Two streaks; season’s reading; body-text fonts, pt. 10: Optima

A little trivia, and then I’ll be quiet about the World Cup until the South Americans’ qualification tournament begins in March.

Two venerable – for me, virtually life-long – streaks were left intact:

(1) The tournament was won by a first-round group winner. Not since 1982 has this not occurred; that year, Italy won the tournament having finished behind Poland in the first round. (Italy did win its three-team quarterfinal group.)

The lesson: A team ought to play well enough from the outset to win its group and not just qualify out of it.

(2) Even more remarkable: The final game of this World Cup featured players employed by Bayern Munich and Inter Milan, as has every World Cup final since, and including, that of 1982. Dayot Upamecano (Bayern) was a starter in this year’s final, and Kingsley Coman (Bayern) and Lautaro Martínez (Inter) came off the bench – Martínez in the 102nd minute.

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I’ve picked some Canadian or quasi-Canadian literature to read or finish reading this winter.

• Margaret Atwood, Surfacing
• Kate Beaton, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands
• Pierre Berton, The Comfortable Pew
• Rachel Cusk, Outline
• Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost
• Brian Moore, The Mangan Inheritance
• Alice Munro, Dance of the Happy Shades
• Howard Norman, The Northern Lights (or maybe The Bird Artist)
• Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries
• Bernard Suits, The Grasshopper

And I’d like to get around to watching Mon oncle Antoine.

Good luck to me.

(This is in honor of the solstice, the coming blizzard, and especially Canada’s rare and brief World Cup appearance – most of which I contrived to miss. My Internet died during one game; I was in church during another; and during the third game, I chose to watch Belgium vs. Croatia instead.)

One of the books from my list is the source of this month’s body-text sample, which is set in Hermann Zapf’s Optima. This is surely one of the most elegant typefaces, although it’s not often used for large blocks of literary text. Which is a shame. The Canadian Journal of Philosophy was set in Optima many years ago. My church’s history, Merging Streams, is set in Optima, as is Tom Wolfe’s The Painted Word. This blog currently is typeset with an Optima clone, URW Classico. Another clone is Zapf Humanist 601; a third, with old-style numerals, is Epigrafica; and a fourth, with old-style numerals and small capitals, is Ophian.

The misfortunes of Ziva – and of Karin, Samuel, John-Paul, and Ecuador

I feel much better, though I’m still coughing and blowing my nose. Karin and Samuel also have got bad colds. They probably caught the germs from me and then compromised their bodily defenses on Wednesday night.

We were outside in the cold for several hours because little Ziva had escaped through a hole in the screen door.

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It was a desperate time. We searched the yard and then the neighborhood. Then we heard Ziva mewing under our porch. She couldn’t come out the way she’d gone in: either she couldn’t remember how to, or she was obstructed.

We removed several boards nailed to the edge of the porch, only to come up against an even sturdier barrier of wood and concrete. This barrier had a gap in it, however, which Ziva approached. She mewed and looked out at us. We reached in and petted her. We gave her food. But the gap was too small for her to squeeze through.

We decided to tear one of the planks out of the porch floor. But it had been screwed in too tight, and so we had to wait a few more hours until a friend could bring over an electric drill so that we could make a hole large enough for Ziva to fit through. The drilling terrified Ziva.

An hour later, she finally mustered enough courage to climb up onto the porch. By this time it was about 11:00 at night.

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And so, ever since, Samuel and Karin have been sick. It didn’t occur to us to go back inside the house and leave Ziva in her despair – or to put on jackets. At the time, I hardly felt my own illness or the cold.

When a loved one is making desperate little cries, it’s easy to forget about yourself – and other loved ones, I’m sorry to say.

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Last night, then, Karin and Samuel lay around, pretty miserable, as I’d done earlier in the week. I spent the evening web-surfing until I was able to find a video stream of Ecuador’s first qualifier for the Qatar World Cup.

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I remember how, in 2004, Ecuador lost 1–0 to Argentina in a thrilling World Cup qualifier played in Buenos Aires. Hernán Crespo was the goalscorer.

They were two good teams, two mature teams.

Last night’s fixture in the Boca Juniors stadium had the same scoreline but lacked virtuosity and excitement.

Messi scored with a penalty kick and gave a few good passes.

Lautaro Martínez did nothing.

Ecuador’s lone striker, Énner Valencia, was stranded.

Our shining young talent, the left-back Pervis Estupiñán, gave away the penalty.

Alexander Domínguez had to tend goal rather too well for the comfort of the nation.

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Ecuador did improve as the game went on. I hope that, in the coming months, the team will be afforded more practice sessions with its new manager (so far, only two sessions have been held). The other South American teams also have been severely disrupted by the pandemic.

Ecuador will play the next game, against Uruguay, in Quito on Tuesday. Five substitutions will be allowed, which will enable more Uruguayans to come off the field once they’re short of breath.