1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 48: Lone star

Before there was No Country for Old Men … before there was Hell or High Water … there was Lone Star, in which a thoughtful Texan sheriff goes around asking questions. Not philosophical questions about death or evil or moral responsibility – though there’s some of that, too – but about relationships that are more comfortably left unscrutinized.

The movie isn’t very interested in its bad guy. He is a corrupt, sadistic former sheriff (Kris Kristofferson) whose bones and badge are found during the opening scene, in the desert, by a couple of clownish metal scavengers who are not so unlike the gravediggers in Hamlet. And the movie is only slightly more interested in who killed the bad guy. Mostly it just shows what life is like for the ordinary people who live in fictional Rio County just north of the Mexico-U.S. border. (Supposedly, Del Rio, Texas, is in the vicinity.) These people include Hispanic and Anglo Texans, illegal and legal Mexican immigrants, and a few Indians. Also, due to the presence of an Army base, more Blacks reside in Rio County than is typical in this part of the state.

These groups all keep their identities strictly separate, at least in theory; in practice, the locals are intermixed and interdependent. Flashbacks show how the bad old Anglo police used to frequent the Mexican restaurants … while loudly complaining about Mexican food … while happily scarfing it down … while collecting extortion payments and bribes packed in with the tortillas. In the movie’s present day, the Anglo–Hispanic dealings are more polite but just as clandestine. Hispanic businessmen handpick Anglo officials for the public to employ: preferably, ones who’ll support a bid to build a lucrative new prison. More overtly, Anglos and Hispanics on the school board squabble over how to teach Texas history. One of the most likable characters – a high school teacher (Elizabeth Peña) – is criticized by all parties because she wants to tell a complicated story about the past. By the movie’s end, the complications of the past will have made her own happiness impossible. “Forget the Alamo,” she says, bitterly. “Forget them all.”

So, this movie is all social commentary, and it’s pretty straightforward and unadorned, unlike, e.g., Robert Altman’s Nashville. There’s nothing visually or rhythmically distinctive about Lone Star. Just lots of characters and conversations. These, often, are wryly insightful. The two “clowns” I mentioned earlier perform this exchange:

I never thought I’d see that a buddy of mine would be dating a woman with three bars on her shoulder. [The woman in question works for the Army.]

I think it’s beyond what you’d call dating.

You’re gonna get married?

Maybe.

You met her family? Think her family’s gonna be OK that you’re a white guy? [She is Black.]

They think any woman over thirty who isn’t married is a lesbian. She figures, they’ll be so relieved that I’m a man …

Yeah, it’s always heartwarming to see a prejudice defeated by a deeper prejudice.

And there’s a brilliant little discussion, which I won’t quote, between two Black soldiers – a colonel and a private – about why a poor, young, Black woman would wish to join and remain in the Army.

A lot of this is interesting; and yet, arguably, it’s lamentable that for all the emphasis on locality, the insights aren’t specific to South Texas. John Sayles, the writer-director, sets his movies all over the map (New York City, New Jersey, Florida, Louisiana, Chicago, Ireland, etc.). Lone Star isn’t alone in inhabiting a regionally realistic place that isn’t a real place; most conspicuously, City of Hope, filmed in Cincinatti, is set in an unspecified city in New Jersey. Contrast this with one of Sayles’s first movies, The Brother From Another Planet, in which it actually matters that a particular scene is set on a particular New York subway line. Brother is less tightly constructed than Lone Star but, scene-by-scene, more compelling. Or so I recall. One might also criticize Lone Star’s casting. The main Anglo characters are played by Texans (Kristofferson, Matthew McConaughey) or by people with Texan heritage (Chris Cooper); but the main Mexican-American roles are filled by a Cuban-American (Peña) and a puertorriqueña (Míriam Colón). Good as they are, their un-Mexicanness would be distracting to some viewers. The movie’s “authenticity” extends only so far, and it is racially unequal. But maybe I’m judging too harshly, especially considering how movies were cast in the 1990s.

Besides, to dwell very closely on the actors’ appearance, speech, etc., is to miss one of the movie’s main points, which is that in Texas – and, more generally, in the USA – Anglos and Hispanics are more interconnected, in all sorts of ways, than most observers can tell just by looking. I was reminded of this classic commercial by Aeroméxico:

See also: Carey McWilliams, North from Mexico: The Spanish-Speaking People of the United States; and Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States.

Daniel, cont.

By now, many readers will have met Daniel or seen photos of him. For those who have not, here are a few images.

(A) Minutes after his birth:

(B) A day later. For scale, he is next to a book (a New York Review of Books Classic, the same size as a Penguin Classic):

Compare with the newly born Samuel.

This time, I tried not to take very many books to the hospital. I ended up taking seventeen, not counting the books of the Bible.

(C) At home. Daniel meets Samuel and my mother:

(D) Daniel sleeps:

The naming of cats

“Sammy, what is Jasper?”

“Jasper is a cat.”

“Sammy, what is Ziva?”

“Ziva is a cat.”

“Sammy, what is Sammy?”

“Sammy is a cat.”

We correct him. We repeat our questions. He says: “Sammy is a little boy.”

We’ve long been telling him about his little brother, Baby Danny. It’s not clear what he understands; although, one day, he did greet Karin: “Hi Mommy. Hi Baby.”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Daniel James was born this afternoon.

“Daniel,” for the OT prophet. I’ve known quite a few Daniels; each, in his own way, has been rather good. Also, “Daniel” is spelled the same in English and in Spanish.

“James,” for the NT epistle writer, and for my brother Stephen James. “Stephen” isn’t spelled the same in English and in Spanish, but “James” is; or, put it this way, there are many Spanish variants of “James” – “Jaime,” “Diego,” “Tiago,” “Santiago,” “Iago” (corruptions of Ya’akov or “Jacob”) … but also there is “James,” i.e. HAH-mess, as in “James Rodríguez” (the footballer). A Latin American name, by way of English.

It counts. It’s passable.

I have photos of Daniel but can’t upload them because the hospital’s Internet signal is weak.

When Samuel was born, I was wracked with dread. This time, the journey has seemed familiar, and I’ve enjoyed some of it. I couldn’t help but grin when Daniel was being wrenched out. Afterward, Karin was very hungry, and she ate a footlong Subway sandwich. Having viewed her exertions – and sensing that much iron had been lost – I ate even more than Karin did, and I opted for the steak rather than the chicken. Daniel also ate and ate. What with his tongue-tie, though, it isn’t clear how much food he’s been swallowing.

We did a video call to introduce the brothers to one another (Samuel has been staying with his abuelos). Samuel was mostly indifferent, except that he wanted to play with my Mom’s phone. Daniel was annoyed to have had his feeding interrupted.

A “budget” option

Monday is a bank holiday, the holiday of Washington and FDR and Trump and the fellow buried in Grant’s tomb, who might be my favorite of them all because he was the best writer. (The criterion isn’t so ludicrous. Whenever I see informal polls about the greatest [U.S.] Americans of the 19th and 20th centuries, writers get lots of votes, and I often catch myself thinking of writers first – especially, Frederick Douglass and Mark Twain – not so much because of what they did or stood for, though that also matters, but because of how they wrote.) Anyway, today, Karin worked her last shift in a good while. She expects to be on maternity leave through March – which isn’t a paid leave, she keeps having to tell people who assume otherwise. It’ll be good to have her at home. It’ll be good, though not so pleasant, to live more frugally.

Speaking of frugality.

I’d known about the Cambridge Elements book series, but I hadn’t known that so, so many of those books are free to download (some only temporarily).

Most are shorter than 100 pages. They all try to painlessly introduce the reader to important recent scholarship.

This webpage states the series’s goals and subject categories, and this one lists the titles in reverse publication order. You can see which books are currently free by ticking a box on the left.

I can vouch for this author, a professor of whom I was fond. Is he the world’s leading free-will philosopher? Maybe. Does he believe in free will? No; he comes as close to believing as one can do while disbelieving, which is cheeky. Does he believe in moral responsibility? Not if it should require free will; but he is open to revising the concept so that a person can be held responsible even if she isn’t free. Is he a religious believer? Yes. He is a Calvinist. But his main arguments don’t presuppose much, or anything, by way of doctrine. But whatever you think of his position, the point of reading this book is to get an overview of the recent secular literature, and so it is valuable.

Is he a great writer and therefore a great (U.S.) American? I should say not; he was born in the Netherlands, and as for his identification with this side of the pond, I believe that when he wrote his most famous book he was merely a Canadian.

His Cambridge Elements book is free to download through February 23.

Waiting

After weeks under the cover of deep snow – during which Samuel and I hardly ever left the house – we had two days of warmth and rain. Almost all the snow was melted. I took Samuel strolling; he was pleased to travel through the puddles. Then, this morning, Karin & I looked out the kitchen window and were amazed to see a field of shaggy grass. We’d almost forgotten that we own grass.

But a couple of hours later, everything, again, was covered in snow.

If I go into labor tonight, Karin says, it won’t be easy to get to the hospital.

Karin’s belly is so enormous now, she doesn’t like to go up and down the basement stairs. I have brought the TV upstairs, to the front parlor. This has changed the whole ecology of the house.

Apart from the matter of the TV, we are expecting a great change by Tuesday the 22nd. Labor will be induced late at night on the 21st, if the baby hasn’t already been born.

Two readings for St. Valentine’s Day

On this day of love and friendship, here are two brief samples of popular philosophy that are valuable counterpoints to the “spirit of the age.”

(1) G.E.M. Anscombe, “Does Oxford Moral Philosophy Corrupt Youth?”

Today is the 65th anniversary of its first printing (it already had been delivered over a BBC radio program). R.M. Hare and P.H. Nowell-Smith replied to Anscombe in the next week’s issue; and a week later, she replied to them.

(All these PDFs are supplied by the Integrity Project. Their typeface is Plantin, my favorite for body text.)

I’m afraid there is nothing friendly, romantic, or erotic in this exchange; although Hare does begin, “Owing to the lubricity of her style …” and Anscombe replies – equivocally! (for “lubricity” has two meanings) – “I won’t sue Mr. Hare for suggesting I give lecherous talks on the wireless.”

(2) Spencer Case, “The Boy Who Inflated the Concept of ‘Wolf’.”

This was published on St. Valentine’s Day three years ago.

It’s a pretty useful piece. The next time someone accuses you of being a “grammar Nazi” or an “emotional rapist,” you can retort, “Concept inflator!”

Well, OK, that’s not going to win many battles: the phrase just isn’t harsh enough. But you can still look to the concept to purify your own speech. And then you’ll end up as the “sucker” in our society’s verbal arms race. That is, you’ll end up in the pacifist’s position.

(What was Anscombe’s position on dropping language-bombs?)

February’s poems

More of Iona Opie’s and Rosemary Wells’s Mother Goose.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Oh, the brave old duke of York,

He had ten thousand men;

He marched them up to the top of the hill,

and he marched them down again.

And when they were up, they were up,

And when they were down, they were down,

And when they were only halfway up,

They were neither up nor down.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

From Wibbleton to Wobbleton is fifteen miles,

From Wobbleton to Wibbleton is fifteen miles,

From Wibbleton to Wobbleton, from Wobbleton to Wibbleton,

From Wibbleton to Wobbleton is fifteen miles.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

If these two poems are about “relations of ideas,” this one is about “knowledge by acquaintance”:

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Whose little pigs are these, these, these?

Whose little pigs are these?

They are Roger the Cook’s,

I know by their looks –

I found them among my peas.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Or perhaps the speaker is not identifying which pigs they are, so much as deciding what will become of them.

Now, a more famous poem:

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Baa, baa, black sheep,

have you any wool?

Yes, sir, yes, sir,

Three bags full.

One for the master,

and one for the dame,

And one for the little boy

Who lives down the lane.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

This is Samuel’s favorite in all of Mother Goose. He recites it with gusto (goose-toe). Yessir! Yessir!

Karin admires it, too. I like it that the sheep is implying: I do have wool, but not for you.

But this is not the only way of reading the poem. In Wells’s pictures, the sheep appears to be conversing with the little boy. I have wool for YOU, the sheep means (this is a more tender interpretation).

My favorite is this poem about a donkey:

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

If I had a donkey

that wouldn’t go,

D’you think I’d beat him?

Oh, no, no.

I’d put him in a barn

and give him some corn,

The best little donkey

that ever was born.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Our awful diet; crime; the diary

We have another mouse in our mud-room. We had recognized the signs for some time, and today I actually saw the mouse. Jasper and Ziva were uninterested. And who could blame them, since we took away the previous mouse after Jasper killed it.

Today, while I was cooking for Samuel – a mash of black beans, egg, and mayonnaise – he decided to take matters into his own hands and poured a bag of Cheez-Its onto the kitchen floor.

Ironically, he ended up preferring the black bean mash, while I ate the Cheez-Its (the least-contaminated ones).

Yes, our diet is awful. I don’t know how it got this way. It’s not even that I dislike nutritious food.

Or clean food.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

And now the crime report. On Saturday, Karin & I got haircuts. It was Karin’s first haircut since the pandemic began. My hair also had gotten quite long. Anyway, we both got our locks cut short. This is not the crime. The crime, or crimes, already had been committed. What the haircuts revealed were the forensic traces: the many nicks and scratches, on our faces, inflicted by Samuel.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I have blogged for so many years now, I often think of entries well in advance of posting them, and sometimes I even write them in advance. (Of course, certain regular columns – the poems, the movie reviews, the World Cup qualifier reports – make some content foreseeable.) And then there are the entries written just before midnight on the due date, with little planning of what I’ll say. They are the most diaristic entries. Tonight’s rhapsody has been of this kind.

The women are up to something

This biography of the Oxonians Anscombe, Foot, Midgley, and Murdoch has been receiving buzz and now is endorsed by Thomas Nagel, the best reviewer of philosophical books of general interest. I expect that not a few upper-level seminars will be taught at Christian colleges on this episode in the history of philosophy – Anscombe is our (very judgmental) co-religionist – as well as upon one or two of Murdoch’s novels, because novels are fun. (The biography also touches upon Ayer, Austin, Hare, the French existentialists, and of course Wittgenstein.) I certainly am itching to design such a class, whether or not I’d teach it. Would Samuel allow me time for this pointless project? Would he even let me read through the book (not to mention, texts discussed in it that I haven’t read)? Would Samuel’s little brother allow it? It’s doubtful. Anscombe, famously, used to change her seven twerps’ diapers while conducting tutorials, and Midgley left the professoriate for many years to raise her children. So the endeavor would be personally as well as intellectually meaningful to me. And futile. And impossible.

Ben Lipscomb, the biographer, is interviewed here.

A snowy day; the groundhog; the new boy; the first boy; Peru 1, Ecuador 1

It was warm enough yesterday for me to push Samuel around the block. Today, though, it’s “the snowy and the blowy” – times ten thousand.

Karin went to her job. Her office stayed open until 1:00, and then she was sent home. Her car got stuck in our driveway; I had to push it back into the street. Then I used the “snow blaster” to clear away most of the snow. And now the driveway is all covered again.

Along our street, people have been shoveling all day, and I feel like a slacker because I’ve only gone out twice to clear away snow.

I doubt the groundhog will make any sort of appearance.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’ll tell you who will appear, Lord willing: our new son. Or he might wait a couple of weeks. Last night, Karin & I took Samuel to my parents’ house so we could shop and he could practice receiving care from those abuelos (as he will when Karin & I go to the hospital). His conduct, reportedly, was very good; already he knows to clean up his act for certain audiences. Then this morning, as usual, he wrestled with and mugged me, and when I innocently stood up to give myself a rest, he tried to pull off one of my shoes.

I pray every day that both of our sons will be good and pious people. For now, Samuel seems not to have been spared the normal regimen of hard learning.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Last night’s World Cup qualifier was productive but unsatisfying. Ecuador scored in the third minute and controlled everything until the middle of the second half. Then we failed to deal with a loose ball in the penalty area, and the Peruvians scored.

That’s two games in a row in which we’ve given up a goal in this manner.

So, we haven’t qualified for the World Cup – at least, not with mathematical certainty. But it’s extremely likely that we’ll qualify.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Now the pedantic bit. (Feel free to stop reading. Or look at this article, which delineates most of the relevant facts and possibilities. Because Colombia recently lost, “Option 5,” near the bottom, is the pertinent one.)

Each team must play two more games, on March 24 and 29.

Only three rivals – Chile, Peru, and Uruguay – can overtake Ecuador; and if not more than one does, we’ll qualify.

Ecuador will finish with at least 25 points.

Chile can’t earn more than 25 points.

If Peru earns more than 25 points, Uruguay can’t do so.

If Uruguay earns more than 25 points, Peru can’t do so.

What if these teams match but don’t surpass Ecuador’s point total? Ecuador’s goal differential – the first tiebreaker – currently surpasses Chile’s, Peru’s, and Uruguay’s by eleven goals or more. Ecuador also leads all three rivals by a significant number of goals scored; this is the second tiebreaker. What is more, Ecuador outperformed Uruguay and Chile – though not Peru – in head-to-head encounters, which constitute the third tiebreaker.

Finally, Ecuador would guarantee qualification by avoiding defeat in at least one game. And neither Paraguay nor Argentina would benefit by defeating us. So, that works in our favor, too.