A Veterans Day pup

Monday’s and Tuesday’s schooling began two hours late, due to snow. Karin delayed her Monday work to sit with Samuel in her heated car while he waited for the bus. Good thing, because otherwise I’d’ve stood by the curb with Samuel and Daniel and Abel, thirty minutes longer than usual, not knowing whether the bus would come at all. (The bus-tracking app was out of order.)

(Time was, people’d wait for buses in the cold, not having apps to reassure them. Ours is a softer time.)

Tuesday – yesterday – was Veterans Day, so Karin didn’t go to work. She put Samuel on the bus again. When he came home, he was carrying a drawing he’d made of a “Veterans Day pup”:

Daniel and Abel played in the snow. Mormon missionaries stood by our yard and invited our family to church. They were so winsome, I hated to say no. I should’ve invited them to church.

They knocked on doors on our street, then drove away in a Texas-plated ute (my preferred term for that car) (pun not intended).

January’s poetry

… reminisces about the Trojan Horse.

I’ve begun watching The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, my first “real housewives”-type show. The religious angle picqued my interest. (The mountains are nice, too.)

So far, I’ve been struck by:

(a) The Jesus artwork in the McMansions.

(b) The very early marriages (late teens for the women). Performed in the Temple.

It’s hard to see how Mormonism or anything Christian has anything else to do with these people’s lives, even as a force to be reacted against. The characters make some half-baked references to resisting the patriarchy, but it’s clear that they just do whatever feels good at the time.

Or whatever makes money for them on TikTok.

Anyway, here is the poetry. The Greeks could have starred in one of these shows.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

But Helen, child of Zeus, had other ideas.

She threw a drug into the wine bowl

They were drinking from, a drug

That stilled all pain, quieted all anger

And brought forgetfulness of every ill …

“… I couldn’t begin to tell you

All that Odysseus endured and accomplished,

But listen to what that hero did once

In the land of Troy, where the Achaeans suffered.

First, he beat himself up – gave himself some nasty bruises –

Then put on a cheap cloak so he looked like a slave,

And in this disguise he entered the wide streets

Of the enemy city. He looked like a beggar,

Far from what he was back in the Greek camp,

And fooled everyone when he entered Troy.

I alone recognized him in his disguise

And questioned him, but he cleverly put me off.

It was only after I had bathed him

And rubbed him down with oil and clothed him

And had sworn a great oath not to tell the Trojans

Who he really was until he got back to the ships,

That he told me, at last, what the Achaeans planned.

He killed many Trojans before he left

And arrived back at camp with much to report.

The other women in Troy wailed aloud,

But I was glad inside, for my heart had turned

Homeward, and I rued the infatuation

Aphrodite gave me when she led me away

From my native land, leaving my dear child,

My bridal chamber, and my husband,

A man who lacked nothing in wisdom or looks.”

And Menelaus, the red-haired king:

“A very good story, my wife, and well told.

By now I have come to know the minds

Of many heroes, and have traveled far and wide,

But I have never laid eyes on anyone

Who had an enduring heart like Odysseus.

Listen to what he did in the wooden horse,

Where all we Argive chiefs sat waiting

To bring slaughter and death to the Trojans.

You came there then, with godlike Deiphobus.

Some god who favored the Trojans

Must have lured you on. Three times you circled

Our hollow hiding place, feeling it

With your hands, and you called out the names

Of all the Argive leaders, making your voice

Sound like each of our wives’ in turn.

Diomedes and I, sitting in the middle

With Odysseus, heard you calling

And couldn’t take it. We were frantic

To come out, or answer you from inside,

But Odysseus held us back and stopped us.

Then everyone else stayed quiet also,

Except for Anticlus, who wanted to answer you,

But Odysseus saved us all by clamping

His strong hands over Anticlus’ mouth

And holding them there until Athena led you off.”

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

From the Odyssey, bk. 4, ll. 200–300 (approx.). Translated by Stanley Lombardo.

It turns out that, spiritually, I am Berkeleyan

We received our annual taste reports from Spotify (“Your 2023 Wrapped”). My listening habits were likened to those of the people of Berkeley, California; Karin’s, to those of the residents of Provo, Utah.

So, what do they listen to at BYU? Broadway tunes and Disney.

What do the liberal kids at UC Berkeley listen to? Evidently, Joe Hisaishi’s cartoon music. (Not so different from the Mormons, then.)

Other musicians who got lots of Spotify play from me in 2023: Boards of Canada, Stelvio Cipriani, Vangelis, Silver Convention, and Aphex Twin. And, too late to make the list, Enigma. I should note that it’s Samuel who asks to listen to much of this. “I want to hear Mix-Mad by Enigma,” he says (the album is MCXMD a.D.).

Closing credits (2018)

A rainy New Year’s Eve. Still, 2018 ends with more warmth than 2017 did.

This is my 120th entry of the year. I’ve written ten entries each month.

For providing material to discuss, I again thank Karin, Jasper, and Ziva; my tutees; my blood relations; and Brianna and other in-laws.

Additionally, this year, I acknowledge:

The poets.

Boca Juniors and River Plate.

The Mormons, who, until mid-October, were very friendly to Karin & me. They must have then given up trying to convert us.

Brett Kavanaugh.

My dissertation adviser for – so far – allowing various prolongments.

The St. Joseph River for declining to flood our apartment complex.

The city of Austin.

Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö for authoring the Martin Beck mysteries.

Aimee-Ffion Edwards for acting in four of the best screenworks I viewed this year:

• Skins (a lewd TV soap opera about Bristol’s teens; not for the faint of heart);
• Detectorists (a gentle sitcom – featuring the excellent Toby Jones – about rural, amateur metal detectorists; quite suitable for the faint of heart);
• Luther (a quasi-fantastical crime show starring Idris Elba; for the great of heart); and
• Queen & Country (the long-overdue, surprisingly un-cynical, cinematic continuation of John Boorman’s Hope and Glory).

I also thank the moviemakers of 1996.

And I thank our new church, which welcomed Karin & me during a rather turbulent period. We watched over the two- and three-year-olds during many services. Starting in the spring, we also wrote, printed out, and folded each week’s bulletin. (Mercifully, that task will soon be performed by a new secretary.) The most rewarding event each week was the adults’ Sunday School class. For authoring that class’s discussion guides, I heartily thank the late John Stott.

Finally: thanks to everyone who offered money and prayers on our behalf. Please pray for me to complete my degree soon. Karin & I long to get out of this rut in which we’ve been living.

Woes

Most days, my students drop by unannounced, and I tutor them in the order in which they arrive. On Wednesdays, though, I tutor them by appointment. The disadvantage of the “by appointment” system is that I don’t get paid if a student cancels thirty minutes before the starting-time. (Moreover, when a student misses an appointment without canceling, I receive payment only for the first thirty minutes of the non-tutorial.)

Today, I met with one student at ten o’clock and with another at eleven o’clock. I worked with each student for one hour. Then I had lunch. All of that was OK.

Then, a student missed her one-o’clock appointment (she overslept, she later told me in an email). I obtained credit for thirty minutes of work. Also, because this was her second unexcused absence, I canceled her privilege to continue making tutoring appointments.

At 1:15, another student canceled her 2:00–4:00 appointment due to illness. At 3:30, the next student canceled his 4:05 appointment. (More illness – “the runs.”) And a little after 5:00, the last student called to reschedule her appointment (she’d had a workplace emergency).

So, although I was at the job longer than seven hours, I earned payment for about 2.75 of them.

It was similar two weeks ago. Wednesdays are generally pretty bad.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Also, tonight, Elders Johnathon and Richard canceled the supper they were supposed to cook for us.

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Yesterday was pretty awful, too. I had to miss work for the draining of a trichilemmal cyst on the back of my neck. (If you want to see some disgusting photos, perform a Google search for the word “cyst”; my own cyst was much handsomer than those depicted.) The procedure hurt like hell. Afterward, I had to wear a very uncomfortable bandage.

When my surgery was over, I wasted much time at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. I went there to update my ID card. After a long wait, my number was called, but I was told I’d failed to meet certain requirements for my objective.

During the wait, I reread a good chunk of J.M. Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K, the great South African novel of Kafkaesque misery. It got me feeling sorry for myself.

I decided that it might be funny the next time to bring along Kafka’s own stories to the BMV.

Helaman 5:12

Tonight, Karin & I had a quiet supper with the Elders. One of them liked our cooking so well, he took a second helping.

Then we discussed our respective churches – especially, their missionary predilections.

And later, as if to fulfill his duty, one of the Elders read us a verse from The Book of Mormon:

And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo [sic?], because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall. [Helaman 5:12]

What about Job, I asked. Though he was God-fearing, didn’t the devil drag him down into the gulf of misery, so to speak?

Job did endure a little misery, they answered. But things got better for him. (His woe wasn’t endless.)

Ah, OK.

We’d love to have supper with you again next week, they said.

How about you cook it the next time, I suggested.

Another ambitious read

Karin has “beaten” the Rugrats in Paris video game.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

A tutee of mine, writing about Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, is quite taken with the titular character’s virtue.

I, not so much. But the assignment has piqued my interest in Fielding, and I’ve decided to read Tom Jones. Afterward, I’ll be able to watch the movie in good conscience. It’s supposed to feature Albert Finney prancing up and down the countryside as a young man.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The Elders saw me tonight at Barnes & Noble. They asked if I’d read much of the Book of Mormon lately, and I had to say I hadn’t.

I promised to discuss more of it with them on Wednesday.

Before then, I must turn in a dissertation chapter, or two, to my adviser.

Karin’s birth week

We’ve celebrated as follows:

Last Saturday, we trudged around and around inside Thistleberry Farms’s Lord of the Rings-themed corn maze. It was none too easy. Toward the end, it became perilous: the sky darkened, and we only reached the exit fifteen minutes before closing time.

It was nearly as tiring as Frodo’s and Sam’s journey with the One Ring.

On Monday, we ate chicken wings with Karin’s dad and his two other children: Lily, Karin’s sister, and Julian, Karin’s stepbrother. It left Karin & me feeling quite poorly.

Wednesday was the birthday itself. We did very little. My parents sent a monetary gift through PayPal. Others sent Facebook greetings. I ordered an Agatha Christie book for myself.

On Thursday, Karin’s mom gave her some cash. Karin & I went to a used-media store and bought seven movies and one video game, Rugrats in Paris, which Karin played the rest of the night.

Yesterday (Friday), we ate Italian food with Mary & Martin and Stephen & Edoarda. When we got home, I ordered this puzzle for Karin:

Then the Mormons came over for a while. After they left, Karin played Rugrats in Paris.

Today, we’re going to buy some sale-priced frozen yogurt.

We aren’t Kardashians, but we’ve still managed to have a nice little week-long party.

1 Nephi 4

Our new Mormon neighbors, Elders Johnathon and Richard, have been receiving our letters in their mailbox, and we’ve been receiving theirs. (It’s because the word “Elder” resembles our last name.)

We continue to be on excellent terms with these missionaries. Elder Johnathon invited me to be his Facebook friend. Most of his photos are from high school, which he recently completed. He appears to have been a member of a highly successful dance team.

I’ve now read several chapters of the first book of Nephi. My favorite so far is chapter 4, in which Nephi decapitates Laban, who is lying drunkenly on the ground. Nephi then dresses in Laban’s garments, bluffs his way into Laban’s treasury, and carries away some brass plates upon which the Lord’s commandments are engraved. However, Nephi’s own brothers, Laman, Lemuel, and Sam, fail to recognize him because he is wearing Laban’s clothes.

The narrative is rapid and suspenseful, and one gets used to the linguistic quirks.

I’ve also learned, from the introduction to my “reader’s edition,” that these quirks are entirely attributable to Joseph Smith. Mormons regard his translations as fallible. In this respect, the Book of Mormon differs from, say, the Quran, whose every Arabic word is presumed to be Allah’s own.

When I first met Johnathon and Richard, I told them that although I’d be willing to read the Book of Mormon with them, I was unlikely to ever become a Latter-Day Saint, and I didn’t want to waste their time. “That’s all right,” Johnathon told me. “Our goal is for you to grow closer to Christ.”

I thought that was a pretty good answer.

Brianna is taught the consequences

Ziva’s adoption-day was yesterday; she and Jasper were allowed to share a can of tuna. She’s lived two years with us. We love her very much.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Today, I worked on revising my dissertation chapter on the Rawlsian quest for political stability. This chapter has been scrambling my little brain.

Rawls offers many different characterizations of his key ideas. It’s bad enough, having to explain which characterization of an idea is the most important one for him; explaining others’ confused interpretations is downright dizzying.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

As I was engaged with these tasks, Karin’s little sister, Brianna, knocked on our door. She’d missed her school bus – again – on purpose, to talk to her friends (Brianna is a twelfth-grader). Also, she hadn’t wanted to walk home. Instead, she’d walked in the opposite direction, to our apartment.

Karin was away for the evening and couldn’t drive Brianna home.

Karin’s and Brianna’s mother refused to come over and drive Brianna home. “Why are you punishing Brianna in this way?” Karin asked her. “I’m not punishing Brianna,” her mother said. “I’m merely helping her to learn the consequences of her actions.”

I was inclined to agree with my mother-in-law. But, in this case, the consequences of Brianna’s actions fell squarely upon me. (Farewell to a peaceful evening during which to write.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

“Gather up your school things,” I told Brianna. “We’re walking to your house.”

Of course, Brianna is capable of walking by herself (though, notoriously, she doesn’t).

But what could she say? It’s much easier and nicer to be kicked out of someone’s home when that person goes with you on your journey.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

On the way to Brianna’s house, we saw the friendly Mormons driving down the street. They waved at us and drove away.

Goodbye, Mormons, I thought. I wish you’d offered us a lift.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The walk to Brianna’s house took fifty minutes. When we arrived, Brianna’s mother was in her car, pulling out of the driveway. She stared at me. “Thank you for walking my daughter home,” she said. Then she drove away, to go shopping.

I hadn’t quite expected my mother-in-law to offer me a lift home; I suppose that if she had, it would’ve interfered with Brianna’s learning of the consequences. Still, I was a little irked that she didn’t.

All together, my round trip was five miles. A few years ago, that would’ve been a cinch to walk; but now, I’m old and fat. My limbs are sore, and I am tired. These, also, are among the consequences.

Cornish ambiance; two new Mormon missionaries; their predecessors, the raccoon killers; I join a reading group

Well, I finished reading Rebecca. The last hundred or so pages were very thrilling. Then I read the back matter: (i) an essay by Daphne du Maurier about how she wrote the novel; (ii) an essay about Menabilly, the real-life “Manderlay” (where du Maurier later resided); and (iii) a disused draft of the epilogue (it sucked so badly, I tore it out of the book).

Cornwall must be one of the best English counties in which to set a Gothic novel. It has the requisite desolation. Fittingly, Aphex Twin is the best-selling musician to hail from that county.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Two new Mormon missionaries have moved in downstairs. Today, they made the rounds in our building, knocking on doors and introducing themselves. When they came to our apartment, I told them that I knew a great deal about missionary life; that Karin & I’d honeymooned in Utah; and that their predecessors, Elders Henderson and Parker, had neglected us, except to skin a raccoon under our window. (Yes, we now know that they did it: they fashioned the tail into an ornament for their car.)

I agreed to discuss the Book of Mormon with the new young “elders.” This, at last, will spur me to read it.

A dissection

Under our window this evening, two youths skinned and dissected a raccoon.

Who were these youths? Were they the two young Mormon missionaries who live downstairs (Elders Henderson and Parker)? We couldn’t tell. We’d never seen the missionaries out of uniform.

We’d seen them meeting other Mormons in the parking lot to ride bicycles around the neighborhood. We’d seen them sitting for hours in a parked car, surfing the Internet with their phones. But, always, they’d been in uniform.

Whoever the raccoon skinners were, their activity unnerved me. Don’t raccoons often have rabies?

And how did the youths procure the raccoon? Did they kill it? Had it already died?

And then there’s the matter of Rascal, Sterling North’s book about a boy and his raccoon, which I’d bought just last week at Goodwill. Hadn’t these young ruffians read Rascal? (Well, I haven’t read it either, but now I’m going to.)

And isn’t it a bad sign when youths cut up animals for fun?

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Karin will take our kitties to the vet’s tomorrow. Jasper’s mouth sores have returned, and little Ziva has a bleeding paw.

Salt Lake City; Lehi; South Bend

A song from Shrek.

At Temple Square we were spoken to by a nice, young, Taiwanese missionary.

Where have you come from?

Indiana.

What brings you to Salt Lake City?

Our honeymoon.

How exciting! – would it please you to be married to each other for all of eternity?

We don’t believe in that (I told her after an awkward pause).

What is your church?

The Missionary Church (said Karin).

Oh! The missionaries! Good! Did you talk to the missionaries?

Yes. We talked to the missionaries many times.

That’s good. That’s very good. Well, enjoy your visit to Salt Lake City.

Thank you.

We strolled upon the grounds; we peeked into the building where the famous pipe organ sits. The Temple itself cannot be accessed, but a 3-D model of its innards can be viewed in the South Visitors’ Center. In the North Visitors’ Center we looked at some religious art. I tried to photograph a scene of the Garden of Eden, but, no matter how I adjusted the camera, Eve & Adam came out blurry.

Was this a trick of the lighting? Was it something supernatural?

Wipe your camera lens, said Karin.

Oh.

The next day we rode the public transport out to the suburb of Lehi, where there’s a tourism complex called Thanksgiving Point. It has museums, gardens, and a petting zoo. We began with the Museum of Ancient Life, where we looked at dinosaur skeletons and browsed through a gift shop that had all sorts of plush and plastic dinosaurs. We viewed a video, from 1991, of the dinosaurs’ extinction. … Next we visited the petting zoo, which was rather crowded: there were numerous Mormon mothers, blond, thin, carefully made up, pregnant, with three or four small children in tow.

The real challenge was presented by the next site, a children’s museum/playground. Getting there required a couple of miles of walking in the harsh desert sunlight. We’d forgotten our sunscreen, and we’d already been on our feet for a long time. I was getting grumpy.

Walk, walk, walk. We passed office parks. The sun glinted off of the windows. SUVs full of children drove past us.

The mountains began to look rather different.

Are you sure you want to see this museum?, I asked Karin.

Yes. She was sure.

When we got there, I wasn’t thrilled. I felt like an adult at a Chuck-E-Cheese. There was an enormous jungle gym-type structure of mesh and slides and rope bridges. Due to my great fat, I had trouble extricating myself from the rope bridges. … What I did wish to try was the “wind room,” a small compartment through which blew gusts of up to 85 m.p.h. The children hogged the “wind room” for a long time. But when we did finally get to try it, it was truly refreshing. I decided that it atoned for the rest of the children’s museum/playground.

What remained to be visited was the garden, right next to the museum; but to enter it, we again had to walk and walk. We passed an entire golf course. It became clear that this garden was enormous, and that it didn’t have much shade. At the entrance there were golf-cart rentals of $30 for one hour. We decided to stay on foot and to see only two-thirds of the garden.

Afterward, I was very grumpy. But I told myself, this is one of the precious aspects of marriage. This is an experience with my spouse.

I looked over at Karin, and she was beautiful. “I’m tired and I’m cranky,” I admitted to her. “But this has been a lovely day with you.” We held hands. We now knew the route better, and so we cut across some parking lots.

On the train, I enjoyed looking at Karin while she listened to her audiobook.

The next day we rode out to a nearer suburb. We ate at In-N-Out Burger and bought things at a thrift shop. We returned early to Salt Lake City, did our laundry, and rested up for the following day’s journey back to South Bend.

Now we’ve had two straight nights at home. Jasper is happy to see us, though mostly he hides in cool places, because his coat is thick and it’s sweltering in our apartment.

I-15; Bryce Canyon; Hatch; Orderville; Zion

Here’s our first photo of Salt Lake City, taken near to the airport (we’d just gotten our rental car):

We headed southward on I-15. As she drove, Karin marveled at the scenery. First we passed snow-capped mountains which loomed over suburban sprawl (office parks; strip malls; gun shops; for-profit universities). Before long, the constructed things gave way to lush, green valleys with creeks and cattle in them. The mountains turned redder and smaller.

After some two hundred miles, we left the interstate and turned eastward, in the direction of Bryce Canyon National Park. The going was slower, and the hills rested nearer to the road.

Then came tourist town after tourist town, motel after motel. Bryce Canyon itself was swarming with tourists, many of them from such places as the Netherlands and Japan. Nearly all of these svelte persons were wearing hiking gear. With them, we rode shuttle buses to the vistas.

Proof that we were at Bryce Canyon:

Proof that we were at Bryce Canyon together:

(Karin thinks this picture is very funny.)

Worn out from riding the shuttle buses, we drove to the little town of Hatch, where we’d reserved our motel room. At first we had trouble finding the motel. We drove up and down what seemed to be Hatch’s only street. Karin pulled into a gas station to collect her wits.

I looked across the street. “That building is our motel,” I said.

This, too, was very funny to Karin. She laughed and laughed.

“It’ll be a fine motel,” I said.

Later, when we dined at the steakhouse there, we decided that it was a fine motel.

The next morning I made sure to photograph the motel:

And the carpet in our room:

Which I wouldn’t mind installing in my own house some day.

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The route between the town of Hatch and Zion National Park was perhaps the loveliest route of the whole trip. Much of it seemed to be permanently clouded over.

We stopped in the town of Orderville to buy supplies, and I picked up a free Spanish translation of the Book of Mormon. “It should be easier to read this version than to read the English version,” I told myself (Joseph Smith was no great prose stylist). The phrase And it came to pass mercifully was rendered in Spanish sometimes as Y sucedió, sometimes as Y ocurrió.

Also available: translations into Dutch, into Italian, into what may have been Bengali.

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Zion is a park for fatties. You can go through all of it in a car. (From what I could tell, there were more cars inside of Zion than anywhere else in Utah.) At Zion you needn’t pretend to be an outdoorsman: lots of people dress in regular clothes.

Karin & I performed a single hike, which wasn’t terribly strenuous. It took us to this vista:

Again, here’s proof that we were there together:

Much of the park resembled the scenery in Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Next blog entry: our return to Salt Lake City. But by the time I publish it we’ll have arrived back in South Bend.

Looking forward

Karin & I’ll be married in one month and one week.

People ask me, have you any misgivings? No, I haven’t. Of the two of us, I’m clearly getting the better deal.

This doesn’t mean I never worry. I dreamed, last night, that we were at the church and that the ceremony was about to begin. I’d forgotten the suit I was meant to wear; and so I scurried from uncle to uncle, asking to swap outfits.

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My sweetie & I hoped to honeymoon in Scotland.

I was all set to take Lanark to read. We’d both been learning the poetry of William McGonagall.

The trip would cost us next to nothing: Karin’s grandpa would supply the airline miles. Alas, his travel agent tried to burden us with tours and hotels. The price became prohibitive.

We ended up booking the trip ourselves – to Utah – whose scenery is also lovely, but very different. This will be my chance to finally hunker down and study the Book of Mormon.