Closing credits

This year, I thank:

First, the people who gave money, advice, or labor to help our family to buy and move into our new house. I love our house. Every day, I am happy to be in it.

Second, our COVID-19 vaccinators.

Third, our TV. These shows stood out:

• Benidorm
• Cracker
• Det som göms i snö
• Mystery Road
• No Offence
• Rebecka Martinsson (especially, the first season, with Ida Engvoll)
• Wire in the Blood

Now that I’ve listed them, I see they’re all police procedurals, except Benidorm (a sitcom). Their seriousness varies. Wire in the Blood is gothic and ridiculous. No Offence is jokey and ridiculous; it’s very near to being a sitcom. Rebecka Martinsson has the saddest murder cases. The saddest murderers are in Cracker, which Karin & I are currently watching. The best investigators to watch are played by Ida Engvoll in Rebecka Martinsson, Aaron Pederson in Mystery Road (and in two movies, Mystery Road and Goldstone), and Robbie Coltrane and Geraldine Somerville in Cracker. Pederson and Coltrane, I daresay, are great, and Somerville is often great (the script doesn’t give her enough scenes). Mystery Road and Wire in the Blood are stunningly photographed, and Mystery Road and Rebecka Martinsson have stunning landscapes. Benidorm is ugly to look at, and that’s the point.

One more show, or YouTube channel, is worth mentioning again: Un mundo inmenso.

For completeness, I’d have to list Samuel’s shows, which certainly have taken up much of my time; but I’ll let him discuss them when he begins to blog. This year he has taken great physical and intellectual strides. I am grateful to YouTube for his intellectual ones. Samuel now knows his colors, shapes, numbers, letters, animals, and vehicles; he recognizes quite a few written words; he repeats interesting phrases; and today, he sang a few lines along with Dua Lipa and Elton John.

This year I’ll have completed the Bible-reading schedule devised by Robert Murray M’Cheyne. It’s the best schedule I’ve used, and the Good News Translation has been a joy to read.

I also passed my eyes over more philosophy than in any year since I lived in Ithaca. I wrote down the title of every article and book chapter I finished. Perusing the titles, I’m dismayed that I remember so little of the content. There’s something to be said for reading less.

(This doesn’t reflect well upon the industry of philosophy, whose practitioners are caught up in a whirlwind of having to publish more and more and more.)

I also wrote down the vast majority of the calories I ate; and, consequently, I lost a lot of lbs.

So did Karin, though she’s been gaining weight again. In February, Lord willing, we’ll have another son.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

P.S. I forgot Clarkson’s Farm. That show was outstanding, too!

Clarkson’s farm

A weekend of bone-tiredness. Karin is rather laid up, and I’ve been shouldering some extra burdens which have made my usual chores more difficult. This afternoon, it took an hour and a half instead of the customary hour to mow one of the fields; this was due to the length and dampness of the grass (the rain has wreaked havoc on the mowing schedule). After I returned inside I drank four bottles of water. Samuel wanted to sleep in my arms. Karin was too tired to start watching a new crime series with me, so I put on the first thing that looked interesting: a documentary series called Clarkson’s Farm. I’d never heard of Jeremy Clarkson, but in Britain he’s famous. He kept me thinking of the Kingsley Amis title “One Fat Englishman.” Clarkson is only sixty-one but looks seventy-five because he’s smoked so many cigarettes. In this show he has bought a farm in the Cottswolds, and after years of paying someone else to do his work, he’s decided to do it himself, even though he knows nothing about farming. He buys a huge, fancy Lamborghini tractor instead of a sensible second-hand tractor; it doesn’t fit into his barn. Then he discovers that a lot of farming consists of climbing up to and down from the cab of his very tall tractor. He tills the soil inefficiently. He wears rough-looking farmers’ clothes. Real farmers are summoned to advise him; as often as not, they’ve dressed as if to work in an office. I am not a gentleman farmer, but on a much smaller scale I can relate to all of this.