What we listen to at night

Karin & I diligently read the Bible aloud to our sons – or we’d done so until the last few weeks. 1 Chronicles is defeating us. All those genealogies.

We’ve resorted to playing a recording of 1 Chronicles.

I trust spiritual nourishment will come in time, after a little supplemental reading.

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These days, Daniel goes to sleep listening to classical music on Andrews University’s radio station, WAUS-FM.

Spotify chooses classical music better than I do. But an experienced radio DJ does better than Spotify. Longer pieces; obscurer pieces; better pieces.

Besides, Spotify sucks me into an eddy of Handel and Vaughan Williams and other British (or British-serving) composers. Not that I don’t enjoy that stuff; but Spotify’s algorithm has decided that that’s all I enjoy, which isn’t the case.

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Karin & I have been viewing the police procedural Dahaad, which is set in Rajasthan. I already knew a little about caste in India, and I’ve seen instances of racism and classism in Ecuador and the United States. But it’s been shocking to observe Indian caste dynamics play out on TV, in genre fiction.

Umbrella; vermin; children; Heineken

Rihanna: “ … under my um-bar-
ella, -ella, -ella,
eh, eh.”

Samuel: “Hahahahahahahahahaha.”

A timely song, what with all the drizzle. Summer appears to be winding down. We’ve had our first notable cooling, and leaves have been peppering the ground. This is a “false fall”; but tell that to the mice, who’ve again infiltrated our mud-room: we’ve found little mounds of dirt where they’ve been tunneling. We’ve left no food for them. They must simply be sheltering from the cold.

Daniel, who seems constitutionally squirmier than Samuel (and he is plenty squirmy), has been hurtling himself out of his chair and slithering over the ground, either backwards until he gets stuck or, like a hurricane, in a spiral pattern. He leaves little spiral-paths of puke. Or he stays in his chair and rocks his legs so vigorously that it lurches, a foot at a time, across the room.

Samuel leaves out uncapped dry-erase markers, and Daniel sucks them.

I’m gradually weaning the children off YouTube, to interest them in soccer (which will be necessary for them when the World Cup is played). It helps that on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, ViX broadcasts Champions League matches. Samuel is familiar with the halftime commercials. “Drink responsibly,” he says when he hears strains of Handel, who composed the Champions League refrain.