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.

A February stroll

An early spring, says Punxsutawney Phil, whose predictive record is mixed (good on temperature, bad on seasonal change). What with yesterday’s fifty-plus Fahrenheit degrees, we led our boys on a long walk through the parking lots of Western Avenue. Karin was carrying a gift card, so we popped into a Dairy Queen, rested in the armchairs of the café section, watched a couple of awful sitcoms on the big TV, and snacked. The boys mostly behaved themselves.

(As I write this, in the sanctity of our home, Samuel lies next to me on the sofa; Daniel climbs up the back of the sofa and jumps on Samuel; then, Samuel twists Daniel’s nose. Rinse, repeat. They think it’s a great game. I think it’s a great way to break someone’s bones. Mine, probably.)

(I should have finished reading King Solomon’s Mines by now, but Daniel threw it from a great height and broke its spine. My new used copy should arrive tomorrow.)

Anyway. We also toured a small African/Caribbean food mart. It sells unusual tubers, legumes, grains, flours, and many kinds of rice and canned herring. Of course I wouldn’t know what to do with most of these foods. I was familiar with certain Goya products: plantain chips; cassava/yuca chips; and malta, which I am curious to see Karin try some day.

I would have bought some chips out of politeness, but the clerk stayed in the back office, on her phone, and I thought it kinder not to disturb her.

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In case you wonder why the fonts look different: The website that provided URW Classico got glitchy, so I switched back to Charter for the body text and to IM Fell French Canon for the blog post titles.

Reading report

Due to all the snow, it’s time to list the most entertaining books I’m reading.

(1) Henry Fielding, Tom Jones. This’ll last forever. I average just one or two little chapters each day. I believe there are over two hundred. Daniel, roughhousing, caused me to drop the unread paperback I’d owned for twenty years; the cover and spine broke. The cover of my replacement copy shows Tom leching. I haven’t gotten there in the story. Tom is still an infant nearly a hundred pages in. He’s clearly on his way to ignominy, due to the circumstances of his birth. I plan to alternate between Fielding and Richardson: Tom Jones; Pamela; Joseph Andrews and/or Shamela; and, finally, the grandmommy, Clarissa. Wish me luck.

BTW, Daniel says dozens of words but just started saying “no!” this week. It’s his favorite word.

Back to the books.

(2) Michael Lewis, Going Infinite, about Sam Bankman-Fried. One chapter per day, most days. It’s a library book, so I can’t dawdle over it indefinitely.

(3) Nancy Mitford, Highland Fling (just completed) and now Christmas Pudding. Delightful. The scenes of old nobles and ex-military shooting grouse are especially compelling. I may race through all these novels and Mitford’s aristocratic histories and then finish reading the journalism and memoirs of her sister, Jessica, which I began some years ago and then put off. I think I’ve got the correct order now. One ought to read Nancy to appreciate Jessica, not vice versa.

(4) H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines. I read half of this many years ago. I enjoyed it but am a chronic unfinisher of books. Until I’m not. It can take decades.

(5) Dolores Hitchens, Sleep with Slander. I read Sleep with Strangers in October. This second novel is ten times better. The private eye is hired to track down a young adoptee who may or may not be suffering abuse. The search should be straightforward. But everyone lies to the P.I. – even the people who have the child’s interest at heart. I dread what’s to come.

I regret to say I’m dragging my feet over the not-very-entertaining Coriolanus. It does have this going for it, that although the hero’s friends and enemies alternately tediously praise and condemn him, he isn’t very interested; he shows up, hears some praise or condemnation, and then is like, I’m bored with you morons, and exits. The Shakespeare-hating Sam Bankman-Fried might have enjoyed this. No, probably not.