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.”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

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.