the opus of Ann Rule, about the serial killer Ted Bundy. “Esio Trot” is more unsettling.)

When we got to the camp it was close to midnight. Karin parked in the main lot, just outside of the front gate. Suddenly we were confronted by a golf cart driven by a feeble old man and a bored teen-aged boy. They were wearing bright green shirts that said “Security.”

“What are you doing here,” said the old man.

“We have a cabin here,” said Karin. “We just arrived from South Bend.”

“Oh, all right,” said the old man. “Let me open the gate for you so you can park nearer to your cabin.” The golf cart drove away.

“That was bizarre,” I said to Karin.

“It’s after curfew,” she explained.

As we went down to our cabin we passed two other “Security” golf carts, one driven by two old women, another by a middle-aged man and woman who were extremely fat. I figured that I could outrun any of these security guards.

(On the other hand, so many of these golf carts were creeping around in the middle of the night, I’d probably be caught no matter what.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Prof. Robby has asked me to teach a few Spanish courses at Bethel. So that’s what I expect to do this fall, along with my other two jobs. I’ve agreed to teach Elementary Spanish II and Intermediate Spanish.

The brave persons

Independiente are the best or the second-best team in South America, but not the best team in Ecuador. Last weekend my own team, Barcelona S.C., clinched the top place for the first half of the season in the domestic league. This means that at the end of the year, in the grand finale, we’ll play against the champions of the second half of the season (or, if we are the second-half champions, we’ll win the league by default).

“It’s for brave persons,” said our goalie, Máximo Banguera. “I am a warrior and I want it to be known that [here] is a warrior.”

Also:

“When we lost the Clásico del Astillero” – the game against the leaders, Emelec – “many mediocre persons gave us up as finished, but this was a time for brave persons and not for mediocre persons.”

Count me among the mediocre persons. I didn’t think we’d catch up to Emelec. But I’m glad that the games were played by the brave persons and not by the mediocre ones; that B.S.C. recovered to win its last six games; and that down the stretch Emelec stumbled just enough to be overtaken.

Tomorrow night IDV and Atlético Nacional will play the last game of the Copa Libertadores.

The final, leg 1 (Estadio Atahualpa)

For a long time last night I thought IDV would lose. Atlético Nacional were leading; they were imposing their rhythm; they seemed the better team. Very late, though, Arturo Mina poked a rebounded ball into the goal, and the game ended 1 to 1. Because the away-goals rule is disregarded in the final, the slate is clean for the decisive leg in Medellín.

The global press at last has caught on to IDV.

Goal.com says: “Move over Leicester and Iceland: Libertadores hopeful Independiente del Valle is true fairy tale of 2016.”

And here are some nice photos from Britain’s Daily Mail.

The Caribbean

In Doctor No, James Bond travels to Crab Key: a horrid little island, the base for a vicious tycoon who rules over the guano trade. Ah, the Caribbean. It would be nice to go back there (I was in Jamaica in 1993). I think of the various Caribbean books in my library. Cambridge’s Concise History of the Caribbean. Biographical and autobiographical writings about Marcus Garvey. A collection of Haitian revolutionary documents. A book about Fidel Castro’s wars in Africa. A book about the Cuba of José Martí. A Caribbean Mystery. A High Wind in Jamaica. Wide Sargasso Sea. V.S. Naipaul. Juan Bosch. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History.

The telephone rings: I’ve been selected for two cruise tickets to the Bahamas! The condition is that I answer a brief survey.

All rightie.

Should the United States make it a priority to get over its dependency on fossil fuels?

Yes!

If there were an electric car, sold for such-and-such a price, rechargeable every-so-many miles, would you buy it for the primary driver in your household?

Yes!

(I can’t remember the third question, but it, too, is an environmental one. Yes!)

Thank you. Now someone will take your personal information. Please stay on the line.

But I don’t actually wish to go to the Bahamas.

Besides, would Karin wish to go to the Bahamas? Could she take off from work to go to the Bahamas?

Besides, traveling on a cruise ship is, like, the worst thing that an ordinary person could do to the environment.

I feel a pang of guilt. I hang up.

Where were we, ah yes, the literary Caribbean. Better than the literary Middle Ages. Last week I talked to a guy who liked medievalish fantasy fiction so well that he enrolled in a Ph.D. program in medieval literature. He specialized in the late-medieval poets who were “responding to” Chaucer. I asked him which literature of the period he might recommend to me, to someone whose interest was very casual; and with a straight face he told me Game of Thrones. No, I said, something from the period. He told me I might like Beowulf or The Canterbury Tales. Later I told Mary about this. She was not impressed.

Semifinal, leg 2 (La Bombonera)

Last week our heroes, Independiente del Valle, defeated Boca Juniors in the home leg, 2–1: a decent result, but due to the away-goals rule hardly a safe one. (Having scored in Quito, Boca would be able to advance with a 1–0 victory in Buenos Aires.)

Fast-forward to Thursday night. Boca are in their own fabled stadium, the Bombonera, and they score quickly. But IDV score soon after. Now they’re helped by the away-goals rule. Should one other goal be scored by the visitors, the home team would be obliged to convert not two, but three more goals.

The Argentinians must send players forward; but also, for dear life, they must avoid being scored upon.

This tightrope is too daunting for Boca Juniors. They wilt like little flowers. Early in the second half, a long kick by IDV’s goalie is head-flicked, twice, and suddenly one of IDV’s flankers is in scoring position, running with the ball. There’s a lunge by one of Junior Mouth’s defenders, but it’s futile. In a lightning flash, IDV have seized a commanding lead.

Moments later, lightning strikes again. Boca’s goalie comes out too far, tries to pass to a teammate who’s too close to him, and watches another IDV speedster intercept the pass, go around him, and escort the ball into the net.

(At this point, the Junior Mouth fans turn against each other. Some try to leave. Others confront them, questioning their loyalty. There are blows.)

The home players don’t quite give up, but they hardly know what to do. Without much effort, IDV stymie them.

IDV concede a penalty kick – and block it.

One goal does arrive for Junior Mouth, at the very end. Three goals too few.

Bitter Argentinians discuss.

All of Ecuador is behind IDV as they prepare for the home leg of the final, to be played next Wednesday against Atlético Nacional of Medellín. Once more, the ticket sales will be donated to the quake victims.

(Thanks to Stephen for some of this information.)

Reading report; dreaming report

I await my $0.64 copy of The Sorrow of Belgium. I bought it online from Better World Books. It has passed from BWB’s warehouse in Mishawaka (5–6 mi from my house) to Cincinnati, OH, to Allen Park, MI – near to Detroit. Now I’m hoping it’ll come back west.

It’s dumb for stuff to be shipped so circuitously. Would the Pony Express have taken this route? I doubt it.

Meantime, I’m making good progress reading these books:

Inner Workings by J.M. Coetzee;
The Witches by Roald Dahl;
Doctor No by Ian Fleming.

Later this month, Karin & I’ll go on a long car-ride to a place called Brown City Camp. I don’t like to listen to audiobooks, but Karin does. I’ll compromise. The key is to pick out something funny and gruesome: for instance, a book written by Roald Dahl and narrated by Stephen Fry, or by Hugh Laurie, or by some other British comic person. (Maybe also some nice sermons.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I dreamed last night that I wasn’t very fat any more – but also not very limber; and that I was trying to play soccer on a tiny field with two dozen other people, and that the passing lanes were all blocked off; and that the overaggressive coach (or whoever he was) was telling me to “jab the foot in” more, and I was like, It isn’t necessary, Sir: on this congested field I can simply hold the ball carrier off; he will lose his control of the ball. And I dreamed that I scored my only goal by climbing up a chain-linked fence and waiting for the ball to come up to me and then tapping it in from above the other players; but everyone wanted to disallow that goal.

I dream a lot of dreams like this one.

Portugal … ?

Well, who’d’ve thought it? Portugal!

• A team that didn’t win so much as not lose.
• A team whose goalscoring hero wasn’t CR7, but an obscurer striker, Éder. (Not even the most distinguished Éder in the tourney. That striker was Éder the Brazilian; he dressed for Italy.)
• A team whose coach had been employed by Greece during the World Cup, and who brought over the grinding tactics of the Greek team. (Without him, the Greeks finished last in their Euro qualifying group, twice losing to the Faroe Islanders.)

I am glad for my cousins, Annie & Vickie, who grew up in Portugal and are loyal to CR7. After the final they walked around their housing co-op waving the Portuguese flag. I am not glad for CR7, who didn’t play especially well in these Euros; nor for Pepe, who did. I am glad that modest Éder got the winning goal. I am sorry for Moussa Sissoko, the Frenchman who played best against the Portuguese.

Semifinals

In their Quito leg, Independiente del Valle defeat Boca Juniors, 2–1. The Goodness Gracious moment comes at the end of the first half. IDV’s goalkeeper appears to step completely into his own goal, carrying the ball with him. But there is no goal-line technology to denounce him.

The Buenos Aires leg will be played on the 14th.

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Germany’s semifinals, these last ten years:

0–2 vs. Italy, 2006;
3–2 vs. Turkey, 2008;
0–1 vs. Spain, 2010;
1–2 vs. Italy, 2012;
7–1 vs. Brazil, 2014.

Not one drab contest among them.

This year’s semi against the French is, I think, hands-down the best game of these Euros. The Germans play artfully, airily, especially in the first period. But it is “Little Prince” Griezmann who puts in the goals.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

On a tip from Karin (by request of Karin, with Karin), I am watching Holes, a wonderful, strange movie about children forced to dig holes, for their own moral good.

On a tip from Coetzee, I am reading and re-reading “Death Fugue”:

Black milk of daybreak we drink it at evening / we drink it at midday and morning we drink it at night / we drink and we drink / we shovel a grave in the air there you won’t lie too cramped / A man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he writes / he writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden hair Marguerite / he writes it and steps out of doors and the stars are all sparkling / he whistles his hounds to come close / he whistles his Jews into rows has them shovel a grave in the ground / he orders us strike up and play for the dance

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night / we drink you at morning and midday we drink you at evening / we drink and we drink / A man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he writes / he writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden hair Margeurite / your ashen hair Shulamith we shovel a grave in the air there you won’t lie too cramped / He shouts jab this earth deeper you lot there you others sing up and play / he grabs for the rod in his belt he swings it his eyes are blue / jab your spades deeper you lot there you others play on for the dancing

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night / we drink you at midday and morning we drink you at evening / we drink and we drink / a man lives in the house your goldenes Haar Margeurite / your aschenes Haar Shulamith he plays with his vipers / He shouts play death more sweetly Death is a master from Deutschland / he shouts scrape your strings darker you’ll rise then in smoke to the sky / you’ll have a grave then in the clouds there you won’t lie too cramped

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night / we drink you at midday Death is a master aus Deutschland / we drink you at evening and morning we drink and we drink / this Death is ein Meister aus Deutschland his eye it is blue / he shoots you with shot made of lead shoots you level and true / a man lives in the house your goldenes Haar Margarete / he looses his hounds on us grants us a grave in the air / he plays with his vipers and daydreams / der Tod is ein Meister aus Deutschland / dein goldenes Haar Margarete / dein aschenes Haar Shulamith

Zaza

In their quarterfinal, Müller, Özil, and Schweinsteiger erred their penalty kicks. Luckily for them, Simone Zaza’s miss counted for three, it was so terrible.

Zaza without music;

Zaza with music;

Zaza with horsey music.

At least he’s contrite. Brave Zaza, I understand your pain, and I wish you future success.

Other Italians erred. The Germans, KO’ing them, advanced to play against the French, who defeated the Icelanders. Here are the Icelanders back at home, doing their rigid cheer (which I like to think of as their “Ent” cheer).

On a lark I’ve begun to write a story called “The Nephew of Poirot.” It’s set during the present day, i.e. during these Euros. It tells of a collaboration between the Englishman Henry Hastings (the grandson of Captain Arthur) and the nephew of Hercule, the Belgian Claude-Luc Poirot. They must come to terms with Brexit, with their countries’ respective footballing crises, and with the past. Following a tip from Coetzee, I am going to have to do some research into Hugo Claus, the author of The Sorrow of Belgium. Dame Agatha, like Chesterton primarily a commentator on the soul, had absolutely nothing to say about Hercule’s homeland – which was all to the good; but nowadays a responsible writer can’t ignore fiction’s geopolitics.

Wildflower

Another upset: the Welsh KO’d the Belgians. In their semifinal they’ll face the Portuguese, who’ve yet to win in 90 minutes.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

On July 8 the Avalanches will put out their first album since, what, 2000? – and to my great delight the tracks released so far are distinctly like certain passages of Since I Left You.

Ignore for a moment the sounds, the samples, and consider how, structurally and rhythmically, the new tracks parallel the earlier ones.

“Subways” condenses “Close to You,” “Diner’s Only,” and “A Different Feeling”;

“Colours” is like “Electricity”;

and of course in many ways “Frankie Sinatra” is like “Frontier Psychiatrist.”

(All these tracks – old and new – are mid-album. We’ve yet to learn how Wildflower will start up or wind down.)

I don’t think these parallels are accidental (“Fr”-“S”; “Fr”-“Ps”). The Avalanches have been trying for sixteen years to make something that approximates the feel, the mood, that was so loved about Since I Left You, and this goal has proved most elusive. And so here and there they’re making the albums’ similarities extra-conspicuous.

The new tracks are quite good in themselves, but they also show how difficult it is to re-do what first was achieved with comparatively little effort. It is no small victory to copy, accurately, what was done by free association.

Casualties

Some footballing casualties:

Spain, KO’d by Italy;
Croatia, KO’d by tepid Portugal;
England, KO’d by Iceland (and by Brexit);
Ulster, KO’d vs. Wales by an own-goal;
Eire, KO’d by Antoine Griezmann.

Only the Welsh remain to carry the British torch. Due to their (rare) advancement, and to that of the Icelanders, there is a feeling of newness about this tourney.

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Not so with the Copa América. The final was a repetition of last year’s, nearly to a T.

In the first half, both sides defended hard, high up the field. The Argentinians were doing slightly better than the Chileans. Lionel Messi drew enough fouls to provoke the expulsion of Marcelo Díaz.

Then the referee decided to “even” things out, expelling the Argentinians’ left-back, Marcos Rojo, ruining the team’s shape and handing the advantage over to the Chileans.

The ninety minutes ended scoreless. Extra-time was scoreless.

In the shootout, Messi missed his penalty kick and was absolutely devastated. Afterward he announced his retirement from the national team. He and his country (and, let’s face it, the whole world) were the most grievous casualties of the last few days.

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Here is a good column by Jorge Barraza on “The Better and the Worse of the Copa.” My favorite paragraph:

THE SHAME. That this Copa, which in the end was very attractive, should not have been born to unite the Americas or to improve fútbol, but exclusively as a means of paying out bribes. Just as many governments perform yet another needless public work, robbing those who already are over-billed, here a tourney was conceived. The sole consolation is that now all who signed the contracts are in prison in their respective countries or in the United States, and their successors must proceed with care. …

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I wish to close by praising the Icelanders. Some games ago, Cristiano Ronaldo complained that their play was too defensive. But yesterday I saw ingenuity and nerve in how they brought the ball out after recovering it – passing it short, short, short, then long into just-opened spaces, creating more danger than the English did. In particular I was delighted by their fine No. 8, whom I may never see again after this tournament.

Leonardo Messi

Jacob & sons

One month after our wedding, Karin is getting me to listen to Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Way way back many centuries ago
Not long after the Bible began
Jacob lived in the land of Canaan
A fine example of a family man
Jacob!
Jacob and sons
Depended on farming to earn their keep
Jacob!
Jacob and sons
Spent all of his days in the fields with sheep

Jacob was the founder of a whole new nation
Thanks to the number of children he had
He was also known as Israel, but most of the time
His sons and his wives used to call him “Dad”
Jacob!
Jacob and sons
Men of the soil, of the sheaf and crook
Jacob!
Jacob and sons
A remarkable family in anyone’s book …

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The Argentinians, weary of their title drought, are profoundly interested in winning this Copa América. Without any nonsense, they defeated the USA 4–0 in the first semifinal.

The reigning-champion Chileans obviously don’t wish to relinquish their title to the Argentinians, their sworn enemies. They beat Colombia 2–0 in last night’s semifinal.

This second semifinal, in Chicago, was interrupted for a couple of hours by a t-storm that stretched across Illinois and Indiana. Due to this storm South Bend was briefly under a tornado watch. Karin & I huddled together in our apartment and prayed not to lose our lives or our property or our cat. (It would’ve been all right, though, if our rickety outdoor staircase had been blown away. We wouldn’t have minded being given a new staircase.)

Here is a video of the game and of the storm, and here is a decent write-up.

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The group stage of the Euros has ended with some upsets. The new 24-team format ensures that most of the penultimate-placed teams qualify for the knockout stage. This, in turn, has resulted in guaranteed safety, after just two games, for many of the leading nations, which has caused them to switch off their brains during their closing group games, which has caused them to draw or to lose those games. And so now we have a very lopsided knockout bracket.

One one side are Germany, Slovakia, Italy, Spain, France, Eire, England, and Iceland. This is the strong side of the bracket. All of the favorites, minus Belgium, are on this side (and the Belgians have given a lackluster performance so far).

On the other side of the bracket are Belgium, Hungary, Ulster, Wales, Portugal, Croatia, Poland, and Switzerland. Most of these teams didn’t even qualify for the 2012 Euros. (The Portuguese got to the semifinals then, but now they look awful.)

I admit I’m enjoying this.

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Do you ever wonder how the characters of Good Will Hunting turned out? Here Ben Affleck shows what happened to Chuckie after he grew up.