“A monument of misplaced scholarship”

… is how a Guardian reviewer describes a new edition of the diaries of Cambridge don and “Pomp and Circumstance”/​“Land of Hope and Glory” lyricist A. C. Benson (1862–1925).

Having previewed the book on Amazon, I concur.

See, for instance, p. 267, n. 4 (the font is Fournier).

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Samuel will return to school this week. Tonight, he realized that he’ll go to school from August until June every year for the foreseeable future.

I told him I went to school for twenty-four years.

He can count much higher than twenty-four, and he can do other mathematical operations – he and Daniel made extraordinary progress this summer (his teacher will be shocked) – but, clearly, the concept of twenty-four years is beyond his reach.

The concept of an hour is barely within it.

He has the concept of living forever. He’s all for it. Like Wilbur the pig, he doesn’t want to die.

The runaway baby

More napping songs for Samuel:

We’ve been to church twice. Samuel won’t sit still. During the service, Karin & I allow him to roam the back hallways; we take turns supervising him. Afterward, when we wish to mingle with the other Christians, we have to keep him from dashing out into the parking lot. It’s like a game of “capture the flag.”

I wonder if his diet is a cause. I’ve started giving him peanut butter and jelly toast in the mornings. It puts him in an ecstatic mood, and he runs up and down the house, for about an hour.

The other night, we found The Runaway Bunny, one of his favorite books, behind the couch: it had been missing for several days. “Bunny! Bunny!” he said. Then he sat on my lap and paged through that book while I also read.

Presently, I realized that I, too, was reading a treatise of leporine theology: Rabbit, Run.