A culinary dream

Sometimes, my CPAP machine pumps my stomach so full of air that just before I wake up, I have dreams like this one:

I’d just had a large breakfast when Martin showed up at my house and said, Come with me, I’m taking you out for pancakes. There was no refusing him. (Cut to the diner.) The pancakes were impressive – one was actually a huge, flattened cinnamon roll – but afterward, goodness gracious, did my belly ever hurt. (Usually, in dreams with food, I don’t get to eat the food.)

The dream also may have been prompted by my having gotten back on the dieting horse. In three weeks, I’ve lost eight pounds.

If there’s anything more tedious than having to listen to other people talk about their dreams, it’s having to listen to dieters tell about their new regimes and food hacks.

Our new food hack is the George Foreman grill that Karin found at Goodwill.

I also just learned a great way to fry an egg. Pre-heat the pan; put in a little fat; put in a tablespoon of water, and then the egg. Cover the pan.

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Why do Karin & I keep going on dates to Niles, Michigan? What is the town’s allure? Is it the riverwalk? Is it the pleasant drive from Granger, Indiana, where we deposit our children? Is it Casperson Books? Is it Pizza Transit, with its series of outlandish “pizzas of the month” (e.g., Mexican street corn pizza)?

Is it the Wonderland Cinema?

Is it the knowledge that Ring Lardner walked these streets?

IT’S ALL OF THE ABOVE.

Today’s excursion was to eat hot dogs and popcorn and watch The End of Oak Street, David Robert Mitchell’s movie about time-warped dinosaurs preying on suburban Michiganders. Another of Mitchell’s wry commentaries on the inevitability of death.

Peanuts PDFs; UK map; Midwestern wedding

All of the Peanuts strips, PDF format, $25. Offer ends in 12 days.

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My UK wall map – a Christmas gift from my father-in-law – has been framed at last in a heavy, wooden contraption from Goodwill. Karin, the handy one, did the framing. My idea is to hang the map next to the TV so that we can check it when we watch homicidal/​agricultural/​veterinary programs, e.g. our latest, The Highland Vet.

Current reading: François Mauriac, Genetrix; Sue Townsend, Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years (the last book in the series). And lots of other books.

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I should describe the wedding we attended on Sunday. Samuel bore the rings with aplomb. The much younger flower girl lagged behind, so Samuel retraced his steps, grabbed some petals, and strewed them for her. All else went according to the script: the brief vowing ceremony; the post-vowing, pre-dining interlude for photos; the popcorn and donut tables; the soda and liquor booths; the dinner rolls, sweet corn, and mashed potatoes; the couple’s dance, the bride’s dance with her father, and the groom’s with his mother; and the Cha-Cha Slide. There was no removal of the garter with teeth – none we stayed for, anyway. When we left, I was dead-tired. I’d held squirmy Abel for several hours. It was as wearying as if I’d spent the day moving house.

Samuel and Daniel loved the Cha-Cha Slide; their grandpa danced it with them. That ex-DJ was in his element. I’ve not met a more ardent ritual-relisher.

Hoyle

Someday I’ll explain why, a decade or so ago, I resolved never to learn another brand-new board or card game – indeed, why I came to loathe the very idea of new games.

Tonight’s post is about why despite (or perhaps because of) this loathing, I bought The New Complete Hoyle, Revised (1991) at Goodwill.

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The book’s subtitle is: “The Authoritative Guide to the Official Rules of All Popular Games of Skill and Chance.”

All popular games. Of skill and chance.

Is this a literally true description of the book? No.

Was it true in 1991? No. There were other popular games than those in Hoyle.

The pretense of officiality also goes too far. See, for example, this admission:

The rules of Go differ somewhat in China, Korea, and Japan. Unfortunately they have not been codified even in Japan, where, in 1928, a championship tournament was interrupted and suspended for a month by a dispute over rules. A commission appointed to clarify the Japanese rules proposed a code in 1933, but it has not been generally adopted.

One might deplore the book’s exaggeration. On the other hand, one might admire its determination to establish a canon of games.

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Which brings me to what canonization is for.

Walk down any Walmart games aisle, or visit a specialty shop: new games proliferate like Hydra’s heads. This, at best, is a distraction from the sustained pursuit of excellence. At worst, it’s postmodern absurdity.

One is tempted to commit one of two opposing mistakes. The first is to renounce all gaming. This is the Charybdis of asceticism. The second is to try to keep up with new gaming. This is the Scylla of … well, probably not asceticism’s starkest opposites, wantonness and incontinence. It’s more like an arms race. Or like keeping up with the Joneses.

The sensible middle course is to choose just a few games and to stick with them. Here a canon of games is invaluable. It’s less good to practice something with no stock of wisdom built up around it. (I’m sure Alasdair MacIntyre would agree.)

Adhering to the canon ensures that one is communing, not only with today’s gamers, but also with those of the past, e.g. the Japanese who debated the rules of Go in 1928.

Hoyle is steeped in history, or aspires to be.

(Indeed, its stated pedigree is almost blasphemous:

The only truly immortal being on record is an Englishman named Edmond Hoyle, who was born in 1672 and buried in 1769 but who has never really died.

I imagine my pious grandfather, who refused to play cards, disapproving.)

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Suppose that one is nauseated by the uselessness of gaming and decides that total abstention is, after all, the way to go. Hoyle still is invaluable. What better tool is there for understanding scenes of gaming in old books? I’ve never actually played bridge, but (in some moods) my favorite Christie novel is Cards on the Table. Identifying the murderer in that book depends on knowing about bridge. Then there are the James Bond novels (Casino Royale, Goldfinger  … ). Even Austen’s and Pepys’s people are card fiends. A confirmed teetotaller probably should know a little about boozing, if only for literature’s sake.

More mini-books

School goes smoothly enough for Samuel, who puts on a brave face but still has misgivings (as shown in the third photograph below).

To catch up on my reading, I continue to choose mini-books.

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Life Together. For the reading group. I’m also attempting the Ethics (delivered on my porch in an imperfectly sealed package, during a rainstorm).
• Maggie Nelson: Jane: A Murder. Poetry. An earlier treatment of the subject matter of The Red Parts (a memoir).
• Ditto: The Argonauts. A memoir of modern love. Scavanged at Goodwill with Jane: A Murder.
• Alexandra Elizabeth Sheedy (yes, that Ally Sheedy, aged approx. twelve): She Was Nice to Mice. Good Queen Bess’s private moments, as reported by eyewitnesses (palace vermin).
• Arthur Miller: The Crucible. Scavanged at Goodwill. I missed this high school staple when I was younger (I did read Death of a Salesman).

I’m also reading Wilder’s Our Town; later, I’ll read The Skin of Our Teeth and re-read The Matchmaker. These are collected in a single ordinary-sized volume and so don’t count as separate books, mini- or otherwise. But using plays for catching up is one of my better recent brainwaves.

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.

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.

“To grandfather in the village”

This is a holiday weekend, which, for Karin, means half-days at the office. Karin’s dad whisked Samuel away for a sleepover, leaving Karin & me with just one child. We used our exotic new freedom to eat inside a restaurant and shop at Goodwill.

We bought Daniel some much-needed shoes. He refuses to walk in them. At home, I carried him to the back yard, plunked him down on the grass, and watched him crawl sadly over and beg to be held.

He’s happy to walk around in socks. It’s shoes that freak him out.

At Goodwill, I also found a volume, published out of India, of fifty Chekhov stories translated by Constance Garnett. Amazingly, I hadn’t previously owned any of Chekhov’s writings. I read “Vanka” when I was little and thought it unbearably sad (for by then I had lived away from my parents). Shirley Jackson’s “Lottery” is light and airy compared to “Vanka.”

Body-text fonts, pt. 11: Vendôme

His departure is old news, but I’d like to record my gratitude to the Argentinian Gustavo Alfaro, Ecuador’s manager during this last World Cup cycle. An astute tactician and a careful mentor to young pros; by most accounts, a good person.

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This month I exhibit a bizarre typeface. It appears as body text in just one of my volumes, a Random House Value Publishing omnibus of E. M. Forster’s novels (obtained last weekend at Goodwill).

The italics are severely slanted.

That’s how they were designed to look.

[Update, 27 January: I now believe this isn’t a sample of true italics. Here’s a website where you can buy cheap font files of Vendôme. Images of body text are provided. Roman text looks like this; italics look like this.

You can see the italics aren’t just slanted versions of the romans. Compare the roman and italic uppercase “A,” as well as the roman and italic lowercase “b”: the romans have more serifs. And in the italic lowercase “g,” the lower and upper storeys are farther apart than in the roman “g.” On the other hand, all these differences are absent from the text sample taken from the Forster omnibus.

Of course, not every genuine Vendôme will look exactly like Fontsite’s Vendôme.]

Karin didn’t bother with the typesetting. She listened to a recording of the book. Cecil Vyse and Cousin Charlotte irked her equally.

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Daniel sleeps; I type.

He often goes to bed like this. I put on soothing Italian soundtrack music and lie with him. He rolls and jumps on me; then, declining suddenly, he “gives up the ghost.”