1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 34: Whisper of the heart

This movie was released in Japan in 1995 and in the USA in 1996. The version I know is the one dubbed into English.

I first saw it in 2007. I was twenty-five, still tossed by youth’s tempests. The movie affected me considerably.

Revisiting it, what impresses me is its patience. It isn’t obvious, at first, that the movie is a love story. For a long while, it mostly just follows fourteen-year-old Shizuko in and out of buildings and trains, and up and down the sidewalks and outdoor stairways of hilly Tokyo – all of which are drawn with the naturalistic clarity that is typical of Studio Ghibli.

Shizuko is a solitary person, but she is not a loner. Her parents, sister, and friends occupy stable positions in her life. But she is driven by her own interests, so that these other people occasionally complain that she neglects them. She also neglects her studies.

She is obsessed with motifs and feelings. She does some writing. Mostly, though, she just absorbs as many stories as she can, reading dozens of library books.

She notices that one book after another has been checked out by the same borrower. She dreams of meeting this person. She even makes a few inquiries about him. But she is a little too wrapped up in her own idea of what he is like. She imagines that he is unfailingly polite (it turns out that he is not). What she does sense, correctly, is his offbeat drivenness; in this respect, she and the other book borrower are as alike as two peas.

Then, one day, she follows a strange cat around a neighborhood and ends up wandering into a shop with some marvelous antiques. …

I had better stop describing the plot. This isn’t a suspenseful movie, but it has secrets. What is revealed isn’t the solution to any great mystery, but, rather, depth of feeling.

“You complete me,” Tom Cruise says to Renée Zellweger in Jerry Maguire. This movie, Whisper of the Heart, has similar utterances, delivered with an earnestness several orders of magnitude more powerful than in most love stories.

The movie is about unrecognized love …

unrequited love …

lovers tragically separated …

and lovers who manage to come together – who, in the fullness of time, might indeed complete one another as well as lovers could do …

who, after some struggle, are able to express this out loud.

(I think, also, of another exquisite Japanese movie, The Garden of Words, and its shattering declaration: “You saved me!”)

It’s possible to interpret the lovers’ condition, their being-in-love, as age-specific. They feel and speak so strongly because they are so young. Of course, there is something to this, but to lay all the emphasis on this point would be a mistake. Another important character, an old man, is shown to feel his own love just as intensely.

The division isn’t between the young and the old, but between those who are romantic and those who are not – or, perhaps, between those who speak frankly about their passion and those who do not (or, between those who are ready to do so, and those who are not). There is a delightful scene in which the two main lovers talk intimately upon a rooftop, in full view of a crowd of gawkers. The lovers simply ignore them. They have important things to tell one another.

As in Jerry Maguire, it’s the frankness about idealism that makes the movie so good. It’s a pleasure to watch people who are passionate about living excellently – and who recognize and love each other for it.

(The music in this video isn’t from the movie. YouTube has lots of videos made by fans of Whisper of the Heart who have mixed different scenes together and set them to other music.)

Closing credits

The blog looks different today. The old template was faltering: stray marks wouldn’t go away; strings of text couldn’t be highlighted or copied; links were frozen. I was displeased that readers couldn’t navigate to the YouTube video of “Banstyle/Sappys Curry” by simply clicking on the link that I had posted. So, I reformatted everything. The commenting function has been disabled – for now. I’d like to put in a virtual guestbook or bulletin board instead. Subject labels also have disappeared from individual posts (for now). You can access them via the sidebar, which you can unhide by clicking on the three small horizontal lines at the top of the blog.

The picture of poor little Juan Pueblo, the cartoon character, has been removed from the front page. It can still be accessed, via the sidebar. The blog’s colors are as garish as ever, but its fonts have been cleaned up. I am now using Heuristica, a clone of Utopia, which is the typeface of Philosophy & Public Affairs. And I’ve decided to begin punctuating as most other web writers do – outside of the hyperlinks.

Are these changes pleasing?

I’d welcome comments, but no one would be able to post them.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

As the year ends, I remain unemployed, and COVID continues to ravage. My own health improves, thanks to Air Supply (my CPAP machine). Samuel gains new abilities; Karin does mighty deeds. Jasper and Ziva are a bit neglected. I’ve been reading the Bible more and going to church less; since the weather turned, we’ve settled for choruses and sermons on YouTube. I am utterly weary of long, drawn-out video conferences. C.P. Snow’s books are a comfort; most nights, I read two, three, or four short chapters. (As it happens, the books suggest parallels between our own COVID-era lives and those of Londoners during the Blitz.) I’ve enjoyed the prose of two books about the Scottish Highlands: A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, by Samuel Johnson, and Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Moreover, I’m delighted that Ecuador’s national soccer team has been playing so well.

It’s a privilege to be isolated in a house owned by my parents, and not in an apartment. It’s even beneficial to mow the lawn, and – like yesterday – to shovel snow. These things allow me to burn calories and eat more Chinese takeout (and more sandwiches from Jimmy John’s, whose manager called one day to thank us for our loyalty).

Clearly, I have little cause for complaint.

Great is thy faithfulness, O God, my father. … Morning by morning, new mercies I see. All I have needed, thy hand hath provided. Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.

Christmas Eve

Karin has got the afternoon off, and she’ll have the whole day off tomorrow. Samuel is glad to have his mother at home. I’m glad for a few minutes alone while Karin and Samuel watch the 1994 version of Little Women.

Last week was just awful for Samuel … and for me … and for Karin … and then a switch was flipped, and Samuel became delighted with the world. Today, he played for hours on the floor. Last week, whenever he was miserable he would insist on being held, and if he wasn’t held, he’d refuse to sleep. Now that the switch has been flipped, he’s been going to sleep by himself after a couple of minutes of listening to “Banstyle/Sappys Curry.”

We’ve noticed a couple of new molars poking out through his gums.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Barcelona played the first leg of Ecuador’s title-deciding round last night, at home against Liga de Quito. It was the first game I’d seen in real time all season. Liga scored as soon as I put the game on, but Barcelona drew level within a few minutes. The final score was 1 to 1. The second leg will be played at the same time next week, in Liga’s stadium, where Barcelona’s record is abysmal.

Movies of the 2010s

The honor roll, continued.

1. Tabloid (dir. Errol Morris, 2010)
2. We Are the Best! (dir. Lukas Moodysson, 2013)
3. L’illusionniste (dir. Sylvain Chomet, 2010)
4. Another Year (dir. Mike Leigh, 2010)
5. It Follows (dir. David Robert Mitchell, 2014)
6. Bridesmaids (dir. Paul Feig, 2011)
7. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (dir. Brad Bird, 2011)
8. Hail, Caesar! (dir. Ethan and Joel Coen, 2016)
9. The Trip (dir. Michael Winterbottom, 2010)
10. 56 Up (dir. Michael Apted, 2012)
11. Queen & Country (dir. John Boorman, 2014)

Several of these movies were released in the previous decade, in the last weeks of 2010. So, clarification is in order.

To qualify for the list, a movie needs to have ended its first run in U.S. theaters no earlier than January 1, 2011. This is a fair criterion because I wouldn’t have been able to see several of these movies as soon as they appeared in theaters, in 2010.

Besides, if I hadn’t adopted this criterion, this would’ve been a sorry list indeed. Like the previous list, this one makes it clear that I stopped paying attention to art and culture halfway through the decade. I guess I no longer view the world with wide-eyed wonder.

Or maybe the new stuff really does lack freshness. A common complaint, nowadays, is that too many movies are sequels or prequels or adaptations. As it happens, this list includes three sequels: Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, 56 Up, and Queen & Country. And the first two of these would go on to have sequels of their own (as would The Trip).

But the three sequels on the list are pretty darn cool. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol revitalized an ailing franchise. Queen & Country, which seems never to have held much commercial promise, is a self-contained appendix to Hope and Glory, which was a minor hit in 1988; its very existence is miraculous.

56 Up is, of course, a part of the greatest string of sequels in documentary history; that they are sequels is their whole point.

Tabloid is not a sequel, but it’s quintessential Errol Morris. This means that it’s what 75% of those true crime docs on Netflix are trying to copy. They are Tabloid’s spiritual sequels, or they would be, if they were good enough.

Tabloid is my no. 1. I thought long and hard about making either We Are the Best! or L’illusionniste no. 1. They may as well all be tied.

The Trip and 56 Up first appeared on British TV.

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Music albums of the 2010s

Contrary to popular belief, 2020 is the last year of the 2010s, not the first year of the 2020s. (The first year of the Common Era was AD/CE 1, not AD/CE 0; the last year of the Common Era’s first decade was AD/CE 10.)

So: this is a good time to publish some rankings.

Tonight, I offer my five favorite music albums of the 2010s. Bear in mind, I’ve hardly listened to anything new since 2013 or 2014.

2016’s Wildflower was an exception. I just couldn’t keep away from the Avalanches’ first album in sixteen years. (I’ve yet to listen to We Will Always Love You, released this month.)

Without further ado, here are the top five:

1. Destroyer, Kaputt (2011)
2. Grimes, Visions (2012)
3. Daft Punk, Random Access Memories (2013)
4. The Avalanches, Wildflower (2016)
5. Kendrick Lamar, Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City (2012)

Nothing very unknown or surprising here.

It’s not that I don’t listen to music any more: this year, I’ve averaged two hours per day on Spotify. It’s that I’ve been going back, again and again, to the well, the well being Julee Cruise.

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December’s poem

… may as well be about 2020.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

In Memoriam A.H.H.
OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 106

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

(Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

A few minor observations

Karin does not have COVID-19.

On the other hand, we figured out that next year, my health insurance will cost another $200 every month.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’ve been going on long walks with the boy. Today’s walk was a little cold, a little misty. Samuel slept in his stroller.

Earlier, visiting his great-grandparents, he’d had plenty of excitment.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Homecomings is this month’s book by C.P. Snow. It’s the seventh of the Strangers and Brothers novels. It’s only the second book to treat the narrator’s home life in any detail.

A theme of Strangers and Brothers is that character, career, and domesticity are all linked in profound and unexpected ways. I’m not sure if the narrator’s rather drastically compartmentalized presentation is an oversight by Snow or a clever, ironical reinforcement of this theme.

No fighting, no biting!

Karin was to’ve had a small medical procedure this week, but it was postponed when her throat turned sticky. Then, today, Indiana’s governor announced stricter health measures. There’s nothing wrong with that, since Indiana has flared up, COVID-wise; but now it’s less likely that Karin will be treated before the end of the year, and if she isn’t treated then, she won’t receive certain insurance benefits.

On Monday, she was tested for COVID-19. We’ll be surprised if she has it. She only ever showed the one symptom, and it went away.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Meanwhile, Jasper and Ziva have been fighting colossal battles, and little Samuel has found a new pleasure: snuggling with his parents and then biting them.

So, from time to time, I read to my children from No Fighting, No Biting!, by Else Holmelund Minarik and Maurice Sendak.

The story takes a rather dark turn in the chapters about the two juvenile alligators and their Stranger Danger.

Reuniting, pt. 2

As Quito celebrated its fiestas, my high school class held its twenty-year reunion, online. Some 35–40 former students and school workers joined in.

A few who were in Quito filmed themselves walking outside with their COVID-19 masks on (they are legally required to wear them in public, even when out of doors). One of these classmates left the video conference, came back, left again, and came back again. In one appearance, she was traveling in a car; in another, she and her family were eating fritada at an hostería; and in yet another, she seemed to be riding a horse.

The rest of us just hunkered down in front of our computers and phones. One person took this screenshot:

I kept thinking how everyone looked just the same.

Well, I suppose we’ve changed quite a bit, as this photo from our senior trip attests:

Even so, during the reunion, I had no difficulty recognizing faces, voices, gestures, or personalities. I hardly said anything – the larger the gathering, the less I’m inclined to speak – but I took great pleasure in viewing and listening to everyone.

Were I to meet any of these people again, we would accept each other without much trouble, or so I should like to think.

Highsmith; Dickens; Potter; Schulz

We had to tell Karin’s dad that we couldn’t attend his Christmas party this year due to COVID-19. He looked terribly sad. Then he perked up when he saw Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt on my bookshelf. It seems he enjoyed watching the movie Carol, which is based upon The Price of Salt. (Also, his girlfriend’s name is Carol.)

I haven’t read The Price of Salt or seen Carol, but what I am reading, for the first time, is A Christmas Carol.

It’s pretty funny. Some do-gooders ask Scrooge to donate to a homeless shelter during the Christmas season, and Scrooge is like, What? Are there not enough prisons?

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Beatrix Potter is hard to read to Samuel – we don’t often get farther than two or three pages before he loses interest – but the other day we did make it through all of The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies (the link is to the Project Gutenberg page). I kept laughing out loud, which must have been very confusing for Samuel.

Then I remembered how, in Snoopy Come Home, Snoopy laughs and laughs at Miss Helen Sweetstory’s Bunny Wunny books until the librarians throw him out onto the sidewalk.

I wonder if Schulz was recalling his own experience of reading Beatrix Potter.

1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 33: Ghost in the shell

This violent, disturbing cartoon for adults has the best soundtrack of 1996:

When I hear those drums, I think of a vast, hidden indoor swimming pool, or a great cistern in a derelict building. I visit such places in my dreams.

The main protagonist of Ghost in the Shell likes to go diving in a canal in the middle of a Japanese city. There are skyscrapers all around her, but hardly anyone is in sight. It’s a good place in which to introspect.

All movie long, this character philosophizes out loud, compulsively.

She works for a governmental agency that deals with cyber crime. Her assignment is to trace the source of a computer virus called the “Puppet Master.”

Indeed, she and her colleagues have been designed for this task. They are robot-human hybrids, or cyborgs (the year is 2029). They look like regular humans, except that they stare vacantly and are able to talk without moving their mouths.

And, sometimes, their limbs get torn off.

The limbs are artificial and can be replaced. Still, it’s unnerving to see humanoids conducting themselves matter-of-factly while they’re mutilated. They’re like sinewy, bloody china dolls.

I’ve watched movies with reanimated corpses, talking severed heads, and the like, but nothing else unsettles me just like Ghost in the Shell does.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I won’t go into detail about the metaphysics of personhood that underlies the combining of a human with a robot. Yes, the movie’s title evokes “The Ghost in the Machine,” the philosopher Gilbert Ryle’s derisive phrase for Cartesian substance-dualism. But whether or not the cyborgs have Cartesian souls is beside the point (as it happens, the movie opts for a thoroughly physicalist ontology).

What matters is that these beings have embodied selves. What kind of self the protagonist has – and, consequently, what her life means – can’t be separated from a physicality that she doesn’t embrace. It troubles her that she’s neither fully human nor fully robotic.

Nor is she fully female – she lacks genitalia. This is evident from scenes in which she fights in the nude.

And this takes us to the interpretation that I find most compelling. The movie meditates on transgenderism, on what it’s like to have a body that feels not just dysfunctional, not just awkward, but wounded.

Here is an excellent review that explores this theme.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I have little more to say. The movie’s dialog is sometimes flat, sometimes ponderous. This is not an artistic failing. It reflects how the characters struggle to come to terms with the strangeness of their existence.

The futuristic Japanese city is superbly conceived. Against this backdrop, the humanoid characters are drawn rather lifelessly, except when they seem most artificial. Then they become curiously expressive.

There is an extraordinary sequence near the end of the movie. Two cyborgs lie next to one another; below their chests, their bodies have been torn away. They communicate by thinking. One tries to persuade the other to join with himself (herself?) into a single being. When shown from a certain angle, their faces almost seem to merge. The scene could be an homage to Bergman’s Persona. One being combines with another; only, in Ghost in the Shell, it isn’t a nightmare or a colonization, it’s a longed-for realization. The movie isn’t pleasant, but it does plumb fascinating depths.

R.I.P. Diego Maradona

… arguably the greatest soccer player. A “great man,” I heard one commentator say. I wouldn’t go that far, but, clearly, very few players have been as naturally gifted as Maradona.

In terms of natural talent, who else is in his class? Puskás? Pelé? Probably. But I know them mostly by reputation. Maradona himself admired Mágico González.

Among those I’ve watched in real time, the two players who stand with Maradona are Ronaldo Nazário de Lima and Lionel Messi. Zinedine Zidane and Ronaldinho Gaúcho, I relegate to the next tier – far, far beneath the others.

It’s also worth mentioning that Romário and N’Golo Kanté have displayed genius in their circumscribed roles. (Kanté works hard, yes, but with an instinctive clarity.)

What, then of such a determinant player as Xavi Hernández – or Johan Cruyff, perhaps the greatest soccer figure of all time (for what he did in management as well as on the field)? They were obsessives, constantly working, constantly scheming to improve. Were they naturally gifted? Surely. But their place on the podium of naturalness is hard to ascertain. The natural ability of Andrés Iniesta is more apparent than that of Xavi. (Iniesta is less conspicuous than Ronaldinho or Zidane, but he might be in their class.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Maradona’s other distinction, besides the naturalness of his talent, is the role he played as the “conduit” of his teams’ successes. His teammates floundered badly when he was absent. This was true at the club level and at the 1994 World Cup. The same has happened again and again with Messi. (Cruyff and Xavi also were “conduits” through which play flowed, but, when they left, their teammates were not without recourse.)

Unlike the other forementioned players, Maradona and Messi have inspired cult-like devotion among their teams’ supporters – and in an entire nation. Maradona encouraged this sacrilege; Messi, as far as I can tell, has been indifferent to adulation (though, in other respects, he’s hardly been faultless). In such cases as theirs, talent rather than personality is what has inspired devotion. Fans and teammates will tether themselves even to such a wastrel as Neymar, who is gifted but ultimately rudderless.

One achievement of Maradona’s was that, for nearly two decades, he overcame the idolatry and dependency of his worshipers forcefully enough to deliver the goods.

Sherlock Hound

… or, in Japanese, Famous Detective Holmes, is a 1984 TV series of Hayao Miyazaki’s. I never thought I’d get to view it without having to shell out a lot of money. Last night, though, our Amazon Fire TV Stick suggested that we try the show for free using the HappyKids.tv app. (We haven’t watched much of Miyazaki with the Fire Stick, but it must know that we like our British period shows.)

On the basis of our first episode – “A Small Client,” a.k.a. “Little Martha’s Big Mystery,” which adapts Arthur Conan Doyle’s story “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb” – I’d say the show is a great success. Miyazaki’s Sherlock is youthful and tousle-headed. Mrs. Hudson – also surprisingly young, and exuding kindness – is a Victorian beauty (or, rather, she is as beautiful as a talking cartoon dog could be). Moriarty is a flamboyant wolf, while Watson and Lestrade belong to portlier breeds. Transport, done by hansom cab in Doyle’s stories, is here performed in a nifty little motorcar upon which Holmes – or Hound – has doubtless tinkered. Another marvel is a machine that wheezes and gasps as it mints counterfeit coins bearing the image of Queen Victoria.

Alas, as the show was being made, its production team turned over. Some of its episodes failed to reach the highest standard – or so says one reviewer. But a half-dozen episodes do evince the master’s touch. (The reviewer lists them.)

Karin & I are delighted to have found this show. Samuel also watched with interest and didn’t howl as he did when we tried to watch Sanditon – a Jane Austen series in which the men do naked sea-bathing (but not with such courage as in the Merchant-Ivory Room with a View).

Update: What we watched tonight: “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” (the link is to YouTube – this video was uploaded within the last day or so).

“Rawr” means I love you

Things that frighten Samuel:

• The alarm in Karin’s car, which has been sounding without provocation
• Gently saying the word “rawr” (one of Samuel’s shirts has a picture of a t-rex, along with the slogan: “Rawr” means I love you)
• The Geico gecko

Many thanks to Stephen for the birthday gifts of one book and one new rice pot (my old rice pot had stopped stopping; I’d been having to watch it like a hawk so it wouldn’t burn the rice). Stephen’s birthday is this week.

David, whose birthday is tomorrow, also gave me a book.

To them: rawr.

Ecuador 6, Colombia 1

An historic victory against one of our toughest rivals, who beat us twice in the previous World Cup qualification cycle (3–1 and 2–0). I figured we’d lose or draw this time, especially since some of our players were sidelined due to COVID.

I needn’t have worried. We scored twice in the first ten minutes. By the end of the game, the Colombians had suffered their worst defeat in World Cup qualification since Brazil thrashed them, 6 to 0, in 1977.

Every goal was scored by a different player. Our precocious winger, Gonzalo Plata, was ejected for taking off his shirt after he scored goal number five.

November’s poem

It’s been several days since the temperature descended from glorious heights. Almost all the leaves have died. We’ve had several frosts. The wind howled all of today; it is still howling.

Now that the porch is uninhabitable, Karin & I are making plans to clear out the spare bedroom and turn it into a play room for Samuel.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Stephen David showed me this video of Brazilian referees discussing whether to award the penalty kick that led to Ecuador’s third goal against Bolivia.

The Bolivian almost surely didn’t handle the ball deliberately, but in this era of the VAR, that hardly matters. You can hear these referees talking about the defender’s having abierto la masa corporal – i.e., he had extended his bodily mass (of course, the operative concept is surface area, not mass). It’s notable that the defender “enlarged his body” before the shot was taken. The video shows the ball striking the arm after a ricochet, but the arm had occupied its “enlarged” position for some time.

If such refereeing were applied consistently, defenders would have to train themselves to keep their arms next to their sides inside the penalty box or else risk conceding a penalty kick for involuntarily handling. This would make it harder for defenders to balance themselves inside the penalty box. This, in turn, would allow attackers to easily dribble or pass around them very near to the goal.

I wonder if it would gradually improve the sport. Teams would have a strong incentive to defend well outside of the box.

Defensive bunkers might be abandoned or at least moved farther away from the goal, toward the middle of the field. There would be less clustering at either end.

Soccer would again become a full-field game – less like basketball, more like itself.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

This month’s poem – from the movie We Are the Best! – is called “Hate the Sport!”

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Nature is fully polluted
But you only care about the recruited
Children cry and scream
You only care about your soccer team
The world is a morgue
But you’re watching Björn Borg
Hate the sport
Hate the sport
Your team is winning
Oil companies are sinning
Hate the sport
Time to abort
Hate the sport
Hate the sport
Hate the sport
Hate the sport
People die and scream
But all you care about is your high-jump team
Children in Africa are dying
But you’re all about balls flying: hate the sport, yeah!

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

(English subtitles – translated from the Swedish)

Another good result

… in World Cup qualification, against Bolivia. The match transpired as I expected it would, with defensive errors, wasted shots, and Ecuador’s eventual victory. The final score was 3 to 2. We briefly leaped into second place among South Americans. It was mathematically impossible for us to remain there, however, and Argentina overtook us by drawing against Paraguay, in lackluster fashion.

Tomorrow, Colombia or Uruguay can knock us down into fourth place, but not if they also draw. The Colombians will play against us on Tuesday.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

November’s novel by C.P. Snow is The New Men, in which scientists jockey for the privilege of building the atomic bomb. They all consider that it’d be better for the world if the bomb weren’t built – but as long as Nazi and U.S. scientists are trying to build it, British scientists may as well try, too. And thus is lit the fuse of personal ambition.

The old Penguin covers are interesting.

A strange sequence in the fall

“Well,” says Karin, “I didn’t see any fleas on Jasper today.”

Jasper has been of two minds: some days, he’s had a flea (just one); some days, he’s had none. Some days, Karin has bathed him. Other days, he’s gone unwashed.

Little Ziva has gone many days without having been caught harboring any fleas.

Samuel has had spots (not from fleas) and a fever. Today he is well again, but he napped five consecutive hours in the late morning and early afternoon. The outdoor temperature was in the seventies (F). Toward evening, I wore shorts and strolled with Samuel around the block. Quite a few dogs ran up to their fences and greeted us. Neighbors were out of doors, visiting one another or washing their cars; their zest made the wintry clouds and the leaf-less trees seem out of place.

I wonder if my old friend Madame is aware of this book, Onward and Upward in the Garden? It’s by Katharine White, who was married to E.B. Its chapters have titles like “Floricordially Yours.”

Sweet dreams (goodnight song)

Not much to write about tonight (who really wants to find out what I think of the election?), so I’ll just post one of the boy’s favorite YouTube videos.

Samuel is made so, so happy by the loving glances between the mother and the baby.

De-fleaing; voting; reuniting

A few updates:

(1) The fleas

None in sight for a couple of days.

We’ve been laundering our clothes and trying to store them away from the fleas. Both Jasper and Ziva have been bathed. We’ve tried to make it up to them by giving them extra, extra love.

Right now, they seem flea-free.

(2) The vote

Today, we drove around before sunrise, looked at four different polling places, and decided to vote at John Young Middle School in Mishawaka – the only place where I’ve ever voted, as it happens. We queued for eighty or ninety minutes before it was our turn. We finished voting well before Karin had to go to work.

The cold was bearable (today’s temperature is supposed to reach the sixties). Samuel lay bundled up in his stroller. His mood was good.

We talked to several people we knew. One poor man (not one we knew) appeared to reach the front of the queue only to realize that he didn’t have his I.D.

My own mistake was to wear glasses instead of contacts: my mask guided my breath upward, fogging the lenses and effectively blinding me for an hour and a half.

(3) A different vote

2020 was to have been the occasion of my twenty-year high school reunion. Well, my classmates and I can’t reunite in person, but some of the go-getters among us have been organizing a video conference which is to include as many of us as possible. The date is TBD; votes are still being cast.

Meanwhile, my classmates and I have been sharing photos with one another.

Karin & I don’t have a recent family photo. We took these photos on Saturday.

In the second one, Samuel is dressed as Stitch, for Halloween.

1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 32: The rock

R.I.P. Sean Connery.

People declared him, in 1999, to be the “Sexiest Man of the Century.” And until today he was “Scotland’s Greatest Living National Treasure,” according to some European betting company I’d never heard of.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My high school friends had great enthusiasm for Connery’s movie The Rock. They’d say things like, “It’s so sad what happens to that Ferrari. And to that beautiful Hummer.”

The movie has car chases, explosions, fighter jets, machine gun fights, handgun fights, hand-to-hand fights … and three dudes: Connery, Nicolas Cage, and Ed Harris. It’s not unlike that scene in The Office in which three employees stand around the water cooler agreeing that they’re all “alpha” males. The characters played by Cage, Connery, and Harris must learn to acknowledge one another as fellow badasses who are worthy of mutual respect.

This would be no small feat. One of these characters is a terrorist. Another is a jailbird. Most shamefully, the Cage character is a nerdy scientist.

Never mind that this scientist is a “field” agent, not a “desk” agent, for the FBI. Never mind that his job is to disarm chemical weapons.

He still has trouble remembering to carry a gun.

Only recently did he impregnate his girlfriend.

He is assigned to San Francisco to deal with what turns out to be a threat to national security. Unwisely, he brings along his girlfriend and unborn child, putting them in harm’s way.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

PRAY TELL, what is this threat to national security?

A dozen or so members of the U.S. Armed Forces have gone rogue. They’re led by a USMC general – Harris – who is acknowledged by all parties to be thoroughly honorable; and yet he and the other rebels have taken some innocent tourists hostage in the disused prison on Alcatraz Island (“the Rock”).

Worse, they’ve stolen four rockets filled with pellets of a lethal gas.

They make two demands:

First, that the government officially recognize one hundred military heroes who’ve died while performing tasks of a clandestine nature.

Second, that it pay reparations to the heroes’ families.

If these honorable, terroristic demands are not met, the rockets will be launched. The poison gas will kill 70 or 80 thousand San Franciscans – as well as Cage’s girlfriend and unborn child.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

So much for Cage and Harris. Enter Sean Connery.

His character has made a distinguished career as an escape artist. But now he’s under lock and key in an ultra-modern federal prison. He spends his days reading philosophy and Shakespeare and growing out his hair …

… until the FBI comes asking for his help. You see, many years ago, he was the only prisoner to escape alive from the Rock. Now he’s the only person who can find his way through Alcatraz’s maze of tunnels. Only he can guide Nicolas Cage and the team of impatient Navy SEALs who have been tasked with neutralizing the chemical weapons and rescuing the hostages.

The Bureau doesn’t like Connery one bit. He’s too cocky and too British. He knows too many U.S. government secrets. But, in this situation, he’s indispensible.

Whether he can get along with Cage is another matter.

They expertly hurtle wisecracks at one another. This is the best thing about the movie.

It’s almost worth the two hour, sixteen minute runtime. Almost.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Let’s skip ahead:

Car chase …

Car crash …

San Francisco streetcar crash …

Explosion …

Scuba diving peril …

Gunfight …

So, there are a lot of action sequences, but they aren’t very gratifying. In a good action sequence, you can see why each character comes to make each move. The action sequences in The Rock are mostly haphazard. The protagonists point and shoot at nameless enemies who may as well be zombies. Complications don’t emerge from the logic of the situation. They are random. They are often played for laughs. (Consider the early chase sequence in which a little old lady crosses the street in front of a speeding car.)

The Rock is dressed up as an action movie, but, fundamentally, it’s a buddy comedy. Its physical wit is undistinguished.

Its verbal wit is better.

In the bowels of the Alcatraz prison, after the SEALs have all been killed, Connery and Cage achieve mutual understanding:

CONNERY: Are you sure you’re ready for this?

CAGE: I’ll do my best.

CONNERY: Your “best!” Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and ---- the prom queen.

CAGE: Carla was the prom queen.

CONNERY: Really?

CAGE [cocking his gun]: Yeah.

I would’ve said that the poison-gas scenario is ridiculous, except I’ve been reading Michael Lewis’s book The Fifth Risk. It’s about how the U.S. government keeps in check lots of security threats comparable to the one in this movie. (It’s also about how the current administration has been foolishly defunding scientific research that most politicians don’t even begin to understand.)

So, it turns out, the movie is probably more realistic than most people would have guessed.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The Rock was the high point of Michael Bay’s directorial career. His Armageddon (1998) was worse. I haven’t seen his Transformers series, but I gather those movies were much, much worse.

So, even the lousy movies of 1996 were much better than their more recent counterparts.

(Link.)

Thank you, Sir Sean. Thank you.

Rest in peace.

P.S. See, also, my review of DragonHeart.

Baths for the kitties

… because Jasper has been harboring fleas. We believe they came into the house via some clothes we inherited from Rick (Rick’s dog, George, recently had fleas).

Ziva has never been bathed. We’re going to postpone that ordeal until we’re sure she has fleas.

No such luck for Jasper, who, last night, suffered his first bath since early kittenhood. He moaned and tried to claw his way out. On the whole, though, he was rather brave. He came out smelling of peppermint and cloves.

Unfortunately, he had fleas again this morning.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

We’ve tried, on several occasions, to vote; but at every polling place, the queue has wrapped around the block. We don’t want to stand out in the cold for a long time with our baby, and the paucity of weekend voting hours makes it hard for us to go stand in line one after the other.

That leaves two options: (1) trying to vote during business hours this week, and (2) voting on Election Day, when more polling stations will be open. Both options are complicated by Karin’s having to manage her workplace – the regular manager will be recovering from surgery – and by my having to care for Samuel.

“A U.S. president has never been elected by a majority of eligible voters,” writes Jason Brennan in Compulsory Voting: For and Against.

In the 1964 election, 61.05 percent of voters cast their ballots for Lyndon Johnson – the largest majority a president has ever enjoyed. Yet, at the same time, because turnout was so low, Johnson was in fact elected by less than 38 percent of all voting-eligible Americans. We call Reagan’s 1984 victory a “landslide,” but less than a third of voting-age Americans actually voted for him. Less than a quarter of eligible Americans voted to reelect Bill Clinton in 1996. In all elections, a minority of the voting-eligible population imposes a president on the majority.

Whether or not you endorse compulsory voting (Brennan doesn’t), it’s hard not to conclude that many of the non-voting majority choose not to vote because they are significantly hindered from voting. Set aside legal disqualifications for criminals, non-citizens, puertorriqueños, those without I.D., etc. The logistical obstacles can still be formidable.

This sort of problem can be grasped in theory; but, as with the stifling of access to health care, transport, and other basic goods, it acquires a more sinister character when it is experienced.

A special day

Lo, the Birthday Sheep returns – this time, for Samuel.

Today Samuel is one. Had it not been for the Leap Year, he would have turned one yesterday. Had he not stayed in utero an extra week, he might have turned one even earlier.

So, for his age, he is rather … old.

Even so, this Birthday Sheep is a bit much for him: he cannot straddle it: it was designed for 18-month-olds to ride. The Sheep isn’t everything he might have wished for (as you can see from the photo).

I expect he’ll learn to love it, though.

In other respects, the birthday was quite satisfactory. Around noon, the temperature was in the seventies, and Samuel and I spent a few hours out on the back porch; Samuel had his post-brunch nap in the fresh air. Then, quickly, everything cooled. There was a rainstorm, and by four or so the temperature was in the fifties. I dressed Samuel in his winter jacket and stocking cap for our afternoon stroll.

When Karin came home from work, she brought Samuel an Arby’s roast beef slider, of which he ate about a quarter. And Martin & Mary also brought Samuel a nice gift: a Radio Flyer “busy buggy” for him to push around the house.

A typical October

Classic fall weather again – on the whole, a good thing. Leaves have been coming down in earnest and the lawn is thick with them. We don’t own a rake. I’ve read that it’s OK to mow over the dead leaves so as to “mulch” them, and that’s what I’ve been doing. The grass grows so slowly now that I keep telling myself, “One last mowing for the season”; and then, after one or two weeks, I mow again.

And now, my reading report.

(1) Patrick Allitt’s I’m the Teacher, You’re the Student: A Semester in the University Classroom describes several tantalizing U.S. history books, a few of which I’ve acquired. The golden discovery has been California: The Great Exception – the assigned text Allitt’s students loathed the most – written for that state’s centennial by Carey McWilliams, with lovely phrasing, apt detail, and shrewd analysis. Even in 1950, California’s growth was cause for wonderment. A boom in mining led to booms in farming, oil drilling, manufacturing, what have you. The mining boom was relatively egalitarian: claim sizes were restricted, and individual miners could prosper without capital. Then, the wealth gained by mining in California funded the mining elsewhere in the Far West, but this was company mining, adhering to other methods and rules. That’s what I’ve read so far. Agriculture, etc., will be discussed later. Allitt told his students to read the chapters about rivers and irrigation – the subject matter of Chinatown. They were bored to tears. I already look forward to reading McWilliams’s Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California and North from Mexico: The Spanish-Speaking People of the United States.

(2) I liked Allitt well enough that I’ve begun another of his books: The Conservatives: Ideas & Personalities throughout American History.

(3) Also: Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy, which I read so long ago I hardly remember it. I’m not even sure I read all of it before.

(4) Some Gothic things for the fall:

• Agatha Christie, Endless Night (excellent, just excellent)
• Hilary Mantel, Fludd
• Ghost stories by Edith Wharton and M.R. James

(5) The Masters, the fifth and most famous book in C.P. Snow’s Strangers and Brothers series. It’s about the politics of an unnamed Cambridge college. Sure enough, it’s good; it might be THE ONE in the series to read, if that’s all you have time for; but it’s no better than the others.

October’s poem

… is reproduced by Iona and Peter Opie, in The Oxford Book of Nursery Rhymes, from “A Little Book for Little Children … which was published during the reign of Queen Anne.”

If you have seen The Favourite, the tenor of this poem will not surprise you.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

A was an Archer, and shot at a Frog;
B was a Blind-man, and led by a Dog:
C was a Cutpurse, and liv’d in Disgrace;
D was a Drunkard, and had a red Face:
E was an Eater, a Glutton was he;
F was a fighter, and fought with a Flea:
G was a Gyant, and pul’d down a House;
H was a Hunter, and hunted a Mouse:
I was an ill Man, and hated by all;
K was a Knave, and he rob’d great and small:
L was a Liar, and told many Lies;
M was a Madman, and beat out his Eyes:
N was a Nobleman, nobly born;
O was an Ostler, and stole Horses’ Corn:
P was a Pedlar, and sold many Pins;
Q was a Quarreller, and broke both his Shins:
R was a Rogue, and ran about Town;
S was a Sailor, a Man of Renown:
T was a Taylor, and Knavishly bent;
U was a Usurer took ten per Cent:
W was a Writer, and Money he earn’d;
X was one Xenophon, prudent and learn’d:
Y was a Yeoman, and work’d for his Bread;
Z was one Zeno the Great, but he’s dead.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

But what of J and V?

Ecuador 4, Uruguay 2

Well, that went better than I expected.

Our first goal came early, while the Uruguayans, ranked sixth in the world, were still just trying to defend. It brought them out of their half of the field for the rest of the game and made them vulnerable to counterattacks.

We poached the second goal on halftime’s stroke.

Our third goal assured our victory moments after the second half began. VAR had just rescinded a goal of Uruguay’s.

(By the end of the game, VAR would disallow three goals and award one penalty.)

Gonzalo Plata, one of the Sub-20 World Cup’s heroes, scored our fourth goal with panache. Like other important contributors to this game, he was trained at Independiente del Valle.

(And I’d worried that these youngsters would lack the composure and confidence to score.)

Uruguay scored its two goals with late penalty kicks.

So: after two games, we’re in fifth place. We have three points, four goals in favor, and three against (all penalties). And the crucial home fixture against Uruguay is behind us.

Suddenly …
there were much bigger worlds again …
and some small place in them for me.

A reading for Columbus Day

One of the mercies of adulthood is that you can use the Internet to track down books you liked when you were young. Last week, I happened to revisit a lovely two-volume anthology that I read when I took AP U.S. History – Portrait of America, edited by Stephen B. Oates. It has been reconstituted enough times that some of its earlier versions have become quite cheap. I own the ninth edition, from 2007.

It isn’t a doom-and-gloom sort of book, and I wasn’t especially thinking of Columbus Day, but the first reading in vol. 1 is apposite. It consists of the first two sections (pp. 57–75) of ch. 3 in David E. Stannard’s American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World (the link is to a PDF).

The description of pestilence and atrocity on various Caribbean islands is, of course, sobering to read. But the passage’s achievement is to link these catastrophes to the brutality of the perpetrators’ “Old World” society. The narrative is clear, gripping, perspective-altering. And terribly sad. Even Christian nations wander in darkness. Come, Lord Jesus.

The misfortunes of Ziva – and of Karin, Samuel, John-Paul, and Ecuador

I feel much better, though I’m still coughing and blowing my nose. Karin and Samuel also have got bad colds. They probably caught the germs from me and then compromised their bodily defenses on Wednesday night.

We were outside in the cold for several hours because little Ziva had escaped through a hole in the screen door.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

It was a desperate time. We searched the yard and then the neighborhood. Then we heard Ziva mewing under our porch. She couldn’t come out the way she’d gone in: either she couldn’t remember how to, or she was obstructed.

We removed several boards nailed to the edge of the porch, only to come up against an even sturdier barrier of wood and concrete. This barrier had a gap in it, however, which Ziva approached. She mewed and looked out at us. We reached in and petted her. We gave her food. But the gap was too small for her to squeeze through.

We decided to tear one of the planks out of the porch floor. But it had been screwed in too tight, and so we had to wait a few more hours until a friend could bring over an electric drill so that we could make a hole large enough for Ziva to fit through. The drilling terrified Ziva.

An hour later, she finally mustered enough courage to climb up onto the porch. By this time it was about 11:00 at night.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

And so, ever since, Samuel and Karin have been sick. It didn’t occur to us to go back inside the house and leave Ziva in her despair – or to put on jackets. At the time, I hardly felt my own illness or the cold.

When a loved one is making desperate little cries, it’s easy to forget about yourself – and other loved ones, I’m sorry to say.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Last night, then, Karin and Samuel lay around, pretty miserable, as I’d done earlier in the week. I spent the evening web-surfing until I was able to find a video stream of Ecuador’s first qualifier for the Qatar World Cup.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I remember how, in 2004, Ecuador lost 1–0 to Argentina in a thrilling World Cup qualifier played in Buenos Aires. Hernán Crespo was the goalscorer.

They were two good teams, two mature teams.

Last night’s fixture in the Boca Juniors stadium had the same scoreline but lacked virtuosity and excitement.

Messi scored with a penalty kick and gave a few good passes.

Lautaro Martínez did nothing.

Ecuador’s lone striker, Énner Valencia, was stranded.

Our shining young talent, the left-back Pervis Estupiñán, gave away the penalty.

Alexander Domínguez had to tend goal rather too well for the comfort of the nation.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Ecuador did improve as the game went on. I hope that, in the coming months, the team will be afforded more practice sessions with its new manager (so far, only two sessions have been held). The other South American teams also have been severely disrupted by the pandemic.

Ecuador will play the next game, against Uruguay, in Quito on Tuesday. Five substitutions will be allowed, which will enable more Uruguayans to come off the field once they’re short of breath.

A slight, demoralizing illness

On Sunday, I was out on the porch too long. It was too cold. And so, the last couple of days, I’ve been sick.

In the evenings, all my life’s woes have paraded themselves back and forth in front of my mind.

While Karin has been working, I’ve struggled to keep up with the little boy. Today, mercifully, he is taking a second nap. That’s what’s allowing me to write this blog entry.

Another mercy is that I’ve slept soundly the last two nights. I suppose it’s because Air Supply forces air down my throat so that it gets around the congestion that would keep me from breathing.

Karin’s birthday; Samuel’s felinity

Happy birthday to Karin, whose colleagues at the bank put up this appreciative display.

Apparently, October 3 is Mean Girls Day (yes, the date is mentioned in the movie). So, that’s what we watched tonight.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Samuel has been learning from his kitty siblings. Yesterday, seeking attention, he crawled to me and rubbed his head against my leg. And today he tried to eat, face-first, from one of the kitties’ dishes.

1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 31: The truth about cats & dogs

From IMDb:

Janeane Garofalo has been quite vocal about how unhappy she was with the film. Initially it was an independent film, but it was turned into a big-studio project when Uma Thurman signed on. Garofalo remarked, “I think it’s soft and corny. The soundtrack makes you want to puke. And everybody’s dressed in Banana Republic clothing. The original script and intent was very different. It was supposed to be a small-budget independent film, with a lot more complexity to the characters. …” Garofalo has since disowned the film, calling it anti-feminist.

Ah, well, too bad. This is the movie she’ll be remembered for.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Well, maybe not. IMDb lists the top four movies she’s known for:

• Ratatouille
• Mystery Men
• Wet Hot American Summer
• Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion

Not, alas, The Truth about Cats & Dogs.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I was just out of college when I saw this movie on TV. Since then, I’ve fondly remembered Garofalo’s performance. I didn’t remember that Uma Thurman was in the movie. Not that Thurman is bad; hers is a tricky role, and she acquits herself with aplomb. It’s just that Garofalo is superb.

Garofalo plays a type who appears now and then in romanctic comedies set in and around Los Angeles:

A variant of the “lonely hearts” columnist, this stock character dispenses advice, over the radio, about matters of the heart. Off the air, however, she is lonely. Against her better judgment, she permits one of her callers to get a little too close for comfort.

The splendidly earnest Geneviève Bujold, in Choose Me (1984), occupies this role. A more recent example – who is much more crass – is a young woman who hosts a satellite radio show in the third season of Netflix’s Love.

Garofalo’s character, Abby Barnes, is situated halfway between these two radio personalities. A veterinarian, she gives medical and relational advice to pet owners. She has a distinctive style: her wordplay is quick and slightly off-color; her advice is blunt but kind. One can believe that a casual listener would stop turning the dial and settle down to hear Doctor Abby Barnes talk to strangers about their pets.

One caller is Brian (Ben Chaplin), a young Britisher whose dog is having a crisis. Abby gives helpful advice. Brian calls again (not on the air) to ask Abby out on a date. Abby reluctantly agrees.

“What do you look like?” Brian asks.

This touches a nerve. Abby tells him that she is tall and blond (she is short and dark). She stands him up.

And then the movie puts its stock protagonist into a rather different stock scenario:

The protagonist’s love object becomes attracted to one of the protagonist’s friends. To disavow any claim on the love object – and, perhaps, to remain in the love object’s orbit – the protagonist encourages the relationship by advising and lending considerable wit to the friend.

This, of course, is the plot of Cyrano de Bergerac and its progeny (e.g., Roxanne). Usually, the witty, pining protagonist is a man, and the love object is a woman. This is inverted in The Truth about Cats & Dogs.

Abby’s friend is Noelle, a relatively new acquaintance who is getting out of a bad relationship. Noelle is played by Uma Thurman, who is blond and very tall. When Brian comes to the radio station to plead his case to Abby, he sees Noelle and infers that she must be Doctor Barnes.

Abby tells Noelle not to correct the misunderstanding. In the rest of the movie, Brian woos the awkward Noelle, whom he believes to be Abby, while Abby tags along as a “third wheel.” Of course, there are sparks between Abby and Brian.

And there you have it: the story plays out as you might expect it to do.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The movie’s strength lies in its characterizations. Chaplin makes Brian into a very nice bloke. He is as kind to Abby as to Noelle when the three of them are together – and, indeed, when he and Abby happen to be together without Noelle. He also must convey both singlemindedness and vacillation: he is resolved to persist in wooing the person with whom he has spoken on the radio, but when he’s with “Abby,” she isn’t at all the sort of person he knows Abby to be.

The real Abby, loving him from afar, is the character who makes the movie fun to watch. It’s poignant to observe a cynical person gradually realize that she is desired for herself. In one long sequence, Brian calls Abby at her apartment. Since they’re physically apart, Brian believes he is talking to Uma Thurman’s “Abby.” Even so, the real Abby is drawn to him. She and Brian talk until early morning. One blush follows another as Abby hears Brian compliment her, tease her, and declare his love – love for her mind, her character, rather than for Uma Thurman’s looks.

Thurman’s is perhaps the most difficult role to pull off. Noelle, who is superficially dim, has reserves of insight and fellow-feeling. She receives lots of ill-intended focus from men. It’s as surpising to her as it is to Abby when someone as kind and attentive as Brian comes wooing.

The movie is predictable, but there is a tiny amount of suspense. How will the disclosure of “Abby’s” real identity affect Noelle’s and Abby’s friendship?

There are signs that Noelle wants Brian for herself, despite his connection with Abby. But is Noelle really the kind of person who’d betray her friend?

Abby believes she might be. Partly, this is her knee-jerk assessment of women who are desired by lots and lots of men. But Abby also believes it because, in this case, it’s not altogether off the mark.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’ll give away the ending:

Noelle stands with her friend.

The movie has lots of animals in it. They’re included for comic effect. But the movie is about people, not animals. Why, then, is it called The Truth about Cats & Dogs? What truth does the movie reveal about cats and dogs?

Well, let’s allow ourselves to be a little crude and to put scare quotes around some of the words: THE TRUTH ABOUT “CATS” & “DOGS.” Some beautiful women are thought of as “cats” who undermine other women. And some women are thought of, or think of themselves, as ugly “dogs.” The title suggests that these hateful appraisals need not be true.

Also: “CATS” & “DOGS.” Ampersand. “Cats” and “dogs” in partnership – as friends.

The movie may be “soft and corny,” as Garofalo says, but that doesn’t make it anti-feminist. It’s anti-anti-feminist. It’s about how a smart woman who has trouble getting along with certain other women learns to see the truth about her friend and herself. Perhaps I’m “mansplaining,” but I wish Garofalo would look beyond the glamorous casting and the Banana Republic clothes and see the truth about what a lovely movie she’s helped to make.

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Another celebrated South Bender

Last Sunday was cold, and our church met indoors, but today’s service was held in the parking lot, in balmy weather. After Karin and Samuel and I went home and ate lunch, Samuel refused to sleep, so I pushed him in his stroller around the block. “Enjoy the last day of good weather,” one neighbor said. Sure enough, the temperature is supposed to fall by twenty degrees.

Another sign of summer’s end: people have been towing their boats back into the neighborhood.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Recently widowed, Karin’s mom went on holiday to Beaver Island in Lake Michigan, a two-and-a-half-hour ferry ride from the northern town of Charlevoix. Beaver Island seems to be a hideaway for the rich. The residents kept telling Karin’s mom not to walk on the beaches (which may well be their private property) or on the roads (which probably aren’t).

“You’re lucky you didn’t get shot,” her brother said.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Pete Buttigieg’s failure notwithstanding, a South Bender will become a very high federal official. I mean the Notre Dame professor, the Catholic charismatic, conservative Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s SCOTUS choice. This is hardly the nomination that Pete’s fans would have wished for. As for me, I don’t mind Barrett like I minded Brett Kavanaugh. Although Barrett is both a textualist and an originalist, she might rule as justly as any SCOTUS judge could do (it’s U.S. constitutionalism and judicial review themselves that are problematic, I’ve come to believe).

But the hypocrisy! What was it the Republicans were saying four years ago, when Obama wanted to install a judge before an election?

I’m surprised that I continue to be surprised.

Here are some interesting remarks by a friend of a friend. (As always, to enlarge an image: click on it; then, right-click on it; then, open it in a new tab; and, finally, click on it again with the magnifying cursor.)

I re-train my logical faculty

As the temperature cools, I wonder if I should cut the grass less often. Its growth this week has been negligible.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Having not studied any formal logic for about fifteen years, I’m working through some very basic textbooks to undo the rust. The funnest one is Logic by Wilfrid Hodges (2nd edition, Penguin, 2001), but not for any reason to do with logic (were I a logician, I’m sure I’d find things to quibble with; indeed, logicians are so finicky, they often assign their own notes when they teach). I just like Hodges’s wry humor and poetical examples. The book makes heavy use of truth trees, which I don’t remember ever having worked with.

I also have the first edition of Barwise & Etchemendy – the book that Cornell undergraduates used to study – but not the software. Oh, look! The second edition is online! All typeset in glorious, drab Computer Modern! Which, incidentally, looks the same as the current font of this blog.

Also online, also typeset in Computer Modern, is the open-source forallx (“for all x”) by a philosopher I once heard speak at Cornell. He praised the grad student who commented on his talk because the student’s notes were nicely typeset (in Computer Modern). It was a genuine compliment, not a Gricean insult.

After I’m happy with my re-mastery of propositional and predicate logic, I’ll read Quine’s Philosophy of Logic, which I meant to do eighteen or nineteen years ago.

“But can he do the job?”

Were I to become a full-time member of a philosophy department with at least some undergraduates under my care, I’d try to establish a one- or two-credit “professional development” seminar to make sure that those considering grad school could make an informed choice.

Yes, it would have to be a course. A couple of informal sessions wouldn’t suffice. The content ought to be repeated several times, in readings, lectures, and class discussions – and with a megaphone. (Even then, there’d be a real danger that the undergraduates wouldn’t listen carefully enough.)

I’d probably assign this book by the philosopher Jason Brennan. It gives lots of useful, blunt, goal-oriented advice. It tells which parts of one’s soul one would have to sell to get an academic job after grad school. (The part that loves to teach, for instance.) Here is an interview in which Brennan mentions some of the book’s highlights.

Another book, by an ex-professor of anthropology, Karen Kelsky, is also worth looking at, but it’s a brutal downer and not always helpful. One senses that Kelsky is writing with cruel glee, grinding people down with minutae about what to do and not do. Then again, who am I to say? I’m on the outside looking in. Perhaps those tiny details do matter in the job market. My impression, though, is that many of them do not matter. For example, I’ve looked at lots of CVs of successful, recent job seekers, and plenty of them run afoul of Kelsky’s very detailed rules for how to write a CV. But then, maybe that level of detail is dictated by her audience. Maybe a lot of job seekers are desperate enough to want to be told where to dot their i’s and cross their t’s.

What I’d definitely assign is this short address by the philosopher David McNaughton. Brennan and Kelsky assume that the goal is to get the job. McNaughton considers the more important question (raised repeatedly by Dan Hedaya in Joe Versus the Volcano):

I KNOW HE CAN GET THE JOB, BUT CAN HE DO THE JOB?

Or, rather, can the job seeker do the job well; that is, can the careerist philosopher write anything worth reading? On McNaughton’s view, professionalization is stunting, and the profession weeds out lots of potentially valuable contributors.

McNaughton is very down on how academic philosophy is done. Brennan thinks it’s much more workable. Who is more trustworthy? I’ve read around in several of Brennan’s books; I like him, though I tend to disagree with him; but he often sounds like he’s on an ideological mission. I’ve read around in several of McNaughton’s books, too, and encountered moments of disinterested curiosity, and even profundity; and when McNaughton isn’t being profound, he’s at least rubbing shoulders with and expounding authors who are profound. Besides, I’ve always been inclined to agree more with McNaughton’s professional priorities, anyway.

This isn’t to say that I agree with everything McNaughton says. He disparages Michael Dummett’s prose style, and I actually quite enjoy reading Dummett.

O brave new world

Though officially it’s summer – the autumnal equinox is still to come – I saw frost this morning, dusted over lawns and rooftops.

“At least you won’t have to mow much longer,” Karin said.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

How cold and snowy will be the winter of 2020–2021? The Farmer’s Almanac and Old Farmer’s Almanac disagree.

It’s just as well: neither of them is considered very reliable.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Indiana is in a sweet spot, climate-wise, according to ProPublica. The most habitable weather will migrate here by midcentury.

On the other hand, southern Missouri will have the climate that Louisiana has today, and coastal Louisiana will slip under water.

Forecasts for Ecuador are dire, too. If they are correct, it’ll be an unfamiliar world.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I often wonder what sort of world Samuel will make his life in. Will its furniture – its countries, its climactic zones – remain in place?

Or will that furniture be drastically rearranged?

And how will Samuel earn his keep?

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Things have changed before. I think of the New World colonizers – and those they colonized. Their lives were swiftly altered.

The colonizers’ resilience and adaptability are celebrated. Their political legacy is worshiped.

But the truth is, many of them were ruthless, and their casualties were high. (And that’s to say nothing of those they colonized.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’m not so far from being a casualty myself. I never quite adapted to my own migration, in 2000. And when the economy tanked, in 2008, well, that was pretty much the end; I realized, studying at a rich school, that material thriving was beyond me.

And now the economy has tanked again.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

What would it be humane to do with Samuel? To encourage him to thrive? Or to prepare him for the worst?

September’s poems

Two from The Oxford Book of Satirical Verse. The first is by a great figure imitating a great figure.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

The Scholar’s Life

When first the college rolls receive his name,
The young enthusiast quits his ease for fame;
Through all his veins the fever of renown
Burns from the strong contagion of the gown;
O’er Bodley’s dome his future labours spread,
And Bacon’s mansion trembles o’er his head;
Are these thy views? Proceed, illustrious youth,
And virtue guard thee to the throne of truth,
Yet should thy soul indulge the gen’rous heat,
Till captive science yields her last retreat;
Should reason guide thee with her brightest ray,
And pour on misty doubt resistless day;
Should no false kindness lure to loose delight,
Nor praise relax, nor difficulty fright;
Should tempting novelty thy cell refrain,
And sloth effuse her opiate fumes in vain;
Should beauty blunt on fops her fatal dart,
Nor claim the triumphs of a lettered heart;
Should no disease thy torpid veins invade,
Nor melancholy phantoms haunt thy shade;
Yet hope not life from grief or danger free,
Nor think the doom of man reversed for thee:
Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes,
And pause awhile from letters to be wise;
There mark what ills the scholar’s life assail,
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

(Samuel Johnson, in The Vanity of Human Wishes: The Tenth Satire of Juvenal Imitated)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The second poem is by a man who, for good or ill, seems not to have been greatly taken with Johnson or his biographers. It didn’t help that Johnson panned his book.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Dr Johnson

Here lies poor Johnson. Reader! have a care,
Tread lightly, lest you rouse a sleeping bear.
Religious, moral, generous and humane,
He was, but self-conceited, rude, and vain:
Ill-bred, and overbearing in dispute,
A scholar and a Christian, yet a brute.
Would you know all his wisdom and his folly,
His actions, sayings, mirth, and melancholy,
Boswell and Thrale, retailers of his wit,
Will tell you how he wrote, and talked, and spit.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

(Soame Jenyns)

Some ethical reflection

Consider two declarations:

(1) In 2016, Trump said: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”

(This seemed pretty hyperbolic at the time. Now, not so much.)

(2) Three days ago, it was revealed that although Trump knew that the coronavirus is highly transmissible – and that it’s “deadly stuff” – he held large gatherings and was slow to promote social distancing because he “wanted to always play [the danger] down.” “I still like playing it down,” he told Bob Woodward, “because I don’t want to create a panic.”

These actions – shooting somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue (hypothetical) and knowingly playing down the danger of COVID-19 (actual) – have a great deal in common, morally speaking. They’re both deadly; they’re both deliberate; and, on the face of it, they’re both outrageous, or they ought to be.

Exercises. Answer the questions of either Set 1 or Set 2, and those of Set 3.

Set 1. (a) What are the morally relevant differences and similarities between the two acts? (b) Which of the two acts would it be morally worse for Trump to do?

Set 2. Recall that Trump’s electoral opponent this cycle is Joe Biden. When Trump made the first declaration, in 2016, his opponents included Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, as well as Republicans Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, and Marco Rubio. (Trump has never run against Hitler or Stalin.)

Given whom Trump competes against, would voters be morally justified in remaining loyal to Trump …

(a) … were he to shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue?

(b) … even though he deliberately and knowingly played down the danger of COVID-19 – and even though his action may well have caused many thousands of premature deaths?

Set 3. Can these exercises even be done with any seriousness, or are the answers so obvious that it would be a waste of time?

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Though I condemn Trump for his response to COVID-19, my own response has fallen well short of what I think it would be good for people to do.

Today, I attended Rick’s funeral. It was held in a crowded gym.

Oh, I wore a mask, but I was there far too long for the risk to cease to be negligible (see the first chart in this useful article).

I came away with a souvenir – a t-shirt with this caption:

I WENT TO

RICK’S MEMORIAL

AND ALL I GOT WAS

THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT

I pray that that’s all I and the other mourners came away with.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Of course, this isn’t to say that the same countervailing considerations apply to my situation and to Trump’s …

Or that I couldn’t make tradeoffs to balance off my action’s increased risk to public health. (Could Trump make tradeoffs on the scale that his action demands? I doubt it.)

Still, I remain very dissatisfied about what I did. I hope that, for his own sake, Trump also can acquire a sense of dissatisfaction.