I guess it’s all right, now, to disclose that Ana, David, Ada, George, and Russell (the dog) have sold their house in Texas and will move to South Bend this weekend. So, we siblings – John-Paul, David, Mary, and Stephen – and our respective households, as well as our parents, will all have settled in the same metro area (two adjacent cities) for the first time since 2000 (the previous millennium). Odd to think that South Bend/Mishawaka, and not, say, Quito, Esmeraldas, Guayaquil, or even Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, should have proved our stubbornest anchor. It’s not as if our ancestors hailed from this part of the state. My dad’s dad grew up closer to Lafayette; my dad’s mom, closer to Fort Wayne. They never lived together in the South Bend area. (Neither of my mom’s parents was a Hoosier.) My parents got together as students in Chicagoland. They became missionaries, moved to Ecuador, had their children, and spent furloughs in Illinois (twice) and Missouri. They – we – never all lived together in Indiana.
But, soon, we shall.
I’ve lived some fifteen years, off and on, in the state. Hoosiers still seem strange to me. Not as horrifying as Missourians – whom I think I actually understand better – but less relatable than, say, Upstate New Yorkers, and not nearly as endearing as Minnesotans or Wisconsinites.
I look at the institutions and positions that confer prestige here, and think, that doesn’t appeal to me at all. But then, I might think that anywhere.
I look at what people here do for enjoyment, and think, that doesn’t appeal to me, either. That’s worse.
I think how, last year, a chicken trapped itself in our yard, and the officer who removed it told me it was a gamecock. This weekend we had friends – Michiganders I’d known in Quito – in the yard. We heard roosters crowing, and I thought, I may not approve of cockfighting, but my heart is warmed to know it’s practiced in the neighborhood where I now live.
A satisfactory little vacation in Austin. I’ve done what I said I’d do, except I haven’t ridden the bus.
I’m about to finish reading my second book.
David took me to a good Colombian restaurant in East Austin, the seedy-but-gentrifying part of town. He lives in a much-nicer-but-also-gentrifying part of town. I gather there are other neighborhoods that leave his in the dust.
My legs are sore because yesterday I hiked through a stony, scrubby forest. I’m no birdwatcher, but I was delighted when a roadrunner crossed my path. It was an idyllic morning – except that the freeway traffic near the forest was very loud.
Back where Ana & David live, we did a little tour of the Halloween decorations.
Ada, my neice, is a chatterbox. She is keen to describe all the neighborhood calaveras (skulls). She tells us about Ellison, her imaginary older sister.
George, my nephew, likes to be read to and to dribble the soccer ball around the house.
We watched Ecuador play awfully against Bolivia. To our intense relief, Ecuador scored the winning goal in the last minute. Afterward, David and I listed four or five players whom we never want to see again. The commentator was a nice man from South Africa or maybe New Zealand who clearly knew little about South American soccer or soccer in general. By the end of the game, even he was remarking on how poor these players were, and David and I were warming up to him.
The other notable result was that Venezuela rescued a point in Brazil thanks to a late bicycle-kick goal. The Brazilians were very angry.
A dead racoon lay in the middle of our street, in front of our house. Someone put a traffic cone next to it to alert passing cars. The racoon remained there for many hours.
No city official collected the racoon.
Our next-door neighbors – jovial young men – held a memorial service for the racoon and buried it in their back yard. I applaud the sentiment but worry. Scent of racoon attracts more racoon.
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It’s chilly in the house. Our brand-new furnace provided heat for two days. Then it quit.
Not that I’ll be affected much. Repairs have been comissioned, and meanwhile I’ll fly to Texas to visit David, Ana, Ada, George, and Russell (the dog). The forecast there is for temperatures in the 70s and 80s, F.
Ana & David have jobs, and Ada and George go to day-care, so I’ll have time to myself. I intend to walk, ride the bus, eat, and read – things I used to do when I was a bachelor. I’ve pared down my cargo to these texts:
The Bible
Daphne Du Maurier, Don’t Look Now: Stories (I’ll probably just read one or two longish ones)
R. M. Dworkin, ed., The Philosophy of Law (probably just one or two articles)
Dolores Hitchens, Sleep with Strangers (unless I finish it tonight)
Alasdair MacIntyre, The Unconscious
Ronald Hugh Morrieson, The Scarecrow
I’ll use the Internet to continue reading Macbeth.
So, in addition to Scripture: texts of criminality, deviance, and buried desire. My usual seasonal fare.
Ecuador and Bolivia will play in La Paz on Thursday. David and I will watch that game together.
Happy birthday to Karin; to my sister-in-law, Ana; and, apparently, to quite a few of my acquaintances.
Here’s an old photo of Karin and her dad.
My parents baked Karin a cake. Daniel got it all over himself, and we had to toss him into the bath.
We asked Samuel if he wanted to bathe; he demurred. Later – too late – he apprehended that we were respecting his stated wishes, that we in fact didn’t intend to bathe him. He grabbed some fistfuls of cake and judiciously applied them. So we bathed him after all.
Daniel, whom we’d dried and partly dressed, climbed into the water again.
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This morning, I was urging Samuel to be patient, which got him onto his favorite Sunday School topic – the Fruit of the Spirit – and so we read from Galatians 5, which also mentions walking along with (beside, behind, in step with) the Spirit; which made Samuel impatient to take a physical walk; which we did take, along the perimeter of the nearby school. We observed the physical education students riding bicycles upon the running track. I never got to ride a bicycle in P.E. in my day. … Even stranger, a few yards ahead of us, a car casually drove over the grass and mounted the sidewalk and ambled behind the tennis courts and into a parking lot. I could hardly believe I’d seen this, but I checked the grass, and the tracks were there. What was so strange was the nonchalance of it, as if it were a familiar route for that car.
We aren’t very sick anymore. I have to blow my nose a lot, but that’s the extent of it.
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Last night, we saw a mouse in our basement. Get it, Jasper!, we said.
A little later, we saw our champion mouser trotting along, his mouth full, a bit of brown fuzz dangling out of it. Karin followed after Jasper with an empty potato-salad container. He tried to escape into one of his hidey-holes to play with his prize, but Karin caught him and he grudgingly released the limp thing.
It was a plastic toy. The bit of fuzz was a dust bunny. We didn’t see the mouse again.
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This, at last, is shaping up to be the August when I read all of Light in August.
A warm welcome to George, my nephew, born yesterday to Ana & David. My mom is in Texas with them. She looks after little Ada and the dog, Russell, while Ana, David, and George are in the hospital.
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A synopsis (not by me) of Rats in the Ranks.
Each year, as part of the democratic process all over Australia, local councillors meet to elect a mayor to lead their council for the next year. Rats in the Ranks tells the story of this process in the Leichhardt council area of Sydney in 1994. Every September, the Leichhardt council meets to elect one of their twelve members as the Mayor and another for Deputy Mayor for the following year. The election is rarely a straightforward affair.
In 1994, the current mayor, Larry Hand, was popular with the local citizens, but they don’t vote for the mayor, the councillors do – and after three years of Larry, some of them were after his job.
In Rats in the Ranks, filmmakers Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson trace the story of the struggle for the mayoralty. They had extraordinary access to the councillors who were willing for the story to be filmed in the lead up to the election.
Arms are twisted, favours are called in, people are double-crossed, damaging stories are leaked to the media and deals are done. But right up to the vote, no one knows how the numbers will stick and who will walk away from the election as mayor.
missed out on a nomination in the “best documentary” category and most other categories at the 1996 [Australian Film Institute] Awards. …
The film’s failure to make it past a pre-selection jury into general membership voting became part of a larger ongoing controversy about the AFI Awards, and eventually led to a change to the AFI’s voting system. This was the year that the AFI Awards reached the level of contempt usually reserved for the Academy Awards.
(The last sentence is a bonus, I guess.)
The documentary is basically C.P. Snow’s The Masters, with this difference: the scheming Cambridge dons of that novel are conscientious and gentle souls next to the professional politicians of Rats in the Ranks. In what follows, I’ll not reveal the outcome of the election, but I shall describe some of its participants. My opinions of these people changed as I viewed the movie. Here I’ll present my final character assessments. I thought hard about whether I could cheer for anyone to win the election, and, in the end, I decided I could; but you might reach a different verdict. I recommend you watch the movie and then read this review.
The accents and slang aren’t always easy to follow. I watched with the captions turned on. Here is a YouTube upload; the movie also can be streamed through Kanopy.
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There is a councilor in Rats in the Ranks who may as well be Satan. (In some scenes, he even wears a cape.)
There is another councilor who is “Satan’s” dupe – in effect, his lackey – even though she belongs to the opposing party. She spends more time with the Satan figure than with her fellow party members. After her meetings with them, she runs over to tell “Satan” everything.
In good bureaucratic fashion, this lackey has a lackey.
Meanwhile, other members of her party conspire to defeat the Satan figure by means fair or foul. (Mostly fair means, but the foul cannot be overlooked.) So, there is a potentially fatal division within that party. This makes for some outrageous caucus meetings. These scenes would be ghastly if they weren’t so entertaining.
It’s fascinating to hear such good talkers make tactical blunders, lose all sight of values, etc.
What’s most disturbing is how little the populace matters in all of this. The residents vote for their councilors, but not for their mayor; which might not matter so much, except for two things.
First, the mayor has considerably more formal and effective power than the other councilors have. (Not even the deputy mayor comes close.)
And second, the councilors choose the mayor on the basis of their personal ambitions and resentments. They give lip-service to their parties’ and constituents’ interests; but, at the end of the day, those interests don’t determine their choices.
How can these people live with themselves? How can they sleep at night?, the Satan figure asks about his fellow councilors – though he himself would betray any of them, should the winds change.
Interestingly, the Satan figure is a very good public official. (At least, he convinces me that he is a good public official.) He gets things done. He listens to the citizens. When they disagree with him, he patiently and candidly explains to them why his way is better. Were I to live in Leichhardt, and were it in my power to vote in this election, I’d be tempted to vote for this candidate.
I also was favorably impressed by his main challenger. He, too, has the makings of a good public official. He is the schlubbiest of all these schlubs (or the second-schlubbiest, after the lackey’s lackey); but he has moments of reasonableness and forthrightness.
Indeed, he may be too forthright to be a very successful politician. The Satan figure runs rings around him, gamesmanship-wise.
The two men can’t stand one another. Perhaps this is because of a class difference. Or perhaps they recognize each other as genuine threats. Or perhaps they sincerely disagree about how to govern.
Another politician, who refuses to appear onscreen, makes a crucial intervention. He is Anthony Albanese; as of May of 2022, he has been serving as the Prime Minister of Australia.
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The other day, I said to Karin: Isn’t it funny that I, who find politics so distasteful, should have written a dissertation about political matters. But the word “political” describes two different inquiries. One inquiry is about how a polis should be run, and the other is about how the polis is run (which boils down to a lot of scheming, backstabbing, etc.). If the gulf between should and is is too great, it’s natural to be interested in one inquiry but not the other.
This movie shows a representative democracy whose representatives aren’t chosen with regard for how it’s best to run the polis. And yet the polis is run competently enough. This suggests that we may as well choose our representatives out of a hat, as some of the more trusting politicians in this movie are inclined to do; or by having each desiring person take a turn, as some of the more self-important and envious politicians insist upon.
I guess you could say we’ve been conducting our own little dig here in Mishawaka.
It snowed all weekend, and this morning it was almost thirty (Fahrenheit) degrees below freezing. We’ve tried shoveling the driveway and sidewalks – Karin, especially, is an impressive digger – but 2–3 inches of snow and ice remain stuck to the ground.
The good news is that we ordered an electric “snow blaster,” which UPS just delivered.
It doesn’t store its power, so we’ll have to use an extension cord. Ours is long enough for all but ten feet of the sidewalk. Perhaps the cord on the “snow blaster” will make up the difference.
Last night, Karin couldn’t bring her car all the way up the driveway and into the garage. We shifted as much snow as we could, and we scattered salt to melt the snow and cat litter to improve the traction. I pushed the car; Karin drove it several feet; but, inevitably, it’d hit some thick patch, and the tires would spin in place.
In the end, we decided to leave the car in a section of the driveway we knew Karin could maneuver out of.
All of this took an hour. I would periodically return to the house to check on Samuel, who had gone to sleep eating his supper.
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After we went inside, we heated some food, crawled under our blankets, and watched four episodes of Det som göms i snö – The Truth Will Out, or, literally, “That Which Is Hidden in Snow” – an excellent Swedish crime series. It seemed appropriate.
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The polar vortex reaches down to Texas, where many are without electricity, including Ana, David, and little Ada. Until recently, they were sleeping all bundled up inside their cold house and spending waking hours in their heated car. (The hotels were full.) Then someone lent them a cottage. It is unpowered – but it is heated.
Happy first birthday, a couple of days ago, to Ada – my niece, Ana’s & David’s daughter – in Austin, Texas. Several dozen guests in at least four countries held a bilingual party for her over streaming video. The (hired) guests of honor were some llamas who live in Iowa – Ada likes llamas.
I was reminded of this painting by the surrealist Carel Willink:
(Some of my relations are surely rolling their eyes; I showed them this painting right after the party.)
It’s nice that the party was themed according to Ada’s interests.
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My own interests have evolved considerably. I now enjoy watching videos of the Dallas, Texas, High Five Interchange – a network of stacked traffic bridges, the tallest of which reaches as high as a twelve-story building.
I also enjoy fatherhood. Today, Samuel and I played peek-a-boo, and I carried him around on my shoulders. He has been consistently saying Da-da-da and Da-dee the last two or three days. He also has been venturing off his floor mat and getting very dirty.
Samuel received compliments this weekend from my Aunt Ruth’s brother-in-law, who stopped by to leave some things for my parents (he’s about to retire to New Orleans). “You can tell just by looking in a child’s eyes whether he’s being raised well,” he said.
I was glad that Samuel and Karin & I passed that test.
He then congratulated me on having finished my Ph.D. and told me that all of his children (or their spouses) had earned or were earning Ph.D.s. It was like the movie Conte d’été, in which the youths at the beach all have Ph.D.s.
Among the donations were four suitcases of books, which I raided. There were many Shuar grammars and a Shuar New Testament. There also was a Shuar blowgun. I didn’t take any of the Shuar paraphernalia. I did take an old copy of Locke’s Reasonableness of Christianity, which I’d cited in my dissertation.
There also was a tremendous wall hanging of llama wool. The fascination with llamas is certainly a familial one.
I wish a happy Mother’s Day to my own mother – and, for the first time, to Karin. I’m not sure what gifts they’d like. For my mother-in-law, I’m ordering a couple of novels by Wilkie Collins (I persuaded her to read The Woman in White for her birthday, and she enjoyed it). She needs more books because she Marie Kondo’d her house not long ago.
Honorable mentions for Mother’s Day: my grandmothers; my aunts; my cousins; and Ana, my sister-in-law.
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This evening, I mowed the back yard again. The grass was much shorter this week, and so it took about half as long to cut. The air was cooler, too. I didn’t get as tired.
It’s been three hours since I last arose from my chair.
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The friend I blogged about last time has posted the notorious “Plandemic” video to his Facebook feed. Actually, he posted it twice: once with YouTube, and once with Vimeo. YouTube removed the first upload. Facebook tagged the second upload with a “false information” warning and linked it to this useful debunking. (The original video is here.)
My friend had written of the video:
26 minutes. You decide.
Lots of info packed into a short video.
If you’ve watched it, feel free to comment.
I watched it but didn’t comment. It’s very gratifying, now, to read the debunking, which does contain some useful information.
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But this will do little to keep conspiracy theories from proliferating like Hydra’s heads. What’s needed is education about what conspiracy theories are and why they’re bad.
Some friends have shared this essay addressed to Christians, which makes some good points and includes useful links to sources that deal with conspiracy theories about the pandemic.
For a more systematic treatment, I recommend this book by the philosopher Quassim Cassam. It’s brief and clear; I was able to read it quickly. It distinguishes between theories about conspiracies and what Cassam calls Conspiracy Theories with capital initials (I’d prefer the label “conspiracy theories in the pejorative sense,” since, on Cassam’s view, all such theories are likely to be false). I found the book to be intuitively correct and very helpful for starting to think carefully about conspiracy theories. It also attends to psychological and sociological findings.
Unfortunately, not all reviewers have received the book approvingly or even charitably. It turns out that most philosophers who write about conspiracy theories are themselves conspiracy theorists (or are sympathetic to conspiracy theories). Which often happens in philosophy: those who write about a topic are likelier than others to take an unpopular view about it.
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.
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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.
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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.
Tomorrow, Karin & I will spend some time with my high school friend, Dan, and his wife and three young children. They recently moved from Vermont to southwestern Michigan.
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My current reading:
(1) Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, translated by Robert Graves (1957), revised by some other dude (2007).
(2) Michael Grant, The Twelve Caesars.
“Robert Graves’ Penguin version … is entertaining, but has to be used with caution.”
Yes, I expect that Graves sneaks in a few extra poisonings.
(3) Terri Jentz, Strange Piece of Paradise.
True crime.
Vacationing from Yale, the author camps out in the Oregon desert and is mutilated by a mysterious axeman. Decades later, she returns to the scene to seek out the axeman, his motive, and cosmic meaning.
The book is highly introspective: was the author’s trauma due to herself, or to the axeman? The author writes 100+ pages before even considering the latter possibility.
Still, it isn’t bad.
(4) Lois Duncan, Down a Dark Hall, original 1974 version.
This classic gothic school novel is by the author of I Know What You Did Last Summer and Stranger with My Face.
(The 2011 update incorporates new technology – email, cell phones, etc. – NO GOOD.)
Indeed, she was born on Friday night, around the time I was blogging.
The child and mother (and father) are basically fine, though they aren’t permitted to leave the hospital until Tuesday.
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Some of you may be wondering why the name “Ada” was chosen. I can’t remember all the reasons. But among them are these:
(1) It is spelled the same in English and Spanish.
(2) One of David’s earliest schoolteachers was named Ada.
(3) It was the name of the distinguished mathematician, Ada Lovelace.
Unlike Lord Byron’s other children, Ada Lovelace wasn’t born out of wedlock. Her mother, Lady Byron, encouraged Ada in her studies: “An education in mathematics and logic,” Wikipedia reports Lady Byron as presuming, “would counteract any possible inherited tendency towards Lord Byron’s insanity and romantic excess.”
(I doubt whether such details influenced Ana’s & David’s choice of name.)
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“Marie” is Ada’s middle name. It’s for our mother’s mother.
“They think they’re so great,” said Karin, “but, really, they’re just wankers.”
We were at her mother’s house and within view of Notre Dame Stadium, toward which thousands of red-clad Liverpool fans were walking. They were going to cheer during the pre-season “friendly” between Liverpool and Borussia Dortmund.
Karin & I returned to our apartment.
Using the Internet, I watched the game’s second half.
Karin put up a portable baby play-yard with mesh walls that her mother had given us. Jasper and Ziva immediately tried it out.
Dortmund duly won the game.
Some say these “friendly” matches are devoid of interest. I thought this one proved at least one thing, that Dortmund is better than Liverpool when everyone is playing at a walking pace.
Stephen watched from inside the stadium. He sent me this photo of the Liverpudlian legend, Steven Gerrard.
Now that the game is over, everybody in our family is going to hunker down again to wait for Ada, Ana’s & David’s daughter, to be born.
Yesterday afternoon, the doctors told Ana & David that labor was going to be induced. But when Ana & David arrived at the hospital, they learned that many other pregnant women were ahead of them in the queue. So they went to the cinema and watched Crawl – a horror movie about alligators.
Our son is able to distinguish light from dark. Karin shone her phone’s flashlight onto her belly, and I could feel our son kicking.
Ana & David also are expecting their first child. Her name is Ada, and she’ll be born this month.
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On the eve before July 4, Martin baked beans so that he & Mary could take them to his family’s outing on the lake.
Morning arrived. Martin’s brother called to say that the boat’s motor wouldn’t function. The outing was canceled.
“We could still go to the lakehouse,” said Martin.
“No,” said his brother, “it’s no use.”
It was rather like “An Evening on the River,” the penultimate chapter of Stuart Little, in which Stuart’s boating troubles make him so sulky that he cuts short his date with little Harriet Ames.
Martin & Mary took the baked beans to some other friends in South Bend. They ate the beans with some pasta.
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Karin & I also had a disappointing Independence Day. We went to the county fair. Karin couldn’t go on the rides, of course, so our main goal was to view the livestock. But it was painfully hot and bright, and, like us, the beasts were suffering. Even the chickens were panting with tongues out.
We got ice-cream which melted in our hands before we could gulp it down (and when we tried to do so, the cold tore up our insides).
We wanted to view the monster truck show at seven o’clock. But at that hour the sun was still beaming down on us from an unsparing, cloudless, California-like sky, and we could hardly stand to remain out of doors (besides, the metal benches at the monster truck show would’ve burnt us). We cut our losses, went home, and watched The Hangover.
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The next couple of days brought torrential rain. I would’ve been glad, except that today’s rain coincided with a graduation party for the son of Karin’s boss. The party was held out of doors, in a park pavilion, with water, water, everywhere.
“You look like you’re having fun,” said the ungracious teenager.
About zero degrees Fahrenheit today. I stayed inside; I was on holiday, thanks to Martin Luther King. Karin & I did go out for supper, and I felt the cold then. I barely made it to the car.
A lovely philosophic job is advertised in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, in Marquette – a Lake Superior port town, four hours east of Duluth, eight hours from South Bend if one travels through Illinois and Wisconsin. Its hills and lake are beautiful, and its wooden sports dome is the world’s largest. But the cold! The snow! The darkness! If I barely can endure them here, how could I there?
This job was advertised a year ago as well; I wonder if that school has trouble attracting (or retaining) employees.
Another possible job – in Texas, not far from Ana & David – is in a nicer clime but would expire after a year or two.
Without the Ph.D., no job offer is likely to materialize; but I talked last week with my adviser, and we both realized that I am very close to finishing (though the degree probably wouldn’t be conferred until the end of May).
Yesterday, Karin & I went to the movie theater. The movie itself cost $6 per ticket – the only good deal in the house. Two popcorns and two drinks would’ve cost about $20. Two bottles of water would’ve cost about $10.
And then, to add insult to injury, the drinking fountains in our section didn’t work. (We did find drinking water at the other end of the building.)
We settled into our seats. The previews were uninspired.
Clearly, the movie industry is in bad decline …
… except for the Mission: Impossible series, which just keeps on getting better and better, and whose latest installment we’d come to view. (It’s one of the comforts of my old age.)
Mission: Impossible – Fallout is the “Thundergun Express” of movies. Tom Cruise hangs from a cliff, and from a tall building. He jumps out of a plane – in a lightning storm. He pilots a helicopter – in a dogfight with another helicopter, over the Himalayas. And, in Paris and London, he runs, and runs, and runs.
It’s best viewed on the big screen, what Tom Cruise manages to do.
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Afterward, we stopped by my Aunt Lorena’s & Uncle John’s house to borrow a book; and, lo and behold, who should be visiting but my Aunt Lorena’s own aunt and uncle, Amparo and René Bermúdez. It’s not often that I see people I knew in Esmeraldas, as a child.
We conversed in Spanish.
“How is Ruth?” they asked, referring to Mary, my sister. “Does she still have asthma?”
“No,” my Aunt Lorena said, “she has diabetes.”
“She has both,” I assured them. We all shook our heads.
“She exercises regularly and watches her diet,” I told them. “She’s in better condition than her brothers are.”
“Ah,” they said. “And little David, who wanted to play for Real Madrid?”
“Married to an hondureña.”
“And young Stephen?”
“To a nicaragüense.”
“And your wife, does she speak Spanish?”
“No.” (Karin later told me that she understood 25% of the conversation – and, yes, the, and other words like those.)
“With whom do you practice?”
“With no one.”
“You speak Spanish perfectly.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “For an esmeraldeño.”
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Before we took our leave, Karin & I went upstairs to greet my cousins, Annie and Vickie. Annie was in her bedroom with Johnny, her fiancé. Vickie was in her own bedroom.
After we talked to them, we came back down the stairs.
“Was Vickie in her own room?” asked my Uncle John.
“Yes,” I said.
“Annie and Johnny aren’t supposed to be in a bedroom alone together,” said my uncle.
“Well,” I told him, “you’d better go up there and drag them out.”
One kitty at a time, said the vet. And so Jasper stayed at home while Ziva was taken to get her bleeding paw examined. (Karin figured that since Jasper’s mouth sores are chronic, it’ll be OK to neglect them until the following Monday.)
The results of Ziva’s checkup weren’t nice. She’s suffering from quite an infection – due, as I understand it, to the kitty version of an ingrown toenail. Karin has been trying to soak Ziva’s paw in a special iodine, but Ziva is having none of it.
If the infection doesn’t clear up, something drastic, such as claw-removal surgery, may be required.
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My throat is sore, but not from any cold-like illness. Did I pull a muscle? I don’t think anyone tried to throttle me.
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Ana’s & David’s foster baby has been moved to a different home. (I believe she’s been reunited with a sibling.) For a few days, she was our family’s darling. We’re dismayed, though not very surprised, that she’s been taken away so soon.
I wished to view something more “Texan” than the hipster city of Austin. And so, on Friday, Ana & David took Karin & me out into the Texas Hill Country. Our destination was the LBJ Ranch.
We drove through Dripping Springs and Johnson City, where LBJ grew up (and which was named after his cousin). That city is now a tourist town. We also passed some wineries. Onward!, I insisted. No wineries! Onward, to the ranch!
Admission to the ranch was free, but each of us was charged $3 to tour the house. Driving through the property, we saw the Pedernales River and large fields with handsome Hereford cattle. We also stopped at LBJ’s airplane hangar and viewed a short movie about the importance of the ranch to the Johnson family and the nation. LBJ spent about a quarter of his presidency on the ranch. He hosted politicians and foreign dignitaries there. (His Secret Servicemen were disguised as ranch hands.) We also listened to an airman tell stories about how LBJ would fly into the ranch at the government’s expense.
The house itself was rather plain. It had eight bedrooms, a swimming pool, and many, many phones and televisions. It was decorated in the Sixties’ style, with vinyl armchairs, lemon-yellow countertops, and popular books from the period. (I was reminded of the Missionary Church Dorm, in Quito.) The best thing in the house, however, was LBJ’s desk chair, made of spotted cowhide. Oh, how I longed to sit in that chair! Alas, it wasn’t permitted.
