Singing along

The Proclaimers, singing:

“My heart was broken / My heart was broken / Sorrow / Sorrow …”

Samuel: “My heart isn’t broken.”

John-Paul: “Oh, no? Why not?”

Samuel: “Because I always follow the rules of the road.”

Some of his interpretations are rather literal.

(The Proclaimers are wearing good pants.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Samuel has finished reading the Babar omnibus and is halfway through Little House in the Big Woods (which I first read only last year). Some days, he reads more than the required amount. He has caught the fire. His abuelo pays him $2 per completion.

He’s a good little (mercenary) book reader, but he’s too hard on the spines.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Abel now stands.

Daniel sings along with my Spotify favorites. Most are wordless, so he has to sing the violin parts (for instance). He has a favorite Beethoven piece: the “Turkish March” from The Ruins of Athens. I’ve known it all my life but only just realized it was Beethoven’s.

Happy Father’s Day

… to all fathers; particularly:

• mine own
• mine by marriage (two living, one deceased)

My family almost always spends the day with Karin’s dad and his dad, in Goshen. We eat grilled meats, then go out strolling in the heat. Today it was painfully bright if not quite sweltering. We took the boys to a park.

Photos of my progeny: Samuel, Daniel, Abel.

Notice Samuel’s fighter jet: a gift from his grandpa, who, I believe, had just toured the Grissom Air Reserve base. (Daniel got one, too.)

The boys all loved the swings. Daniel fell off his, soon after the pic was taken.

I’m not used to being celebrated. It’s been only a few years since I became a father. Karin asked if I wanted anything. I said an opportunity to mow, a fastfood snack, and a thriftstore book hunt; and that’s what I got.

Inflation; remembering the Holocaust; I am a V.I.P.

Karin went to the grocery store. A man in the bread aisle turned to her.

Man: “It’s all so damn expensive!”

Karin: “It’s pretty bad.”

“This is my first time shopping in ten years!”

“It must be bad.”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

As I type, I am listening to a long phone message from the local superindentent of schools urging us all to think about the Holocaust. Appropriately, my mother-in-law just returned my copy of Maus. I’d lent it to her to read to her current foster son, a highschooler whose plan of care includes being read to. He’d been objecting, reasonably enough, to the children’s books my mother-in-law had been reading to him. I suggested Maus. He liked it at first but later refused to sit next to my mother-in-law to look at the pictures. “And it’s pointless to read a graphic novel to someone who won’t look at the pictures,” my mother-in-law explained.

Some future Holocaust reading (for me):

Our Nazi (reviewed here).

Diaries of Victor Klemperer (hat tip: my cousin-in-law Peter and his Facebook friends).

Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism (this has been scheduled by my reading group).

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Samuel chose me to accompany him to today’s “V.I.P. breakfast” at his school. The scholars ate fruit and cheese. The grownups had coffee and donuts. They sat at cafeteria tables with their children. I stood while Samuel ran laps around me. “Take me to your friends,” I told him. He’d guide me within five feet of this or that child. Then he’d laugh and run away. I couldn’t always tell whether the child was his classmate.

A few parents introduced themselves. “My child often talks about Sammy,” they’d say. Most parents just looked at us as if we were deranged.

One child (not acquainted with Samuel, apparently) had smuggled Lego bricks into the cafeteria. Samuel kept trying to run away to play with those toys. The mother covered the Lego bricks with a jacket. Samuel lifted the jacket to get to the Lego bricks. I dragged him to the picture-taking area. We posed with an inflatable donut. Samuel took me to his classroom. His teacher put him right to work, and I went home.

Behold him watching football, earlier this week, with his abuelos and his Grandaunt Linda (a rabid Chiefs fan).

Plumb tuckered out

An absolute knackering (knacking?) this day, what with the intensive cleaning of various ground-floor rooms. I have been dozing intermittently since 8:00pm. The boys, for the third or fourth time since the floor’s uncluttering, are running in circles, as in Alice in Wonderland’s Caucus Race. This is lively even by their standards – doubtless a spillover of last night’s mirth (we attended an “open house” at Samuel’s new school; I spent most of it chasing Daniel through the halls).

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I saw very little of the Olympics – none of it in “real” time – but was taken with this handballer’s story (NYT). He, too, has sleep apnea. Yes, this is what it’s like.

Earlier today I was slumped on the sofa, unable to remain fully conscious, while Samuel and Daniel crawled over me. I’d beg them to do a little cleaning. They wouldn’t. At last I rallied, was a virtual tornado for an hour and a half, and made the place spotless. The boys helped enough to earn some basement TV time. Then they came back upstairs, beheld the emptiness, and ran their first Caucus Race. Samuel tackled Daniel a few times. Daniel would urge him to stand up and keep running. High spirits.

I actually am the least tired adult in the house. Karin is pregnant again, you see.

Lord willing, our third son will be born the first week of December.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

P.S. The boys have been watching the infamous (but, to my mind, charming) Peppa Pig show. Samuel now calls himself Peppa; Daniel, he calls George; Karin, Mommy Pig; and yours truly, Daddy Pig. My parents visited; they are, respectively, Abuela and Abuelo Pig.

How the sausage is made

(The sausage being flan.)

Look at all that sugar!

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Old Ecuadorian friends came to town. I went to my parents’ and grandparents’ houses and listened to several hours of esmeraldeño Spanish – the best kind of Spanish.

One of these friends recently married a Mexican. This led to many jokes because Ecuador and Mexico aren’t getting along right now.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Samuel asked me to draw Africa. He then surprised me by adding a very decent Eurasia to it.

He marked out China, India, the Republic of Georgia, Madagascar … and Japan, which isn’t where you’d think; it seems to have joined Russia’s Arctic islands. I asked him if he was sure. He was. “This is Honshu, this is Hokkaido. …” “Japan seems to have migrated,” I said. He thought this hilarious. “Japan migrated! Japan migrated!” he went around shouting.

Unfortunately, he left his map and his pens lying around, and Daniel came along and scribbled over the drawing. Samuel was very sad until I showed him the photo I’d taken. Now he gets such a kick, looking at his map on the computer screen.

Eclipses

Karin has had a cold all week; the boys have been sick even longer. I caught it two days ago. My dad has been watching the Final Four with us; he has a cold, too.

I’ve been ill during many NCAA tournaments. I’m used to watching with blankets and medicine and tea. It must have something to do with the time of year.

My neighbors have been mowing their lawns. It’s warm enough, and our grass certainly is long enough, but I’m just not up to doing it.

And now, the business on everyone’s mind: Monday’s eclipse.

Karin had talked of traveling to Indianapolis, into the path of totality. Bad idea, she decided. The highway will be crammed.

As for me, the memory of the 2017 event is fresh. It was a time of joy and solidarity on the IUSB campus. All too brief. The recollection literally pains me; it makes me squint.

Eclipses are better to study, or to read about, or to imagine, than to view. I recently came across one in King Solomon’s Mines; it was the usual rot about science-minded explorers displaying their “magic” in front of savages. It should be noted, however, that the idea of carrying eclipse-mania through “exotic” lands has a basis in the actual history of science.

I read this, yesterday, in Herodotus (Robin Waterfield, trans.):

The war lasted for five years and although plenty of battles went the Medes’ way, just as many went the Lydians’ way too. They even once fought a kind of night battle. In the sixth year, when neither side had a clear advantage over the other in the war, an engagement took place and it so happened that in the battle day suddenly became night. Thales of Miletus had predicted this loss of daylight to the Ionians by establishing in advance that it would happen within the limits of the year in which it did in fact happen. When the Lydians and the Medes saw that night had replaced day, they did not just stop fighting; both sides also more actively wanted an end to the war. Peace between them was brokered by Syennesis of Cilicia and Labynetus of Babylon, who were anxious that the two sides should enter into a formal peace treaty and arranged for there to be mutual ties of marriage between them. That is, they decided that Allyates should give his daughter Aryenis in marriage to Cyaxeres’ son Astyages, on the grounds that strong treaties tend not to last in the absence of strong ties. These people formalize their treaties in the same way the Greeks do, with the extra feature that when they cut into the skin of their arms, each party licks the other’s blood.

Here is the famous picture of my family observing an eclipse in Esmeraldas (perhaps in 1991). David is shooting it with a machine gun.

Back to the WIC doctor’s

… went the children yesterday. Daniel is in the 99th percentile, height-wise, and Samuel is in the 42nd; when he was Daniel’s age, he was in the 5th or 8th or thereabouts, so he is coming up nicely. We collected our WIC points and, to celebrate, bought McGriddles and hash browns (not with WIC points). Later my parents came over for Daniel’s birthday, and we ate burgers and chocolate cake. Daniel received cards, motorcars, dinosaurs, and books; Samuel, whose birthday it wasn’t, received a road map of Kentucky. And The Hobbit. Today I scolded him for coloring over Tolkien’s maps.

Samuel’s Hobbit is a gift for me, in a way, because I get nervous whenever he pulls my Hobbit off the shelf, which he started doing after he watched the cartoon starring John Huston and Orson Bean. I bought myself an extra Hobbit, too, just in case.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

“Indiana Bill Threatens Faculty Members Who Don’t Provide ‘Intellectual Diversity’ ” (Inside Higher Ed).

Ours is the latest state to have its universities meddled with.

In John Williams’s novel, Stoner (1965), a young academic ruminates with two colleagues about the purpose of the University:

“And so providence, or society, or fate, or whatever name you want to give it, has created this hovel for us, so that we can go in out of the storm. It’s for us that the University exists, for the dispossessed of the world; not for the students, not for the selfless pursuit of knowledge, not for any of the reasons that you hear. We give out the reasons, and we let a few of the ordinary ones in, those that would do in the world; but that’s just protective coloration. Like the church in the Middle Ages, which didn’t give a damn about the laity or even about God, we have our pretenses in order to survive. And we shall survive – because we have to.”

The speech is recalled later in the book:

“Gordon, do you remember something Dave Masters said once?”

Finch raised his brows in puzzlement. “Why do you bring Dave Masters up?”

Stoner looked across the room, out of the window, trying to remember. “The three of us were together, and he said – something about the University being an asylum, a refuge from the world, for the dispossessed, the crippled. But he didn’t mean Walker. Dave would have thought of Walker as – as the world. And we can’t let him in. For if we do, we become like the world, just as unreal, just as … The only hope we have is to keep him out.”

Is it a good idea to sponsor a refuge for brainy misfits? Maybe; maybe not. But force it to look like the world, and it’s no longer a refuge from the world; it’s no longer a university. It’s just another department of the world, doing the same things the world does (but issuing lots of publications). Which makes it redundant, inefficient, and certainly not worth paying for, doesn’t it? I see what you’re really up to, GOP.

Racing; gift-getting

A colleague of Karin’s gave our boys a small, looped racetrack and two battery-powered racecars that look like dinosaur heads. Samuel and Daniel have been fighting over this wonderful gift most of the day. Mercifully, Daniel napped, so Samuel got a long turn by himself, and then I took Samuel to the grocery store and the library, so Daniel got a long turn by himself. Now they’re both playing with the racetrack again. I was going to write that they’ve gotten along better in the evening, but Samuel just shoved Daniel in the face.

“What a beautiful race,” Samuel keeps saying as he watches the dino-head cars tailgate each other around the track.

Each car occupies the full width of the track. So, no passing (or, as they aptly call it in Australia, overtaking).

“I feel this race is rigged,” says Karin.

But occasionally Daniel will pick up one of the cars, waltz around the room, and put the car back down in a random position on the track. So, this race is a bit like Snakes and Ladders.

I forgot to mention, last time, that I turned forty-two, and my parents had me over to eat baked chicken, which is my mother’s specialty (or has been since she found the recipe on the Internet a few months ago). I have been asking people to buy me fonts (which they won’t do) or used bookcases (which they promise to keep their eyes peeled for). My parents brought over a nice bookcase yesterday and I’ve filled it with overflow from other bookcases. I could use at least one more. My mother-in-law sent a birthday greeting by email, remarking on the fine, sunny weather; but I prefer gloom, and anyway it was the wrong day. I sent her a brief thank-you and a thumbs-up.

Dress-up

Twenty-five days before Halloween and, already, we’re in the thick of it. Karin found a Where’s Waldo? outfit at Goodwill; Samuel wore it most of the day.

The costume got him lots of compliments on the street – drivers were queueing up to smile at him and to respect his right-of-way – and at the library. One of the librarians carried a Waldo book over to Samuel. While I was occupied at the checkout machine, Samuel sneaked into the back offices (he also performed this trick last week), but he was so cute, the branch manager scolded him just a little.

Karin bought Daniel a full-body outfit of a skunk (one of his “spirit animals”). He hasn’t tried it on yet, but he’s been dragging it around the house. My parents, zealous Goodwillers, bought Daniel a Superman disguise that would look swell on him were it not a costume for doggies.

Here’s a video of Daniel resisting bedtime.

Birthdays; mischief; the Fruit of the Spirit; a word association; a walk; a rogue motorcar

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.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

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.

Muerte cruzada

“That was the secret of secrets,” said Queen Jadis. “It had long been known to the great kings of our race that there was a word which, if spoken with the proper ceremonies, would destroy all living things except the one who spoke it. But the ancient kings were weak and soft-hearted and bound themselves and all who should come after them with great oaths never even to seek after the knowledge of that word. But I learned it in a secret place and paid a terrible price to learn it. I did not use it until she forced me to it. I fought and fought to overcome her by every other means. I poured out the blood of my armies like water – ”

“Beast!” muttered Polly.

“The last great battle,” said the Queen, “raged for three days here in Charn itself. For three days I looked down upon it from this very spot. I did not use my power till the last of my soldiers had fallen, and the accursed woman, my sister, at the head of her rebels was half way up those great stairs that lead up from the city to the terrace. Then I waited till we were so close that we could see one another’s faces. She flashed her horrible, wicked eyes upon me and said, ‘Victory.’ ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘Victory, but not yours.’ Then I spoke the Deplorable Word. A moment later I was the only living thing beneath the sun.”

(From The Magician’s Nephew.)

In Ecuador, the political situation isn’t as dire as this. But it’s close.

On the verge of impeachment, the president, Guillermo Lasso, has spoken the Deplorable Word. Or, rather, he has invoked its watered-down, constitutional equivalent, the muerte cruzada (“mutual death”).

The legislature is hereby dissolved (although this won’t go unchallenged). Lasso’s tenure is now slated to end in six months. Meanwhile, general elections will be held. The victorious legislators and executive will serve out the remainder of the original, pre-dissolution term of office, which will continue until 2025.

Lasso, in theory, could win his election and be “resurrected” as president. Until then, it will be his prerogative to govern by decree, unchecked by the legislature (but not by the courts).

The BBC explains.

My dad made the point that muerte cruzada amounts to a check on legislators, discouraging them from overthrowing the president – spuriously or otherwise – as the Ecuadorian Asamblea Nacional has been wont to do.

In this case, it was the legislators’ foolish attempt to oust Lasso that provoked Lasso to oust them from the government.

A longer-term consequence is that from now on, every likely presidential impeachment can be expected to result in a dissolution of the legislature. Immanent impeachment virtually guarantees a comprehensive reset.

That might not be such a bad thing.

More worrying is the period of governance by presidential decree. I hope that things will turn out all right this time. But it’s not the sort of privilege I’d be glad for just any president to exercise.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Karin had planned to take a few days off, for enjoyment. Then, she tweaked her lower back, was unable to walk, and ended up taking Tuesday and Wednesday off, for recovery.

The children were mercifully docile those days.

My hometown

Samuel, I regret to say, has identified himself with a certain fictional character: Calvin, of Calvin and Hobbes. “Greetings, my name is Calvin,” he proclaims. “GREETINGS, MY NAME IS CALVIN. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!”

They do look alike.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Aunt Linda – my parents’ oldest sibling – is visiting from Missouri. Samuel and Daniel are turning on the charm for her. My parents are at our house, too.

They reminisce about the Ecuador of the 1950s and 1960s. My dad talks about the night his family’s house in Esmeraldas burned down because a kerosene lamp was lighted with what turned out to be gasoline. After the fire, my dad’s family had to stay over with some missionaries who lived on the plot of land where, eventually, the Hotel Cayapas was built. I don’t envy my dad’s family their ordeal, but I am slightly intrigued. I grew up a block from the Hotel Cayapas; it was one of the fixtures of my childhood; it seemed the height of luxury and class (the grass in its yard was cut silently, with a reel mower, by a starched-shirted worker). I ate in the restaurant once or twice and dreamed of spending a night in the hotel. My dad slept there – or on the same land – during his family’s time of greatest need.

It’s strange to think of the hotel not existing. But, of course, travel to Esmeraldas was hardly easy in those days; vacationers certainly didn’t flock there.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

In theory, it wouldn’t be very hard for me to sleep in the Hotel Cayapas now. I look it up on Kayak: a night’s stay costs a little over $50. The hardest part would be traveling to Ecuador. The second-hardest part would be to avoid being kidnapped or killed. In recent years, Esmeraldas has become a hub for foreign drug cartels and their domestic recruits and conscripts.

When I was growing up, I’d go to sleep listening to the loud music of the discotheques on the beach. Now, because of violent crime, that nighlife has pretty well ceased. In the 1980s and early 1990s, that was unthinkable: that sort of thing only happened in Colombia, and Esmeraldas always would be a party town.

An aborted journey; we finish Midsomer murders; body-text fonts, pt. 7: Janson Text

My parents set out yesterday for a tour of Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, one or both Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and I forget where else. How I envied them! They got as far as Illinois, and then my mother tested positive for COVID.

So, now, they’re back.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

This month’s typeface is Janson Text.

(A crooked but stimulating observation.)

Some say this typeface is the best of the Jansons. I wish it had a longer-tailed Q, as Monotype Janson has.

Also, everything depends on what you count as a Janson. Is Ehrhardt a Janson? Now, there’s a question.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

It took five years, but Karin & I finished viewing all of Midsomer Murders. Twenty-two seasons; 132 episodes of 90–100 minutes.

My overall assessment:

Grainier picture → better episode.

More French horn → better episode.

More scenes with Joyce Barnaby and Cully Barnaby → better episode.

Teleplay by Anthony Horowitz → better episode.

In other words: the earlier, the better (as a rule).

As it happens, we concluded the project with an early episode: S2E3, “Dead Man’s Eleven,” about the cricket. When we first tried it – four years ago? – I couldn’t stay awake, due to my sleep apnea.

I don’t know if more episodes will be released.

Whatever will we do when we run out of Midsomer Murders?, I used to lament.

Karin suggested: Watch them again.

I think we shall.

Dinner with in-laws; another couch; September’s poem

Another dinner at Karin’s mom’s house. We watched Notre Dame lose, and then the conversation turned to how contemptible Joe Biden is and how “they” (the bad guys, i.e., the liberals) are coming after “us.”

“Personally,” McKenzie declared, “I’m looking forward to ‘the purge.’”

Karin’s mom had previously mentioned that she and her new husband intend to build a “family compound” in Kentucky.

“With whom does she expect to live in this compound?” I asked Karin.

“With all of us,” Karin sighed. “With all of her family.”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Back at home, we have a new old couch. It was free for the taking. My parents happened to notice it while passing through Bremen, and some locals offered to haul it over to us in their truck (they were heading toward our part of South Bend, anyway). The couch is brown and plaid, and it’s from the 1980s. It looks like the furniture of Quito’s old Missionary Church Dorm.

Even more than our previous old couch, it “ties the room together.”

The cats already have peed on it.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

This month’s poem, by Rudyard Kipling, is “Recessional.”

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

God of our fathers, known of old,

Lord of our far-flung battle-line,

Beneath whose awful Hand we hold

Dominion over palm and pine –

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget – lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies;

The Captains and the Kings depart:

Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,

An humble and a contrite heart.

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget – lest we forget!

Far-called, our navies melt away;

On dune and headland sinks the fire:

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday

Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,

Lest we forget – lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose

Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,

Such boastings as the Gentiles use,

Or lesser breeds without the Law –

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget – lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust

In reeking tube and iron shard,

All valiant dust that builds on dust,

And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,

For frantic boast and foolish word –

Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

(For the Diamond Jubilee of 1897)

Quino

Happy birthday, yesterday, to my dad. I spent a couple of hours at his house, along with Karin, Samuel, and Daniel. Stephen dropped by, too.

It turns out that my dad shares a birthday with Quino, the famous Argentinian cartoonist who died two years ago. If I had to rank newspaper comics in terms of, I dunno, some combination of intrinsic merit and life-impact, Peanuts would tower above all the others; and then would come Condorito, and then the gag comics of Quino. (I also grew up reading Quino’s daily strip, Mafalda, but was less taken with it.)

No niche-occupiers for me. I like my cartoonists to have hugely universal appeal.

Quino was just featured in a Google Doodle, throughout Latin America and in parts of Europe. I guess his appeal isn’t universal enough for the United States.

He isn’t a good caption writer. His best work is mostly wordless. Or it uses gibberish, as in this famous strip.

A few themes:

Owners.

Workers. (Uber, anyone?)

Politicians.

Law and order.

Reading/dreaming. (He is very good at drawing dreams.)

More reading.

Loneliness (one).

Loneliness (two).

Death (one).

Death (two).

The closest thing in this country is The Far Side. But Quino draws better, and with a certain grandeur.

Mexico 0, Ecuador 0

It was a good night in Chicago, but this morning I worry about COVID.

Martin took this photo of Stephen, my dad, and me.

You can see many more green shirts, but there were plenty of Ecuadorians: twenty or thirty percent of the crowd, I’d guess.

We took our masks into the stadium and then didn’t think to put them on. No one was near us at first. The stadium didn’t fill up until the game was well underway. (Final headcount: about 61,000.)

And I didn’t notice any mask-wearers until people began to leave. I’m not referring to the Mexicans with lucha libre masks.

My dad and I weren’t allowed to bring our drawstring bags into the stadium. “Go hide them in the trees,” advised the guard. After the game, quite a few people were creeping among the trees, in the dark, like perverts, searching for their belongings. Maybe this happens after every game at Soldier Field.

The fans behaved beautifully. No one fought, that I saw. Everyone just seemed happy to be there. We had Mexicans to our left and lively, friendly cuencanos to our right. The Mexicans sang Cielito lindo. Near the end of the game, they did their infamous taunt of Puto. Alexander Domínguez complained; the ref temporarily halted play.

This notice appeared on the scoreboard:

The Ecuadorians all laughed.

It was a good move by Domínguez, that savvy game-freezer, because the Mexicans had been been playing their best soccer; afterward, they did nothing. Ecuador was the much better team throughout the match.

A day-trip to Wheaton

Yesterday, I traveled with my parents to Wheaton, Illinois. Brian was graduating from college. He is my youngest cousin. I hadn’t seen him since he was a year old; he grew up in Indonesia.

He was very pleased to meet me, and we were immediately photographed together (I don’t have the picture). Then, we hardly spoke to one another. He is a pleasant young man, but very quiet. I am unpleasant, and also rather quiet.

Here Brian is with his parents, my Uncle Tim and Aunt Aphing (Ah-PING).

(My Uncle Tim is my mom’s brother.)

My Aunt Linda and her daughter, my cousin Tanya, visited from Kansas City.

Aunt Aphing served lots of good Indonesian food. But there weren’t enough seats at the table.

“Where will Brian sit?”

Aunt Aphing: “In his room.”

“But this meal is to honor him!”

Aunt Aphing: “But you are the guests.”

Brian and Aunt Aphing ended up eating in the kitchen, on barstools.

Not all of us went to the ceremony. Tanya and I stayed at home and read detective stories. Later, we livestreamed the ceremony, and my dad joined us. The greatest applause was for the ROTC graduates – which my dad thought bizarre (“at Wheaton, of all places,” he said); I thought it perverse but typical.

Watching this ceremony – and the baccalaureate religious service, earlier in the day – I was strongly reminded of Quito’s English Fellowship Church, in which North American missionaries would gather to use their mother-tongue. Wheaton’s organ music surely helped to remind me of the EFC. But the whole vibe of the place was familiar.

Wheaton’s evangelicals are more straitlaced, more prim, than those with whom I now associate in the United States.

Billy Graham was mentioned during the ceremony, of course, as were the famous missionary martyrs of 1956.

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 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

In memoriam

It looks like I won’t be going to the funeral after all.

My dad shared these photos of my grandma and her family. The first was taken many years ago in the Ecuadorian jungle.

(My little mother is in this photo – she is the youngest daughter.)

This more recent photo was taken after the deaths of my grandma’s husband and of her second daughter, Irene.

You can see how cheerful my grandma was.

She also was one of the most studious people I have known. She constantly read the Bible and books about the Bible. Her sight was very poor, and so, using a magnifying glass, she would proceed slowly; and because of the effort it cost, she would read little else – she placed God first. But when I was young and she could see well enough, she made for me a tape recording of all of Charlotte’s Web.

You’ll recall that after my grandpa died, I mentioned the books that he and my grandma had written together. They were narrated from his perspective. But she was not the lesser author.

He was rather legendary – a Great Man, I’ve heard people say. He was a force. But so was she. He would have needed someone like her to keep up with him. I remember watching a presentation that they used to do for U.S. churches. They would speak the Shuar language to each other; and, as was customary in dialog between the older Shuar, one of them would begin to speak before the other had finished his or her sentence, so that there was no pause between the utterances.

I used to talk to her quite a bit. She would listen, and she was not intolerant of my opinions, but there was no changing her mind. She had long before decided which path to take, and she tenaciously continued down it. It is better to be like this, I think, so long as one goes in the right direction.

Which, of course, she did.