1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 22: The English patient

There was an unconventional Hungarian aristocrat named László Almásy who explored the Sahara in the 1930s. He had love affairs and died before he was old, but not in the spectacular fashion of Count Almásy of The English Patient.

The fictional Almásy (Ralph Fiennes) finds himself rolling across the desert in a (proto-) jeep with young Mrs. Katharine Clifton (Kristin Scott Thomas). She is talkative. He is quiet. She asks: How does a count make his way from the castle to the desert? Almásy replies:

I once traveled with a guide who was taking me to Faya. He didn’t speak for nine hours. At the end of it, he pointed at the horizon and said, “Faya.” That was a good day.

His answer is evasive. He already is in love with Katharine, whose husband is assisting him with his geographic expedition.

Almásy does what he can to keep himself at arm’s length from Katharine. Then they are caught in a sandstorm. It gathers quietly in the distance, obscuring the stars. Minutes later, Almásy and Katharine are forced to shelter together for the night while the sand beats against the jeep’s windows.

It is too much for Almásy. He strokes Katharine’s hair.

ALMÁSY: “Let me tell you about winds. There is a whirlwind from southern Morrocco, the aajej, against which the fellahin defend themselves with knives. And there is the ghibli, from Tunis …”

KATHARINE: “The ghibli !!!”

ALMÁSY: “The ghibli, which rolls and rolls and rolls and produces a rather strange nervous condition. And then there is the harmattan, a red wind, which mariners call the Sea of Darkness. And red sand from this wind has flown as far as the south coast of England, apparently producing showers so dense that they were mistaken for blood.”

KATHARINE: “Fiction! We have a house on that coast and it has never, never rained blood.”

ALMÁSY: “No, it’s all true. Herodotus, your friend. He writes about it. And he writes about a wind, the simoon, which a nation thought was so evil they declared war on it and marched out against it. In full battle dress. Their swords raised.”

There are scenes of such poetry all through The English Patient. Some of it is verbal; much is visual. The desert is a frequent backdrop. It is likened in different scenes to a human body, to a rumpled bedsheet, a slab of rock, a strip of parchment. As Shine is obsessed with the different appearances and meanings of drops of water, The English Patient showcases sand dunes and grains of sand.

Like Shine, again, The English Patient shifts backward and forward through time. Almásy’s moments with Katharine are deathbed recollections. He has been severely burned, and his lungs are failing. Mistaken for an Englishman, he is in Italy at the close of the Second World War, being cared for in an abandoned villa by Hana (Juliette Binoche), a French-Canadian nurse who has dropped out of her British military convoy to see this patient through his last days. Hana’s lover has just been killed; in Almásy, she recognizes a person similarly bereaved. She asks for his memories, which he divulges intermittently – as they return to him – or perhaps as he chooses to let others know them.

The villa gathers more occupants. Two are bomb disposal experts (the land is littered with mines). Another (Willem Dafoe) is a shadowy figure who calls himself Caravaggio. He, too, urges Almásy to recollect his past.

It is an international group, most of whose members are Britons in name only. Just one of the bomb disposers is fully English. The other (Naveen Andrews) is from India. He serves his colonizer with a certain wariness. Hana is more French than British. Caravaggio, ostensibly another Canadian, turns out to have spent most of his life in North Africa. Almásy, of course, is not an Englishman at all but has merely been taken for one. (In other circumstances, he has been taken for a German – no small matter during the Second World War.) Almásy himself hates the idea that countries claim ownership over land and people. It becomes clear why he might have chosen to leave his castle for an unmarked, largely ignored patch of desert.

This is an extraordinarily rich movie, splashing romance and history over startlingly scenic canvases. At one pole of the story is Hana, Almásy’s nurse, who freely gives of herself (in her first scene, she kisses a wounded soldier just because he asks her to). The other polar character is Almásy, who hates the idea of ownership, of being owned by others. It might more cynically be put that he believes in his absolute ownership of himself. What has been said of John Locke (by D.A. Lloyd Thomas) might also be said of Almásy: he is

perhaps one of those people who wish to protect a private place from everyone else. He [is] jealous of his independence and autonomy, and not only intellectually committed to the doctrine that persons own themselves.

The English Patient is one of the best artistic studies of this type of person. It is one of the very best movies in a good year.

Closing credits

In this last week of a momentous year, Karin & I are quite sick, and Samuel is sicker. He’s been congested, feverish, and lethargic. He’s struggled to breathe and to drink enough milk. At night, I’ve lain awake, worrying, listening to his creaks and gasps.

Mary helped us to take Samuel to the doctor.

Karin & I have decided to delay our move to my parents’ new house by one week.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

What more can I say of Samuel? Though it wrenches me to see him suffer, he’s a tremendous blessing. He’s so small, so quiet, so new. I regard him with awe.

Karin sacrifices herself for us. I do what I can for her and for Samuel; or, rather, I unceasingly think of what to do for them. I often fail to do it.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’ve spent most of the year indoors, on couches or in armchairs. (It didn’t help that in January I sprained my ankle.) There were a few exhausting weeks outside the apartment – touring Ithaca with Karin; hunting for jobs in South Bend. On the whole, though, I’ve been sedentary, and I’ve felt poorly.

I don’t mean that I regret sitting with Samuel or finishing the Ph.D. On the contrary, they’re two of the best things I’ve done.

Both endeavors attracted many helpers. My dissertation’s “acknowledgments” section mentions dozens of people: Cornell philosophers, Ithaca Salvationists, family members, and many others who helped in one way or another to remove that millstone from me. And when I’d completed that project, I again found a large group eager to help with the project of raising a child. Apart from my family, I’m especially grateful to my fellow churchgoers.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’m grateful, also, to the teenaged race walker Glenda Morejón for bringing glory to Ecuador this year. Ecuadorian soccer players also performed well in the U-17 and U-20 World Cups. (The grownup team looked hopeless.)

Ecuador’s president faced a severe challenge to his position. So is the U.S. president now being challenged in a more ritualized fashion. These politicians provided material for this blog.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Two people I haven’t discussed much are my old school friend, Dan, and his wife, Lizzie, who lifted my spirit by moving to the area and going on several outings with Karin & me. Also, it’s been a pleasure to observe the life of Ada, my new niece.

Of course, no yearly review would be complete without Jasper and Ziva. It’s obvious, now, that they’re incorrigibly naughty; but they more than compensate with their affection and their sheer being.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The last book I’ve read this year is James Hilton’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips. It’s debatable whether that old teacher influences his charges in any substantial way. What he does better is to invite them to enrich their lives through the enjoyment of his person.

My own influence is meager; nor is the sheer enjoyment I provide very great. But then, neither does Mr. Chips blossom until he’s in his forties. And this blossoming is due to his wife.

A house; visitations; a cold

My parents just bought a house in Mishawaka – the first they’ve owned. Since they’re living in Ecuador, Mary performed the negotiations and signed the papers on their behalf.

Samuel and Karin & I will benefit considerably from this purchase. Later this week, we’ll move into the house, and we’ll pay a discounted rate to live there. (We won’t relinquish our apartment until the end of January, however.) Jasper and Ziva will come with us, of course, and they’ll benefit from having more space in which to run around.

We toured the house last Friday night. A ceiling fan captured Samuel’s interest:

My parents will remain in Ecuador until they take their next furlough in the United States. That will be their first period in their new house. Afterward, they may return to Ecuador, or they may retire in the United States.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

David is visiting. He hides at Notre Dame and writes for many hours each day. He hopes to complete a dissertation chapter for his university, Rice, before Christmas Eve. Then he’ll have more time for extracurriculars.

Meanwhile, in Texas, his daughter, Ada, and his wife, Ana, are visited by Ana’s parents.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Today, Samuel is two months old. He is enduring his first cold. His chest is heavily congested. He shrieks bitterly when we use a tube to suck fluid from his nostrils.

Rays of hope

The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to impeach President Trump: or, rather, all but two or three of the House’s Democrats so voted (the different articles of impeachment didn’t receive the same number of favorable votes). The impeachers outnumbered the Republicans, who unanimously voted not to impeach.

It isn’t surprising that this outcome should be so partisan. More surprising is yesterday’s editorial by Mark Galli in Christianity Today: “Trump Should Be Removed from Office.”

(I’ve been having trouble loading the editorial’s webpage. Much or all of Galli’s text is reproduced, with interspersed commentary, on the blog of the evangelical historian, John Fea.)

I’ve not often been impressed by political declarations, which tend to be self-interested, but this one is tremendous. It’d seem very risky, circulation-wise, for CT to issue such a strong condemnation of Trump and his followers. But, as the editorial makes clear, this position was the only consistent one available to the magazine, given what it had published in 1998 about President Clinton. Short of retraction, it also was the only position allowing the magazine to meet its aspiration of nonpartisanship. (If you criticize a Democrat for doing X, and if a Republican then does X, your only nonpartisan options are to criticize the Republican or else to withdraw your criticism of the Democrat.)

Now that CT has taken an appropriate stand against this perverse regime, perhaps other evangelicals will do so as well.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Today’s other ray of hope is that a hyperloop route between Cleveland and Chicago might be built through South Bend in the not-too-distant future (see this article, and this one).

Details:

Travel time, Cleveland to Chicago: less than 40 minutes.

First year of operation: 2028 (estimate).

New jobs: 900,000 (estimate).

Ticket prices: two-thirds of Amtrak’s (estimate).

Funding: 100% private.

Energy: 100% solar. The expected surplus is to be fed into the grid.

Initiation in the dark

In this photo, Mary and one other nursing student lead their cohort in a recitation of the Nightingale Pledge. (Mary is on the left.)

Photo credit: Stephen

This (near-) nurses’ “pinning” ceremony was held on Monday, in the dark: IUSB abruptly lost electricity. Audience members illumined the proceedings with their cell phones. (You can see, in the photo, one bigwig doing this.)

You also can see the huge screen that automatically lowered itself when the power went out. It crushed a few of the initiates.

Despite these misfortunes, each person was adequately recognized. Mary wore two tassels, and her name was printed in the bulletin four or five times for various honors.

She’d been studying to become a nurse since 2015.

December’s poem

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

There was a man of double deed,
Who sowed his garden full of seed;
When the seed began to grow,
’Twas like a garden full of snow;
When the snow began to melt,
’Twas like a ship without a belt;
When the ship began to sail,
’Twas like a bird without a tail;
When the bird began to fly,
’Twas like an eagle in the sky;
When the sky began to roar,
’Twas like a lion at my door;
When my door began to crack,
’Twas like a stick across my back;
When my back began to smart,
’Twas like a penknife in my heart;
And when my heart began to bleed,
’Twas death, and death, and death indeed.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

(Anon.)

TNF

Thursday Night Football just broadcast its last game of the season. The show became more tolerable a few weeks ago when I realized I didn’t have to listen to Troy Aikman and Joe Buck: Amazon Prime offered channels with nontraditional commentary. I liked the Mexican commentators pretty well, but my favorites, on the “UK” stream, were the Irishman and the Scot. They described the plays accurately, told nice jokes, and didn’t murder the language.

Nor did they overstate the obvious. Aikman and Buck usurped tonight’s broadcast at the beginning of the second half, opining that “It’s of PARAMOUNT IMPORTANCE that the Jets score touchdowns,” before the audio switched back to the UK commentary and I was able, again, to breathe calmly in my armchair and enjoy my tea and kippers. The Irishman recited a line of poetry: “Quoth the Raven ‘Nevermore.’”

The Jets got some touchdowns, all right, but the Ravens still destroyed the Jets, 42 to 21. The Ravens looked very, very good. The Jets also looked good, uniform-wise. This season they’ve switched from their traditional white and forest-green garments to an ensemble that’s closer to what they wore in the Eighties and Nineties, with a color between forest green and kelly green. (Officially, it’s called “Gotham green.”) The Jets’ helmets are solid green now, not white or striped, and they look like solid-patterned billiard balls. I do miss the simple piping that used to run all the way up and down the sides of the pants. The team itself is awful.

The meeting of needs

I thank (a) Mary & Martin for reading the previous entry and, this evening, bringing us a new coffee pot (and some footlong sandwiches from Subway); and (b) Nora, Karin’s friend, who already had donated a used coffee pot. Our pots overfloweth. Indeed, dozens of people have shown generosity to us upon hearing that Samuel would be born. What we expected to be one of our leanest periods has been a quite comfortable one.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’m rereading Agatha Christie’s Third Girl (1966), one of her least celebrated books. It’s notable for its disparagement of the Sixties’ youth. I find it raucously entertaining. Poirot’s friend, the detection novelist Ariadne Oliver, Dame Agatha’s alter ego, is made to surveil suspects across London and even receives a blow upon the head. Agatha was in her “old lady” phase when she wrote this, but she hadn’t yet gone into steep decline: her next book, Endless Night, would be one of her most acclaimed.

Diagnoses

So, the clinic called today. The tests confirm that I have SEVERE sleep apnea. The clerk who relayed the news didn’t know how to pronounce “apnea” – hup-NEE-uh, she said – but I asked her to spell it, and A-P-N-E-A, indeed, is what I have. I was told to buy a CPAP machine at my pharmacy. Would I like to schedule a “titration” at the sleep clinic? Yes, please, I said, but what was I supposed to do first? Buy the CPAP machine, or have the “titration”? After more phone calls it was determined that I’d do nothing further before going in for the “titration” on January 20. (Really, the slowness of this process is baffling.) I’m still not sure I understand what to do; I plan to investigate further.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Our coffee pot broke a week ago. Karin & I have been keeping awake with sodapop and storebought iced mocha. But by this morning, those supplies had run out; moreover, after two days of relative calm, Samuel decided to shriek and shriek. By the time I’d prepared his bottle and gotten him suckling, I could hardly stay awake. I dozed off watching a TV show about heinous Australian crimes. Samuel slept in my lap. I dreamed I was visiting certain professors in Ithaca – ones under whom I didn’t prosper. My dreams were vivid; my wakefulness, hazy; but, all the while, I was aware of Samuel’s breathing.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Yesterday, I was more alert (I had two glasses of iced mocha), and I read a terrific essay by Nathan J. Robinson analyzing the memoirs of various staffers of Barack Obama’s White House. Robinson isn’t a columnist I ordinarily seek out. On several occasions, though, I’ve admired his work without realizing he was the author of something I’d admired previously (one piece I’ve highlighted in this blog is his assessment of Brett Kavanaugh’s judicial credentials). Now I’m attending more closely to how Robinson connects his political dots.

Interestingly, his condemnations of Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren (whom he used to esteem more highly) seem to hinge on similarities that he perceives between those candidates and Obama. Robinson really doesn’t like Obama’s political style, and I increasingly agree with him. (I put more stock in reasonableness than Robinson does – I’ve written a dissertation about that governmental virtue – but I also lament the manner in which Obama employed reasonableness as an ideal.)

The best thing about Robinson’s analysis of those fanboys’ memoirs is that it conveys what’s dangerous about the allure of a leader who styles himself as elite. Such a person will likely be a technocrat who considers himself above his electorate and his party, or else a panderer to financial elites who play him for a sucker (or both).

Read the article about Obama and his fanboys.

Weep.

Ask how we can do better.

At home with Samuel and the kitties

Karin returned to her job today, and I completed my first shift as a full-time stay-at-home father (of a human being). After 11 a.m. or so, Samuel never slept longer than 20 minutes. He kept me on task cleaning, holding, feeding, and burping him. Now his odor is seared into my nostrils.

I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so tired without being able to sleep. My Excessive Daytime Sleepiness, which usually makes me doze off, has been put on hold so I can wait on the Young Prince.

The kitties brush themselves against me, but I have only so many hands.

I’ve lost my copy of The Good Soldier Švejk just when I fancy reading it (not that Samuel would permit me to do so).

Karin keeps Samuel supplied with milk. Unfortunately, when she expresses at work, she has to go off the clock. This will significantly reduce our income.

1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 21: Ed’s next move

You twisted your ankle
I carried you
You got a divorce
So I married you
You fell off a cliff
So I buried you
I wish there were more bad times
To see you through

These lyrics are by Ed’s Redeeming Qualities, a band of four or five urban hippies. Some of them wear overalls and strum little guitars. One guy plays the clarinet.

A pretty girl named Lee (Callie Thorne) sings and plays the violin.

(“They sound like the music from Juno,” Karin says.)

We don’t know much about Lee, except that she is in this band. Eventually, we’ll learn about her unhappy dating history, but that’s almost an afterthought, something to provide a little turmoil for the movie’s last scenes.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Ed (Matt Ross) doesn’t know much about Lee, either, except that she’s willing to give him the time of day.

On occasion.

Barely.

About him, we know more. He’s moved to New York to work in a genetics lab. He studies how to modify the genes of rice plants. The work is very interesting, he tells new acquaintances.

His only previous scientific discovery was accidental. He worries that it ought not to have been credited to him.

He had a painful breakup at home, in Wisconsin. His girlfriend didn’t like it that he’d mapped out the rest of his life before the age of twenty-five (he’d even reserved himself a burial plot).

It isn’t that Ed loves to be in control. It’s that he’s terrified of not being in control.

It’s a foible he’s been working on. His move to New York is a deliberate exercise in character improvement.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

He’s also trying to get better at talking to women (just one woman, really).

Ed and Lee first spot each other at a party. Later, they recognize each other in a diner and introduce themselves. Then Ed talks too much about the book Lee is reading (Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams). She leaves.

Another day, they both witness a traffic accident. They leave their phone numbers for the victim. Ed gets Lee’s number and calls her.

This time, she’s more interested.

She becomes more patient with him.

This is a movie about a nice man working to make himself nicer; about nice people such as Lee and Ray (Ed’s flatmate) cutting him a little slack; and about the nice diner workers who encourage them.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

One scene in the first half of the movie is pretty bad. Ed walks through the Wisconsin countryside with his old girlfriend. Interpreters go with them: a woman to translate “womanspeak” to Ed, and a man to translate “manspeak” to Ed’s girlfriend. It’s like a fantastical scene out of Annie Hall.

It’s bad because the rest of the movie is realistic. Even though he is so awkward, Ed really could attract such a girl as Lee. Lee really could choose to ignore him, then talk to him, then kiss him, then leave him, then come back to him. That wouldn’t be a strange path for a relationship to take.

Lee really could go over to Ed’s apartment, and Ed’s cat really could vomit on her leg. These things happen.

People really do kiss each other as clumsily as Ed and Lee do in this movie. People kiss each other while ill, or while falling off of furniture.

Whether you’d enjoy a movie like Ed’s Next Move depends on whether you’d enjoy watching realistically attractive, awkward people stumble through the early stages of courtship. Not because you cruelly enjoy watching people stumble, but because these characters’ stumblings are, themselves, rather nice.

Binging

“You’re not a complicated guy, are you, Dick.” – Logan Echolls, Veronica Mars

This series keeps raising itself out of the grave. The movie appeared long after the show’s initial demise, and the newest TV season has been released half a decade after the movie. The actors are the same. Apparently, they can’t get enough of this blend of high school soap opera and detective fiction.

Neither can I. It’s my third viewing. In 2011, I watched the three TV seasons that, to date, had been released. A few years later, I viewed seasons 1 and 2 again, with Stephen. The Veronica Mars movie was released in 2014. I didn’t view it. But now that Hulu has released season 4 of the TV show, my goal is to work through all this material with Karin – we’re in the middle of season 2 – and then, maybe, we’ll glance at the spinoff, Play It Again, Dick, which Karin discovered on the Internet. (Dick focuses on a minor character; it, too, boasts appearances by most of the actors from the main program.)

Dick Casablancas really isn’t a complicated guy, but it’s fun to watch him plunge into pleasure-seeking. He has a parachute: his trust fund. There are lots of characters with trust funds in Veronica Mars, lots of very rich emancipated minors, and one of the interesting themes is the recklessness that their wealth affords them. It rubs off on their poorer high school classmates, with whom they feud.

Veronica (Kristen Bell) isn’t rich – she’s the daughter of a hardworking private detective. She pursues the same line of work, mostly inside her high school and its environs in Neptune, Southern California. She’s very clever. But she’s infected with the heedlessness of her rich schoolmates when, really, she ought to listen to her father.

Veronica is complicated. Some of the rich kids are, too. One is Dick’s friend, the aforementioned Logan Echolls, who makes sparks fly in unceasing confrontations with Veronica, with the local biker gang, and with his movie-star father. Another is Dick’s younger brother, Cassidy “Beaver” Casablancas, who uses his own trust fund to correct imbalances of power. Another is the outspoken Lilly Kane, Veronica’s best friend, whose murder is the focus of season 1.

Hardly anyone – except, perhaps, Veronica’s lunch buddy, Wallace – is unambiguously good. Veronica’s father is wise and brave, but it’d be a stretch to call him a straight arrow. Sunny Neptune is a snakepit. The teenagers circle each other, hissing.

Meanwhile, in each episode, Veronica solves a mystery.

Sometimes, she finds a missing dog (or goat, or parrot). Other times, she’s hired to get to the bottom of high school intrigue (Who sabotaged the election for student body president? Who spread the nasty rumors about the cheerleading captain?).

Occasionally, things are more serious. Veronica reunites long-lost relatives. She uncovers domestic abuse or serial murder or organized crime.

She taunts the corrupt sheriff and other local powers. At school, she attracts grudges – and when others wrong her, she takes fierce revenge.

Let it go, says her father.

Let it go, says Wallace, her friend.

Veronica doesn’t let it go. For all its fantasy, the series gets at the truth in the hard-boiled detective genre. It’s about enacting retributive justice in a world in which no one is blameless enough to throw stones.

The first episodes are bubble-gummy. Then darkness gradually descends.

A couple of field trips

It’s been a colicky few days for Samuel. Now, Karin & I get excited whenever he burps.

Laundry has piled up. Fortunately, there are excellent new washing and drying machines in our building. We put about fifty percent more laundry into each load than we used to.

That qualifies as news.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’ve been trying much of the day to read the last thirty-five pages of Ross Macdonald’s The Way Some People Die, to no avail. It isn’t the book’s fault, either.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My cousin Matthew visited from Atlanta with Megan, his intended. Yesterday, Karin & I took Samuel to an event at Matthew’s parents’ house called “Muffins with Megan.” I’m afraid Samuel stole the limelight too long. Everyone noticed how well-nourished he is. No one noticed his colic. He slept peacefully. Very shrewd.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

He also slept peacefully on Friday, when, at last sufficiently weighty, he was secured to his mother with a Boppy ComfyFit Baby Carrier and transported around the shopping mall. At Barnes & Noble, I found an omnibus of novels by Margaret Millar, the wife of Kenneth Millar (“Ross Macdonald” was his pseudonym).

The volume had some good blurbs:

“Very original.” – Agatha Christie

“Stunningly original.” – Val McDermid

“She has few peers, and no superior in the art of bamboozlement.” – Julian Symons

And my favorite:

“I long ago changed my writing name to Ross Macdonald for obvious reasons.” – Kenneth Millar

Why the twerp Griezmann isn’t succeeding at F.C. Barcelona

This article points out what should have been obvious before Griezmann moved for €120 million from Atlético de Madrid. Griezmann is accustomed to playing directly behind another striker. At Barcelona, Messi is the only striker who is permitted to consistently drop behind another striker.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Tonight, Karin & I celebrated three and a half years of marriage. We went to a burrito restaurant. We silently ate and admired our sleeping baby.

As November winds down, Karin dreads her return to her regular work schedule.

The good news is, I’m improving at giving Samuel the bottle.

Contrary to mystical prognostication, the missing copy of Picnic at Hanging Rock has been found (by Karin).

More parenting

My library copy of Picnic at Hanging Rock has gone missing. I’ve searched everywhere. There is no trace of the book. The plot of Picnic at Hanging Rock is happening to Picnic at Hanging Rock.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Nicknames of Samuel:

• Sammie (or Sammy?)
• Sam
• Little Roasted Chicken
• Porkchop
• Lambchop
• Lambie Boy
• Little Lamb
• Little Laah (after his noise)
• Lambwood

The boy is increasingly comfortable by himself, in the day, awake. This bodes well.

At night, inevitably and almost immediately upon waking, he cries.

Today I fed him his first bottle. He didn’t take to it much. We are practicing for when Karin returns to her job.

November’s poem

… is by e e cummings.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

mouse)Won
derfully is
anyone else entirely who doesn’t
move(Moved more suddenly than)whose

tiniest smile?may Be
bigger than the fear of all
hearts never which have
(Per

aps)loved(or than
everyone that will Ever love)we
’ve
hidden him in A leaf

and,
Opening
beautiful earth
put(only)a Leaf among dark

ness.sunlight’s
thenlike?now
Disappears
some

thing(silent:
madeof‌imagination:
;the incredible soft)ness
(his ears(eyes

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

A medical test

The last few days, we’ve had an arctic chill – and, suddenly, it’s mid-winter. Snow covers fields; frozen slush obstinately sticks to parking lots; ice daggers dangle over doorways; temperatures touch the lowest (positive) Fahrenheit integers. It’s indistinguishable from January. It looks lovely from indoors.

Tonight, I’m sleeping at my grandparents’ house. A vacation from Samuel’s squalling!

No, not just that. I have tubes in my nostrils and belts and wires and boxes strapped around my chest. They’re to measure my breathing and help the doctors decide if I have a sleep disorder.

If results are positive, they’ll account for:

• my constant sleepiness during the day;
• my inability to read an article or watch an hour of TV without dozing off;
• my weight gain the last seven years;
• my athletic and intellectual decline;
• my general lack of success.

The idea to get tested arose because, when I was in the hospital with Karin and Samuel, various medical professionals observed me sleeping and, independently, said I should.

Actually, I’d thought of it before, and Karin had thought of it (as a joke?), but the hospital stay definitely was the catalyst.

Independiente del Valle 3, Colón de Santa Fe 1

A great triumph for Ecuador: Independiente del Valle, the modest but well-run club of Sangolquí, defeated Colón of Santa Fe, Argentina, in the final of the Copa Sudamericana – the continent’s most important club competition after the Copa Libertadores. (Independiente also played in the Copa Libertadores final of 2016.) Today’s match occurred in a “neutral” venue in Asunción, Paraguay, which of course was filled with Colón supporters. No matter: a deluge stymied the Argentinian players, while the Ecuadorians dribbled and passed expertly through the puddles. Independiente also blocked a penalty kick.

In Texas, Ada watched the game:

In South Bend, Samuel and Karin slept through the game:

Parental leave

These weeks of staying at home with Karin and Samuel have been among the happiest of my life. I’ve been able to watch plenty of TV – quality TV, like Midsomer Murders. And on my birthday, we viewed Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan, which delighted Karin.

We’ve also been eating handsomely. Our church created a “meal train” for us. The congregants have been taking turns bringing dinner.

Samuel has been eating better, too. His tongue tether was clipped by a doctor of the ear, nose, and throat. Now it’s easier for Samuel to latch on to the breast.

(On a wall in the doctor’s office was a satellite photo of San Francisco, California. “That’s how San Francisco looks?” asked Karin. That night, I showed her Dirty Harry.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

We visited the public library in Mishawaka so that Karin’s former colleagues could admire our son. Browsing the stacks, I found a book that, many weeks ago, I’d asked South Bend’s librarians to procure via InterLibrary Loan (they never did). I was miffed to learn that the book hadn’t been far away – the two libraries are just minutes from one another. Perhaps the blood between them is poor.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Having narrowly lost to Italy, Ecuador is out of the World Cup. It was interesting to watch the sixteen-year-olds: so talented, so boneheaded.

Earlier today, Karin & I viewed the first half of Mary Poppins. We turned Samuel toward the TV. It’d be nice if he would remember Mary Poppins as his first movie.

I hadn’t seen Mary Poppins for many years. It was startling how young, how fresh-faced, Julie Andrews looked. Karin did some research and learned that Julie Andrews was twenty-nine when the movie was released. I’m nine years older than Mary Poppins.

I’d always been impressed by her sternness. Now, she looks not long out of university.

(Give Bert a chance, Mary Poppins. Give Bert a chance.)

Another World Cup

Ecuador has been playing in its second World Cup of this year: the U-17 World Cup. We made it through the group stage with one defeat, against Nigeria, and two victories, against Australia and Hungary. On Thursday, we’ll play our first knockout game, against the Italians; should we progress, our next opponents will be either the Chileans or the Brazilians (the hosts).

This tournament is hardly the most prestigious or the most predictive of long-term success. Still, it matters. It generates some lovely “human interest” stories, such as this one about a man who walked many miles, over mountains, so his son could play.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Karin will continue staying at home with Samuel all through November. I’ve been learning to care for the boy. Often, when I hold him, he doesn’t cry. He listens when I talk – and sometimes smiles.

Karin has been leaving him with me for short periods. Today she went shopping and then to the zoo to see South Bend’s new rhinoceros. The rhino stayed out of view. At home, I watched Lina Wertmüller’s World War II movie, Seven Beauties; Samuel slept.

Tomorrow, I’ll turn thirty-eight.

1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 20: Mary Reilly

A respected physician concocts a drug that, for a few hours at a time, allows him to assume the appearance of another man. So disguised, he commits heinous crimes. He avoids detection by taking a drug that restores his original appearance. After several of these transformations, however, the persona of the criminal comes to dominate that of the physician.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

A myth, in the technical sense of C.S. Lewis’s An Experiment in Criticism, is a story or situation that, even in barest outline, affects an audience; that is, a myth creates an effect no matter whether its telling has literary merit. (Even so, Lewis says, a person capable of being affected by myth seems, invariably, to have literary sensitivity. Lewis offers this as an observation about audiences, not as a part of myth’s definition.)

Imagine, for example, a person who has never learned the story of Jekyll and Hyde. If my artless summary at the beginning of this entry evokes the right sort of response in such a person – specifically, a response that is “grave” (p. 44) and “aweful” (p. 48) – then that story has “mythical quality” (p. 42). (Lewis himself names the Jekyll and Hyde story as an example of modern myth.)

To further explain how myth is “extra-literary,” Lewis says that one of myth’s defining characteristics is that “those who have got at the same myth through Natalis Comes, Lemprière, Kingsley, Hawthorne, Robert Graves, or Roger Green have a mythical experience in common” (p. 43).

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

In Mary Reilly, we get a retelling of the Jekyll and Hyde myth – one that doesn’t contain precisely the same characters and episodes of Stevenson’s novella but nonetheless conforms to the essential summary given above. The interesting question, so far as Lewis’s theory of myth goes, is whether the same mythical experience is had in common by those who approach the myth through Stevenson (or, for that matter, through my bare summary) and those who approach it through the movie.

For there is a difference. The movie might have been called Sympathy for Dr Jekyll. The main project of Mary Reilly is to give the audience a perspective from which to sympathize with Jekyll – and even, to some extent, with Hyde. This is achieved through the character of Mary, one of the housemaids in Jekyll’s employ.

The movie begins with Jekyll’s fascination with Mary. As Roger Ebert describes it:

Why is Jekyll drawn to her? Because of her scars. He asks her about them, and finally she reveals that she was beaten as a child, and locked in a closet with rats. And yet she refuses to say she hates her father for his treatment of her. This powerfully attracts Jekyll, who already feels that the Hyde side of his nature is beyond human acceptance. If Mary cannot hate her father, perhaps she cannot hate Jekyll and his secret; that would make her the only human soul with sympathy for the suffering doctor.

The movie shows Mary drawing closer to Jekyll even as his other acquaintances recoil further from his increasing strangeness. It might have been tempting to suggest some weirdness in Mary, so that she and Jekyll, or she and Hyde, could be kindred spirits. But the movie doesn’t do this. Mary has no attraction to suffering as such. But she is a decent person who responds to others’ needs, even as Jekyll’s and Hyde’s needs are revealed to be convoluted and repulsive.

If, as the myth suggests, people are conflicted between public good and private evil, then this telling of it shows why they might still reach out to others for understanding, and why, in so doing, they impose demands (for Jekyll and Hyde impose demands on Mary). Mary Reilly explores these impulses more carefully than other tellings of the Jekyll and Hyde tale, and it does so from the perspective of one from whom understanding is demanded. This is what distinguishes it from other versions. It doesn’t allow the horror to be kept at arm’s length.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Lewis would say that this cinematic version breaks one of his other rules about myths, which is that “human sympathy is at a minimum” (p. 44). Well, then: are stories mythical only in bare outline? Do they cease to be mythical once the details are filled in? Is myth like color, which washes out the more closely you peer under a microscope?

I don’t know how Lewis would answer. I do think, however, that the story as told in Mary Reilly loses none of its gravity and “awefulness” though it evokes sympathy. Perhaps Lewis ought to retract his no-sympathy rule.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Ebert describes how most of the action of Mary Reilly occurs on “a few vast yet claustrophobic sets”:

We see Jekyll’s library, filled with books to intimidate the uneducated housemaid. His operating theater, a Victorian monstrosity with tiers of seats for observers, looking down into the circles of hell. His laboratory, behind the house, usually locked, reached by a strange walkway suspended from chains. His bedroom, which one day is covered with blood, even on the ceiling.

The set design is, indeed, unsettling; otherwise, this is far from the most accomplished movie I’ve reviewed. Julia Roberts’s performance as Mary is touching and believable insofar as the viewer is able to suspend disbelief about her inauthentic Irish accent. John Malkovich, who plays both Jekyll and Hyde, also speaks like a non-native, but this is less noticeable because he exudes oddness in everything he does. I’m not sure whether having an oddball play Jekyll is the best choice; the division between Jekyll and Hyde might have been starker if Jekyll had been more bland, at least at the beginning.

But, as with any great myth, it isn’t the details that matter. Mary Reilly takes a good story and makes us think of it differently by changing the perspective from which it comes to us.

Samuel, cont.

Here I’ve posed Samuel next to a Penguin Classic to show his size. (See his arms flail.)

We brought him home on Friday. Since then, he’s been to church, where the congregants queued up to greet him; to Wendy’s, where he insisted on being fed in the parking lot; to a house that my parents are thinking of buying; and to my grandparents’ house.

There are many other photos I could show, but I’ll just offer two in which Samuel is acknowledged by the kitties, who seem enormous. Little Ziva looks like a horse.

This wasn’t their first encounter with Samuel. Upon first meeting him, Jasper sniffed once and then bolted under the bed. Ziva quickly followed.

Samuel operates on Tokyo time. He sleeps most of the day and wails most of the night. His wail isn’t WAAH, WAAH so much as uh-LAAH, uh-LAAH.

… and called his name Samuel, saying, Because I have asked him of the LORD

Would you like to see photos of our new son?

From yesterday:

From today:

The previous photo highlights my own traits, I think. Most of the time, the boy looks more like Karin (and especially Karin’s dad).

His name is Samuel David.

We’ve been attended, excellently, by about two dozen nurses and doctors, and received ten different visitors (several, more than once). Our little room has been the site of considerable traffic.

I brought fifteen books to the hospital. My goal is to finish reading the shortest one, The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (140 pp.), by Heinrich Böll. I don’t think I’ll meet it: we expect to leave the hospital tomorrow.

Karin also has a goal, which is to feed Samuel, from the breast, every two or three hours. This is an even greater challenge. His tongue is tethered, and he reclines only in certain positions due to a fracture of his clavicle. Throughout his first night, he spat out phlegm. Already, life is hard for him – and he’s reasonably healthy.

Is it good to bring a new person into existence? I’ve often wondered. Hannah, in I Samuel, had her reasons, and Karin & I have ours. What we agree on is that this child is from, and for, the LORD.

A plan for success

So here’s the plan.

(1) Karin takes the day off from work; maybe goes to the mall, walks up and down, prepares her muscles.

(2) She takes tomorrow off, too, for more of the same.

(3) If, by 7:00 tomorrow evening, she hasn’t begun laboring, we check in to the hospital.

(4) On Wednesday, someone takes our car to get an oil change. Karin produces our son.

Our dwelling is about as ready as we’ll make it. Today, looking for more to do, we separated unexpired grocery coupons from expired ones. Then we slept a little. Karin is still sleeping. I might put away our ironing board.

Still waiting

Our little son, whose name will be Hamish Macbeth (not really), refuses to come out of his mother.

The doctor says that if he hasn’t been born by Monday, we’ll make a “birthing plan.”

There’s little else to report. I finished reading Down a Dark Hall by Lois Duncan:

It was a slow burn, but the last pages were – as kids these days like to say – fire.

(Its cinematic adaptation, released in 2018, isn’t well regarded.)

Next, to read another boarding school classic: Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock. Copies have become readily available due to the popularity of the new miniseries. I’ve only seen the movie of 1975. It’s one of my favorites.

A truce

… has been declared. The protesting has (mostly) ceased. President Moreno has repealed the controversial Decree 833, which made fuel more costly for citizens. Together with the protestors, he’s negotiating a new law.

The unrest left a death toll of six or seven (I’ve seen conflicting reports).

Ecuadorian citizens and businesses lost a great deal of money due to looting, vandalism, work stoppages, etc. Apart from this, the protestors destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars of exportable oil.

President Moreno has accused his predecessor, Rafael Correa, of conspiring with Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela to overthrow Ecuador’s government.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Ecuador lost a “friendly” soccer match against Argentina, six goals to one. I’m somewhat alarmed. No one else is. The Ecuadorian players have the excuse that they were distracted by the country’s turmoil.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Ana and Ada have returned to Texas, along with David, who, for a couple of days, also visited South Bend.

Some photos of Ada and me:

My own child is due to be born tomorrow (which isn’t to say he will be). Currently, he weighs about 9 lbs.

October’s poem

… is by the Puritan, Anne Bradstreet. It’s called “Before the Birth of One of Her Children.”

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

All things within this fading world hath end,
Adversity doth still our joyes attend;
No ties so strong, no friends so dear and sweet,
But with death’s parting blow is sure to meet.
The sentence past is most irrevocable,
A common thing, yet oh inevitable.
How soon, my Dear, death may my steps attend,
How soon’t may be thy Lot to lose thy friend,
We are both ignorant, yet love bids me
These farewell lines to recommend to thee,
That when that knot’s untied that made us one,
I may seem thine, who in effect am none.
And if I see not half my dayes that’s due,
What nature would, God grant to yours and you;
The many faults that well you know I have
Let be interr’d in my oblivious grave;
If any worth or virtue were in me,
Let that live freshly in thy memory
And when thou feel’st no grief, as I no harms,
Yet love thy dead, who long lay in thine arms.
And when thy loss shall be repaid with gains
Look to my little babes, my dear remains.
And if thou love thyself, or loved’st me,
These o protect from step Dames injury.
And if chance to thine eyes shall bring this verse,
With some sad sighs honour my absent Herse;
And kiss this paper for thy loves dear sake,
Who with salt tears this last Farewel did take.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

I also worry, sometimes.

News and visitors from Ecuador

Most readers will have heard of Ecuador’s latest political unrest (summarized here). Briefly, transport workers and the indígenas have been striking against the government’s austerity measures, and especially against the cutting of fuel subsidies (this was done to comply with borrowing conditions set by the International Monetary Fund). Thousands have marched on Quito, blocking roads. President Lenín Moreno has moved the government to Guayaquil.

It was clear that after Rafael Correa’s presidency, Ecuador would shift back toward the right; what wasn’t clear was how far or how speedily. In the election of 2016, I favored Moreno, the candidate of Correa’s party, because I thought he’d shift more gradually than his opponents would. But Correa already had made Ecuador cripplingly indebted to China; and now, perhaps out of necessity, Moreno has resumed dealings with the IMF, which, in the late 1990s, had insisted on detrimentally austere financial measures as borrowing conditions for Latin American countries. From 1997 to 2005, several Ecuadorian presidents were toppled after enacting austerity measures. I fear that history is about to repeat itself.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My parents arrived in South Bend yesterday to visit little Ada and my own child (whenever he’s born). But it wasn’t easy for them to get here. They traveled from Santo Domingo to Quito several days early, during a lull in the protests. Then they went to the airport twenty hours before takeoff. Had they not done those things, they wouldn’t have made it through.

Anyhow, they’re here. This morning they’re at the Social Security office, dealing with the obstinate bureaucracy of the United States.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

On Tuesday, I got a couple of shots. They made me ache as with fever. I was especially miserable yesterday. This morning, my arms still hurt, but I seem to be on the up-and-up.

Ada; “Lava”; a golazo; a textbook

Much fawning over little Ada. She’s quite a pretty baby, and rather anxious.

Fortunately, she’s calmed by the “Lava” song. I’ve heard it played to her fifteen times in the last three days.

(Mary has made a playlist of Hawaiian music for Ada. I suggested adding the version of “Nothing Compares 2 U” performed by the Coconutz, from the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Yesterday, West Ham United enacted one of the nicer pre-goal buildups I’d seen in some time. I was pleased when the ball went in the net. (Crystal Palace won the game, however.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My Uncle Tim lent a textbook I’ve long wanted to peruse: The Norton Introduction to Philosophy (second edition).

A few remarks:

(1) The body text fonts are quite small. One doesn’t get the same impression previewing the pages online.

(2) Surely, much of the painstaking editorial content has been honed over dozens or hundreds of class lectures. Some of it, however, seems too opinionated:

Paley’s argument is sometimes taken to be an argument from analogy. … But arguments from analogy are notoriously weak. (27–28)

I can’t find any explanation of why such arguments are weak.

Instead, an example is offered:

Living things are like watches. Watches are made in factories. Therefore, living things are made in factories. (28)

But an example of a bad inductive argument is offered, too:

In the past, every time a presidential election has been held in the United States, the winning candidate has been a man. Therefore, in the future, every time a presidential election is held in the United States, the winning candidate will be a man. (xlix)

What’s more, concede the editors, it “turns out to be impossible” for there to be “some formal test for distinguishing the good inductive arguments from the bad ones” (xlix, cont.).

The editors suggest that this difficulty is handled by “the theory of statistical inference.” But, as far as I can tell, they don’t say what this theory is or how it handles the difficulty. Still, they issue no blanket condemnation of induction.

There may be a powerful reason for holding that analogical arguments are much less adequate than inductive ones; however, an explanation accessible to beginners is lacking. Such an explanation may be impossible to provide. My complaint, though, is that readers are left to take the comparative inadequacy of analogical argumentation on faith, though it isn’t admitted that this is what they’re left to do.

(3) Speaking of faith, the volume mixes classic readings with new articles that spell out “cutting edge” positions on the same topics; and faith is the topic of the article that I read tonight, “When Is Faith Rational?” by Lara Buchak.

There is much to commend Buchak’s view, and I think its gist probably is intelligible to the bright undergraduate reader who perseveres to the last page. The presentation is also helped by some well-chosen examples.

Alas, at key argumentative steps, the article simply refers to formal presentations in Buchak’s other work. This is unhelpful to readers who’ll have little further exposure to philosophy. Interesting and relevant though Buchak’s view may be, I worry that the argument for it just isn’t accessible to the book’s intended readers.

Perhaps, also, other new readings have been included because they present views that, like Buchak’s, are exciting and “trendy” and maybe even true, rather than because they help the novice to learn to philosophize. But I wouldn’t accept this conclusion purely on the basis of analogy. I’d have to read more of the volume to find out.

Birthdays; visitors; dinners; autumn; Ray Bradbury; hyphens

Happy birthday to Karin! She looks about to burst, but the doctors say she could remain pregnant for three more weeks.

Tonight’s dinner was provided by Karin’s mom and grandpa.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Happy birthday, also, to our sister-in-law Ana, who has flown up from Texas with Ada, our new niece.

Karin & I saw them yesterday, and then we were all fed by our Aunt Lorena & Uncle John.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Not many leaves have fallen, but the weather is unambiguously autumnal.

I remarked that this is Ray Bradbury Month.

Mary: “What? You’re going to name your child Ray Bradbury?”

John-Paul: “No.”

When a nosy person asks what our child’s name will be – as Karin’s mom did, again, tonight – I say, “His name will be John-Paul-Karin.”

Events of the weekend

Friday night, we had quite a rainstorm. It was loud and flashy and lasted several hours. Jasper and Ziva hid.

Karin took this video from our living room window:

The next day, when Karin & I went to the zoo, hardly anyone else was around, what with everything so wet. I’m glad we waited until this weekend to use our free tickets.

One of the lions was in fine form:

Tonight, Karin’s dad bought us chicken wings for Karin’s birthday:

The two youngsters in the photo are Julian, Karin’s stepbrother from one of her dad’s previous marriages, and Lily, Karin’s sister.

It seems Karin & I won’t be moving to Muncie. I was notified of my rejection this morning.

1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 19: DragonHeart

1996 is still an innocent time, dragon-wise. The cynicism of Game of Thrones hasn’t yet pervaded the post-Arthurian, pre-Chaucerian world of DragonHeart.

The young Prince Einon is trained by Bowen (Dennis Quaid), a “knight of the Old Code.” Bowen teaches Einon to swordfight and to do good.

Rebellious peasants kill Einon’s tyrannical father. Einon, too, is mortally wounded. But before he can die, his mother, Queen Aislinn (Julie Christie), takes him into the lair of an old worm named Draco. The dragon has the power to heal Einon. But first, Bowen, the knight, must swear an oath to bring up Einon in line with the Old Code.

After Bowen takes the oath, Draco inserts a piece of his own heart into Einon’s chest. Not only does this restore Einon to health, it makes him invulnerable.

Years pass. It’s dismaying to see King Einon (David Thewlis) grown up worse than his father, torturing, enslaving, and killing peasants.

Bowen blames the dragon’s heart for Einon’s corruption. Bitterly, he leaves the court and takes revenge against any dragon he can find.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

What follows this dark prologue is a hilarious Muppet-like romp through the British countryside. I say “Muppet-like” because its protagonist, Draco, is a benevolent monster. He isn’t a puppet – at least, not in every scene; usually, he seems computer-generated. But he’s awfully cuddly for an old lizard. Some of his expressions seem almost feline. He’s lifelike and absurd.

Best of all, he’s voiced by Sean Connery.

Draco reencounters Bowen and convinces him to become his partner in con artistry. The two lapsed adherents of the Old Code traverse the countryside, swindling peasants of their money. To do the swindle, Draco pretends to die in a manner that generates considerable slapstick humor, not unlike the false hangings in such Westerns as The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

It’s all very silly and formulaic; thankfully, the movie doesn’t aspire not to be. One particularly ripe old chestnut, served up during the opening scene, you may recall from a 1971 Wizard of Id collection:

(DragonHeart isn’t even the first movie to recycle this joke: see it done by Mel Brooks in 1981.)

A monk (Peter Postlethwaite) follows Draco and Bowen, commenting on the action like a Greek chorus.

In one scene, the monk climbs up on a large, gray rock and begins to recite obnoxiously from a scroll. Beneath his feet, a fiery eye twitches open. The rock is Draco in natural camouflage. The monk is scared out of his wits.

Later, in preparation for the obligatory battle against King Einon, the monk will become an excellent archer.

Another notable warrior is a peasant girl, Kara (Dina Meyer). Einon wishes to make her his bride. (This, too, already has been done in movies.) She’d rather kill him for his vile treatment of her father. For that matter, she’d rather kill than marry anyone. But in time she grows attracted to Bowen.

Recall that because he has a dragon’s heart in his chest, Einon is invulnerable. How this issue is resolved, I won’t tell; maybe you can guess. Also, it goes without saying that before they can defeat Einon, Bowen and Draco must remember what it is to follow the Old Code. No more may they swindle the peasants. (The movie always has been on the peasants’ side, anyway.)

Original plotting isn’t DragonHeart’s strength. That’s all right. Draco is loveable. He has a noble heart. Once he follows its promptings, the rest of his universe rights itself, too.

Hoosiers

Karin & I watched Hoosiers tonight. It was the first time Karin had seen it. I’d seen it many times, but not for several years.

The kitties watched with us.

John-Paul: “Jasper, are you a Hoosier?”

Karin (for Jasper): “Yes, I’m a son of the state.”

The last time I’d seen Hoosiers, I was living in upstate New York. Somehow, this time, I didn’t recall that Norman Dale (the Gene Hackman character) had coached in Ithaca.

On this viewing, I was unsettled by how awfully the Indiana townspeople treat Norman. What always used to seem like a plot device or local color or even comedy this time impressed me as straightforwardly realistic. The self-loathing townspeople are suspicious of any assured outsider who’ll settle among them; they set themselves against Norman from the beginning. “Upstanding” citizens, men who hold power, nearly run Norman out of town; but the same poisoned attitude is evinced by an “enlightened” schoolteacher (Barbara Hershey).

Yes, I thought, I’ve seen this sort of thing in Indiana (and not only in Indiana).

Of course, by the end of the movie, Norman has repaired the basketball team and steered it toward glory, gaining the town’s allegiance and pulling up some of its sad-sacks (the players, the aforementioned teacher, and, especially, the town drunk, movingly portrayed by Dennis Hopper). It’s hard not to rejoice in the conclusion. “That was such a nice movie,” Karin said; and I agree.

Whether the ending is credible depends on whether one believes in divine grace. Norman isn’t much of a Christian; apart from that detail, though, he is a tenacious missionary.

Let me be clear that I haven’t intended to denigrate Hoosiers, even if this time I’ve viewed it with a jaded perspective. This is my dear grandpa’s favorite movie – and with good reason. What it celebrates about Indiana, it shows lovingly and truly. The best thing about the movie is its compassion – for a people, and for the worker who goes to them. This is evident from the first shots of him traveling, lonely, between fields at dawn, surveying the countryside, hoping for a new beginning.

Preparing, pt. 10

Today it’s my turn to be ill, though, so far, my suffering has been less than Karin’s.

John-Paul: “Are you still infirm, dearest love?”

Karin: “No. I just have the residual coughing.”

John-Paul: “The residual coughing?”

Karin: “The coughing that goes on for two more weeks.”

We keep on acquiring furniture: today, we received a metal bookcase that used to belong to the public library. Karin has filled half of the shelves with cloth diapers.

She’s also rearranged our bedroom, bringing out the cardboard box that the newborn will sleep in, as well as the metal grate that will cover it to keep out Jasper and Ziva.

Ill and pregnant and ill and pregnant and ill (and a trip to Muncie)

Karin has been ill since the weekend, with symptoms of cold and fever. She began feeling especially poorly on Saturday after we completed a six-hour parenting class. She rested all of Sunday and returned to work on Monday.

On Tuesday, after seeing a doctor, she felt well enough to go with me to Muncie, Indiana, about three hours to the southeast, so I could interview for a job. Afterward, we toured the town to get a clearer idea of what it’d be like to live there. We saw the fringes of Ball State University; Muncie Central High School, which lost to Milan High School in the famous Indiana High School Boys Basketball Tournament of 1954; numerous statues of a Native American warrior; and occasional references to Garfield, which is set in Muncie (its cartoonist, Jim Davis, is from that region). We also became very familiar with the scenery between Muncie and South Bend.

Our son behaved normally through all of this. Karin & I received no indication that he was silently experiencing Karin’s illness. (This evening, watching House, M.D., we were reminded of that possibility when we observed Hugh Laurie try out a medicine by inducing a migraine in a comatose patient.) Our boy’s organ systems have developed about as much as they will inside the womb. Now, he’s putting on fat and enjoying a few more days of peace.

September’s poem

… is by A.E. Housman.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Harvest moon

Thanks, Martin & Mary, for paying for the clothes dresser I said I needed.

Thanks, Martin’s parents, for finding and bringing it.

There’s been good weather this Friday the 13th, and a good moon.

The second shower

On Sunday, our church held the second (and final) gift shower for our son. It was simpler than the first shower. Most donors gave money – not clothes, books, or contraptions.

We also were served so many tacos and cupcakes that I’ve been eating the leftovers ever since.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The child is due to be born in mid-October, but, as far as I’m concerned, he’s ready to come out. (Ah, well, what do I know.)

Tomorrow, Karin & I will go to another appointment with a doctor from the rotation at the women’s health center. The last doctor we met called our son a “critter.”

Just think, says Karin, what if, on the day of birthing, it’s THAT doctor who happens to be on call. “Here’s your critter,” he’ll announce.

Two appointments ago, we met a fellow patient who’s married to one of my friends from Bethel. She was going on their third child – and, I believe, their eighteenth dachshund.

Job hunting, pt. 3.14

I had a bizarre series of interviews with a certain company.

On Wednesday, I met with some of the company’s top people about job X. You are a very strong candidate, they told me. We will certainly consider you for this job. But would you mind also being considered for jobs Y and Z?

All right, I said.

On Thursday, I got a call. My résumé had been passed on to the director of job Y. Would I come in for an interview on Friday morning?

All right.

(It was good that Mary had helped me to choose two sets of interviewing clothes.)

During the interview for job Y, I was told I was overqualified. Something like job Z would be more suitable, and it would pay better. Would I like to go to the highest floor to meet the very top person in the company? He’d seen my résumé and asked to be introduced to me.

OK.

The very top person was in a meeting with other top people. I was ushered into their presence. The very top person leaped up. What sort of work would you REALLY like to do?, he asked.

I told him.

The very top person turned to one of the other top people. Do we have any jobs like that available?

Yes. Z-1 or Z-2.

Would you like to go down to Human Resources to start the paperwork?, the very top person asked me.

Yes.

(This last interview took less than a minute.)

The director of job Y took me downstairs to the human resources department, congratulated me, and went away to continue interviewing candidates for job Y. After a while, two human resources workers appeared.

Yes?, they said.

I’m here about either job Z-1 or job Z-2.

Those jobs are not available.

But this person, that person, and the other person said they were.

Well, they aren’t. Perhaps you would be interested in [other job]?

I’d have to think about it, I said. I left the building. I felt like I’d just passed a series of complicated video game levels only to come back out in level 1.

That afternoon, I had a phone interview with a different company located out of town. It lasted fifteen minutes and was much more straightforward. It was about whether I could do specific tasks, not what would satisfy my innermost longings.

I hope to find out early next week whether I’ve made the first cut.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I wish to thank Karin for going online and figuring out how to tie a Windsor knot for me. In five minutes, she accomplished what I’d been trying to do for about an hour.

That isn’t all she’s figured out how to do. Some fruit flies have infested our kitchen. Karin went online and learned how to build a trap for them. She used a jar with an old banana peel in it.

As you can see, the flies have been trapped in the jar, but they’re doing better than ever. Karin, out of tenderness, has refused to put immobilizing dish soap in the jar. Now the flies are enjoying their fruit and each other, and they’re making children. In effect, as Karin’s friend Nora put it, Karin has built a fruit fly love nest. From time to time, a fly escapes the jar.

Back to the salt mines

On Sunday, we attended a large, Amish-style meal for the birthday of Karin’s grandpa. Then, yesterday, we entertained visitors from noon until five. We liked those visitors, but it was a tiring conclusion to the weekend (what with our sitting in chairs all those hours).

Now that Labor Day has ended, the real labor must begin.

No, not the kind that produces a child. That can wait another month. What I mean is, tomorrow I’ll have another job interview – the fifth one of this job search (I guess I’m not so impressive in the flesh).

Tonight, Karin & I went to our church’s small group meeting. One of the children who’d tagged along volunteered to pray for us:

“Dear God, I pray that John-Paul gets hired so that he and Karin can have lots of money to buy things for the baby.”

Mary took me to the store to help choose some clothes for tomorrow’s interview. After I brought them home, Karin realized that the security tag was still attached to one of my new shoes. She spent an hour figuring out how to pry it off without spilling ink everywhere (that’s what the tag is designed to do to shoplifters). I offered to help, but she was intent on doing it herself.

She watched YouTube videos about how to pry it off with a couple of forks. In the end, she managed with a flathead screwdriver, the claw of a hammer, and some pliers.

La reina rezaba por los niños pobres

… according to Duolingo’s sentence generator. Karin was amused.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

It’s Labor Day weekend. There isn’t a day when Karin & I don’t have at least one event scheduled with this or that acquaintance.

For us, this is unusual.

Today, we visited my friend Dan’s family. We went to the beach. Although the water was supposedly infested with E. coli, it contained many bathers.

We didn’t bathe. We walked down a pier to where, between the cities of St. Joseph and Benton Harbor, our own St. Joseph River empties itself out into Lake Michigan.

We also went on a carousel (I gather it’s impossible not to do so if one goes to the beach with Dan’s kids).

I rode the flamingo:

It had a slimming effect.

Dan and his wife, Lizzie, kindly gave us many things for our baby. Dan & Lizzie aren’t going to produce any more children. They have three who are cute but wild, especially at night.

1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 18: Manny & Lo

Watching this story unfold, I was reminded of two others:

(1) Marilynn Robinson’s celebrated novel, Housekeeping (1980), in which two orphaned sisters are cared for by an eccentric aunt. I’ve not read it, but it seems all my friends have, and so I’ve absorbed it through osmosis (no doubt inadequately). Behold this trailer of the 1987 cinematic version.

(2) The Night of the Hunter (1955), in which an orphaned brother and sister take refuge with a not-quite-elderly spinster (Lillian Gish). At night, the spinster sits on her porch, singing hymns, grasping a shotgun, guarding the children against their pursuer in one of the all-time greatest scenes.

In Manny & Lo, it’s the children – two sisters – who wield the shotgun. They use it to force an eccentric spinster to fulfill their mother’s role.

Sixteen-year-old Laurel (Aleksa Palladino) is the instigator, the more desperate sister. She’s pregnant.

Eleven-year-old Amanda (Scarlett Johansson) is the movie’s narrator. She’s willing to go along with whatever Laurel does, apparently for the sheer pleasure of experiencing and contemplating it.

The sisters have illegally removed themselves from the fostering system and are out on the lam. The movie begins with them driving around in an old station wagon. (No, it’s nothing like Thelma & Louise.) They sleep in forests and model homes. They prefer not to stay long in the same place. As Laurel’s baby grows inside her, however, they realize they must choose a different survival tactic.

After Laurel decides not to have an abortion, she and Amanda kidnap Elaine (Mary Kay Place), a knowledgeable maternity shop clerk. They conscript Elaine to serve as a midwife for Laurel. They chain Elaine’s ankles together and imprison her in an empty vacation house in the woods.

Most of the movie takes place while Elaine and the two girls await the birth of the child in this hideout.

At first, Elaine is none too pleased, as shown in this still photo. (No, she hasn’t been decapitated. The girls are force-feeding cereal to her: she’s been hunger-striking.)

“I do not give in to criminals,” Elaine says.

She reiterates: “I don’t care what type of drugs are involved, or so-called religious rituals, or what have you. I do not give in to criminals.”

There has been no suggestion of drug use or religious ritual. This is just how Elaine talks: with unceasing, severe moralism.

Later, however, she cooks casseroles for the household.

Again, she underscores that she is not giving in to criminals. “I believe kidnap victims have just as much right to a balanced meal as anyone else,” she tells Laurel and Amanda. “And, if I am not mistaken, the same holds true for innocent babies.”

She adds: “If you two benefit in the process, well, that can’t be helped.”

In deed, then, if not in word, Elaine exhibits increasing sympathy toward her captors. (Does it count as Stockholm syndrome if she was rather cuckoo to begin with?)

Over all this hang various possibilities that the trio will be caught:

• The owner of the vacation house might show up.
• The neighbors might show up. (Rather foolishly, or perhaps daringly, Amanda has made friends with a little boy she has found in the woods.)
• The fostering agency might show up.
• Elaine’s friends and relations might show up.

What in fact happens is perhaps the most interesting thing that could happen. It leads the three women to understand their position in the world, and what they mean to each other.

At certain points, I thought I knew how the movie would turn out, and I was wrong (at least about the details). What does occur, and how, is immensely satisfying – and amusing. And a little sad.