Seahawks 29, Patriots 13

A Super Bowl for connoisseurs of defensive football. I’m not one. I understand what’s happening when a DB breaks up a pass or a lineman beats his blocker and troubles the QB. But os and xs, zonal coverage, disguised coverage … I know these things exist, but I can’t perceive them – not in real time.

I like Kenneth Walker’s running. Dude calmly glides toward his blockers, awaits the defenders’ removal, scoots past them. Elegant. Not unlike slow-roll penalty taking (in soccer).

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My Facebook friends signal their politics by praising or condemning Bad Bunny’s halftime show.

What a stupid time to be alive.

I’ve not previously listened to Bad Bunny.

The sugarcane is good décor. The dancing is uncouth.

So are the lyrics. I learn them only by reading them online. (I can’t understand them sung; I have trouble with Puerto Rican Spanish.)

The apagón song stands out because I know what it’s like to endure frequent apagones (power outages). One extended passage in that song is reminiscent of, if not quite ideologically aligned with, The Vagina Monologues. Is it included in this Super Bowl performance? I’m not sure. I can’t make out enough words, and I’m distracted by utility-pole dancers.

Sweet teeth

For the longest time, Abel had just two teeth, and then this week four more broke through the top gum. How long he’ll keep them is anyone’s guess. We trunk-or-treated last night at the school where my brother Stephen teaches, and I was amazed that so many of the teachers tried to give Abel candy. (He’s only ten months old.) Afterward, as we waited in the McDonald’s drive-thru, Samuel told us that children eat McDonald’s at school on their birthdays. I’m skeptical, but it’s within the realm of possibility. (For his upcoming birthday, he’s asked for McDonald’s, chocolate cake with icing, and a piñata.) Daniel ate sweet toast for breakfast today, like most days, and then asked for ice-cream. I held him off fairly comfortably by pointing out that he’d only eaten half of his toast.

Abel’s pediatrician told me that children’ll eat anything until they start eating sugar, and then that’s all they’ll want.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Karin uses Duolingo (an app, if you didn’t know) to practice Spanish, Welsh, math, chess, and sometimes piano. The sentences for practicing Spanish are like a high school/​Almodóvar melodrama.

No saldré con él si usa ropa anticuada (I won’t go out with him if his clothes are out of date).

Todas mis amigas son lesbianas (all of my woman friends are lesbians).

Some Welsh sentences, translated:

Owen is eating parsnips in the rain.

After the dragon had eaten Owen, it went to Cardiff.

See this compilation. A literature grad student ought to publish a paper about national stereotyping in Duolingo. But isn’t that what the app is for? When, really, will we have occasion to meaningfully use Icelandic or Korean? Isn’t mental tourism the point?

How the sausage is made

(The sausage being flan.)

Look at all that sugar!

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Old Ecuadorian friends came to town. I went to my parents’ and grandparents’ houses and listened to several hours of esmeraldeño Spanish – the best kind of Spanish.

One of these friends recently married a Mexican. This led to many jokes because Ecuador and Mexico aren’t getting along right now.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Samuel asked me to draw Africa. He then surprised me by adding a very decent Eurasia to it.

He marked out China, India, the Republic of Georgia, Madagascar … and Japan, which isn’t where you’d think; it seems to have joined Russia’s Arctic islands. I asked him if he was sure. He was. “This is Honshu, this is Hokkaido. …” “Japan seems to have migrated,” I said. He thought this hilarious. “Japan migrated! Japan migrated!” he went around shouting.

Unfortunately, he left his map and his pens lying around, and Daniel came along and scribbled over the drawing. Samuel was very sad until I showed him the photo I’d taken. Now he gets such a kick, looking at his map on the computer screen.

March’s poem

… in recognition of World Contact Day, is by Café Tacvba. It’s about an E.T. encounter.

(1) The original, then (2) my paraphrase.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

¡Ay! ¡Qué hombre que maneja el aparato!

Cuando volteé lo tenía arriba

Es una luz

Algún tiempo me dejó inmóvil

Solo me quedó el zumbido de la luz

Lo escuchaba en mi cabeza

En lengua extraña me hablaba

Pero entendí

Lo juro que no había tomado

Solo estaba encandilado

La hora perdí

Ay

Yo sé que vendrá por mí

Ay

Y me llevará a un jardín

Ay (Ay)

(Cuando me encontré con Pablo

fue que me contó esta historia

No le creí

Eso fue algunos meses

desde entonces que no lo vemos

más por aquí

Ya no sé ni que pensar

desde que llegó una carta

del hospital:

Pablo tiene quemaduras y ceguera permanente

No quiere hablar)

Ay

Yo sé que vendrá por mí

Ay

Y me llevará a un jardín

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

¡Ay! … Such a man steering the vessel!

When I turned, it hovered over:

A beam of light …

Some time he paralyzed me

Only left me with the buzzing

Of the light

I listened to him in my head

Although strange words he said

His point I grasped

Trust me: I wasn’t sozzled

Only utterly bedazzled

The hours passed

Ay

I know he’ll come back for me

Ay

To a garden, he’ll take me

Ay (ay)

(When I last ran into Pablo, he related a wild tale

I wouldn’t hear

That was several months previous

These days we never see him

Near here

Since the clinic’s letter came here

I no longer have an inkling

What to think:

Pablo, badly burned, forever blinded,

Declines to speak)

Ay

I know he’ll come back for me

Ay

To a garden, he’ll take me

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Compare:
Acts 9
2 Corinthians 12

A bonus poem

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Look at these trophies.

See how my trophies gleam in the sunlight.

See how they shine.

What do you think it took to become

English hammer-throwing champion nineteen sixty-nine?

Do you think in that moment, when my big moment came,

That I treated the rules with casual disdain?

Well? Like hell!

As I stepped up to the circle, did I change my plan?

Hmm? What?

As I chalked up my palms, did I wave my hands?

I did not!

As I started my spin, did I look at the view?

Did I drift off and dream for a minute or two?

Do you think I faltered or amended my rotation?

Do you think I altered my intended elevation?

As the hammer took off, did I change my grunt,

From the grunt I had practised for many a month?

Not a jot, not a dot did I stray from the plot.

Not a detail of my throw was adjusted or forgotten.

Not even when the hammer left my hands

And sailed high up, up above the stands, did I let myself go.

No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No!

If you want to throw the hammer for your country,

You have to stay inside the circle all the time,

And if you want to make the team,

You don’t need happiness or self-esteem,

You just need to keep your feet inside the line.

Sing, children – two, three, four!

If you want to throw the hammer for your country,

(Habinot est magitem.) [Suitable is more.]

You have to stay inside the circle all the time.

(Circular! Magitem! Magitem!) [More! More!]

And if you want to teach success,

(Aaah …)

You don’t use sympathy or tenderness.

(Tenderness …)

You have to force the little squits to toe the line!

Sing, Jenny – two, three, four!

If you want to throw the hammer for your country,

(Regotem … Regotem varia magitem …) [To guide … To guide variety more …]

You have to stay inside the circle all the time.

(Tempero es te iste is.) [Thee are to control it.]

Apply just one simple rule –

To hammer-throwing, life, and school –

Life’s a ball, so learn to throw it.

Find the bally line, and toe it,

And always keep your feet inside the line.

Now get out.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

From Matilda the Musical; lyrics by Tim Minchin.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Samuel, in a pleading voice: “Soccer on Peacock?”

John-Paul: “Tomorrow we will watch some soccer on Peacock.”

Samuel: “We will watch Netherlands versus Japan.”

John-Paul: “We will watch Croatia versus Argentina.”

Samuel, happy: “We will watch Croatia versus Argentina.”

He has a deck of cards with flags, country names, and capitals on them. He likes to put two cards opposite each other and announce the soccer matchup. “Denmark versus North Korea.” Or else: “Germany versus Thailand.”

That’s the spirit.

His Spanish pronunciation is improving, too.

For nerds

The latest video from Un mundo inmenso takes us on a quick tour through utopian social theory, with mentions of Plato, More, Bellamy, and Nozick …

… as a prelude to discussion of a homegrown work, Arjirópolis or Argirópolis (1850) by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, the author of Facundo.

Sarmiento wrote a lot of things. Even so, I’m a little shocked that I hadn’t heard of this book. I’m especially shocked that there’s no mention of it in the best English edition of Facundo.

I’m not shocked that Argirópolis wasn’t translated until recently, or that the translation’s price is $70. But there’s no fee attached to the Spanish original, in which Sarmiento uses utopian spelling (Arjentina, Uruguai, fewer accent marks, i rather than y, etc., etc.).

To call this book “utopian” is a bit misleading. A utopia is a no-place, or a no-place-in-particular, but the new country is precisely situated: it’s a confederation formed from Paraguay, Uruguay, and river-adjacent parts of Argentina, with a new capital on an island in the Río de la Plata. As in Facundo, the local geography determines the politics; the new land subscribes to no replicable political philosophy, though certain countries (e.g., the USA) serve as its models.

This is perhaps one of the more prescient “utopian” works, anticipating and even recommending the subservient role that Latin American countries would assume in global trade. Sarmiento is said to have been a Latin American apologist for neoliberalism well ahead of his time. To assess whether this is fair, I’d have to read the book.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

If the world had only twenty countries of roughly equal surface area, what would they be?, Un mundo inmenso asks in another recent video.

So: the channel has turned to counterfactual speculation. I hope it isn’t running out of things from actuality to discuss. This is an immense world, after all.

1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 44: (a) The Canterville ghost; (b) The craft; (c) The Simpsons, “Treehouse of horror VII”

This month, three jolly horror pics: an episode of The Simpsons, and two movies with Neve Campbell.

Scream also came out in 1996. That movie made Campbell famous, but I didn’t mention her in my review of it.

The Canterville Ghost

I think Campbell is better in The Canterville Ghost, a pretty negligible piece of filmmaking. Wilde’s tale has been redone for cinema or TV at least twenty times. A British version was broadcast just one year after Campbell’s was shown on ABC.

Wilde’s material is too slight for ninety minutes. Thirty or forty-five would have been all right. This could have been a chapter in an “anthology” series, paired with some other nice story like “A Christmas Carol.” (The ghost, a wicked old man, ultimately repents and becomes a “friendly” ghost.)

Anyway, Campbell. She’s in little-rich-girl mode, very pouty and naïve. Her character is sixteen; in Wilde’s story, she is thirteen. It’s transparently an act – by 1996, Campbell is well into her twenties, and she looks her age – but the mimicry is good. Campbell gives nary a “wink.” Well, maybe just one. She yells out Sooorrriee with a Canadian accent after the script has mentioned thirty or forty times that her character is from Indiana.

Campbell is Canadian. The actors who play her family are mostly British or Irish.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the story’s satirical purpose, which is to make fun of U.S. citizens who come to live among the English.

Patrick Stewart is the ghost.

The Craft

I said “three jolly horror pics,” but this one gets less and less jolly as it goes along. Basically, it’s Mean Girls before there was Mean Girls, only with better performers (Campbell, Fairuza Balk, Rachel True, Robin Tunney) and with impressive special effects. And these mean girls are high school outcasts, not high school socialites. And they’re witches. They don’t wreak havoc through gossip, social betrayal, etc., so much as by casting spells.

Is anything gained by supernaturalizing the Mean Girls template? I think so.

The witches receive power from a benevolent deity but then use it for vengeful, banal purposes. This isn’t just meanness: it’s blasphemy. I doubt that the movie set out to teach any lesson, but this one is worth noting.

I don’t think viewers would get any vicarious social pleasure from observing the clique in The Craft. This is not a circle anyone would wish to belong to. It is almost contractual: the girls need each other because their magic is stronger when there are four of them. Each girl has her own agenda; none seems to care much for the others, or even to aspire to be accepted by the others.

What is compelling is the fantasy of gaining power over one’s enemies – and over one’s friends.

“Treehouse of Horror VII”

For me, this is the most memorable episode in the “Treehouse of Horror” series. It contains three mini-episodes. (1) Something strange lives in the Simpsons’ attic. (2) Lisa’s science fair project takes on a life of its own. (3) Space aliens abduct Homer. It would ruin these little stories to describe them further. But I will say that the third story is ultimately about U.S. politics – and that it reflects what in 1996 was a common belief: that, regrettably, the two major parties are indistinguishable from each other.

How different things seem today.

P.S. I grew up listening to the show in Spanish, and even then I understood how excellent the translating and voice acting were in that language. Here is a video about the voice actor who played Homer. He seems to have changed a lot of the dialog for his audience.

P.P.S. Look out for the space aliens, who appear briefly in the video.

Sacrilege; renovations; our new neighborhood; the “frankly” book

When I did my little jog this morning, I was not alone. A church was holding a fundraiser. I saw signs for a five-kilometer run and for a one-mile walk. There seemed to be four people running and twenty people walking, the walkers all in one clump.

Messages of inspiration were posted around the course. The most obnoxious message, at a watering station, said “‘I thirst’ (John 19:28)” – as if a 5K fun run were comparable to the crucifixion. This is the sort of sacrilege I expect to see on unbelieving (but biblically literate) British TV, not in the pious middle of the United States.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Karin left her job early so we could do some renovations in the house we bought. Mainly, we pulled up filthy old carpet downstairs. The underlying hardwood is in good condition. We discovered that one of the (less filthily) carpeted upstairs rooms has bare, unvarnished planks underneath, so we left that carpet in place.

We both got some nasty scratches from the carpets’ staples. Samuel wandered around and got into trouble, as usual, but after a time we were able to distract him with Internet videos (a technician came who set up our Internet connection).

I took a brief walk. Several of my new neighbors were out of doors; quite a few of them were speaking in Spanish. My mission was to return “Frankly, We Did Win this Election”: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost to the local branch of the public library. What I read of that book was entertaining. The back cover has a nice blurb by President Trump, praising the author for his wavy hair. Alas, I didn’t have time to finish “Frankly,” and a hold had been placed on it, so I couldn’t just borrow it again. This is what comes of reading too many different books when I’ve checked out a book in high demand.

La reina rezaba por los niños pobres

… according to Duolingo’s sentence generator. Karin was amused.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

It’s Labor Day weekend. There isn’t a day when Karin & I don’t have at least one event scheduled with this or that acquaintance.

For us, this is unusual.

Today, we visited my friend Dan’s family. We went to the beach. Although the water was supposedly infested with E. coli, it contained many bathers.

We didn’t bathe. We walked down a pier to where, between the cities of St. Joseph and Benton Harbor, our own St. Joseph River empties itself out into Lake Michigan.

We also went on a carousel (I gather it’s impossible not to do so if one goes to the beach with Dan’s kids).

I rode the flamingo:

It had a slimming effect.

Dan and his wife, Lizzie, kindly gave us many things for our baby. Dan & Lizzie aren’t going to produce any more children. They have three who are cute but wild, especially at night.

“Ada is born”

– as David succinctly put it.

Indeed, she was born on Friday night, around the time I was blogging.

The child and mother (and father) are basically fine, though they aren’t permitted to leave the hospital until Tuesday.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Some of you may be wondering why the name “Ada” was chosen. I can’t remember all the reasons. But among them are these:

(1) It is spelled the same in English and Spanish.

(2) One of David’s earliest schoolteachers was named Ada.

(3) It was the name of the distinguished mathematician, Ada Lovelace.

Unlike Lord Byron’s other children, Ada Lovelace wasn’t born out of wedlock. Her mother, Lady Byron, encouraged Ada in her studies: “An education in mathematics and logic,” Wikipedia reports Lady Byron as presuming, “would counteract any possible inherited tendency towards Lord Byron’s insanity and romantic excess.”

(I doubt whether such details influenced Ana’s & David’s choice of name.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

“Marie” is Ada’s middle name. It’s for our mother’s mother.

Some visitors from Esmeraldas

Yesterday, Karin & I went to the movie theater. The movie itself cost $6 per ticket – the only good deal in the house. Two popcorns and two drinks would’ve cost about $20. Two bottles of water would’ve cost about $10.

And then, to add insult to injury, the drinking fountains in our section didn’t work. (We did find drinking water at the other end of the building.)

We settled into our seats. The previews were uninspired.

Clearly, the movie industry is in bad decline …

… except for the Mission: Impossible series, which just keeps on getting better and better, and whose latest installment we’d come to view. (It’s one of the comforts of my old age.)

Mission: Impossible – Fallout is the “Thundergun Express” of movies. Tom Cruise hangs from a cliff, and from a tall building. He jumps out of a plane – in a lightning storm. He pilots a helicopter – in a dogfight with another helicopter, over the Himalayas. And, in Paris and London, he runs, and runs, and runs.

It’s best viewed on the big screen, what Tom Cruise manages to do.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Afterward, we stopped by my Aunt Lorena’s & Uncle John’s house to borrow a book; and, lo and behold, who should be visiting but my Aunt Lorena’s own aunt and uncle, Amparo and René Bermúdez. It’s not often that I see people I knew in Esmeraldas, as a child.

We conversed in Spanish.

“How is Ruth?” they asked, referring to Mary, my sister. “Does she still have asthma?”

“No,” my Aunt Lorena said, “she has diabetes.”

“She has both,” I assured them. We all shook our heads.

“She exercises regularly and watches her diet,” I told them. “She’s in better condition than her brothers are.”

“Ah,” they said. “And little David, who wanted to play for Real Madrid?”

“Married to an hondureña.”

“And young Stephen?”

“To a nicaragüense.”

“And your wife, does she speak Spanish?”

“No.” (Karin later told me that she understood 25% of the conversation – and, yes, the, and other words like those.)

“With whom do you practice?”

“With no one.”

“You speak Spanish perfectly.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “For an esmeraldeño.”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Before we took our leave, Karin & I went upstairs to greet my cousins, Annie and Vickie. Annie was in her bedroom with Johnny, her fiancé. Vickie was in her own bedroom.

After we talked to them, we came back down the stairs.

“Was Vickie in her own room?” asked my Uncle John.

“Yes,” I said.

“Annie and Johnny aren’t supposed to be in a bedroom alone together,” said my uncle.

“Well,” I told him, “you’d better go up there and drag them out.”

And then Karin & I left.

Before the spring break

I’m now in that limbo prior to a journey when I don’t dare to order any new books, lest they pile up outside the apartment while I’m away. Such is the cost of seeing the world.

Karin’s routine also has been disrupted. She’d made an appointment for a mechanic to look at her car during our absence. But then the car began doing a grinding noise, and we figured it shouldn’t be driven before the appointment, either.

(The solution has been for Karin to use a car that belongs to my parents.)

At IUSB, the Spanish students have attempted their midterm exams. Those who’ve scored poorly enough have been told to make corrections, which are to be reviewed by the tutors before the holiday. The students were alerted to this requirement some time ago; so far, none of them has come to see me. I’ll probably have to deal with a dozen of them all at once on the day before the vacation.

At least it’s springtime. How to tell? Nelson’s port-a-pit chicken has sprung up outside the gas stations. Karin brought me some this afternoon, much to my delight. I would’ve enjoyed it better had the kitties not relentlessly begged to share it, gone digging in the trash after the bones, or knocked my glass of water over my books.

Awake

It’s three-something a.m., the fourth night of a painful cold. I’ve switched from bedroom to livingroom because I don’t want my coughing to wake up Karin. The twerps, Ziva and Jasper – who’d been sleeping peacefully, obeying the human timetable – now wrestle at the fringes of my blanket and compete for my attention.

It’s distressful to be awake at this hour, but sleeping is worse. Asleep, I can’t stop thinking about tedious details of Spanish grammar. Awake, my mood is OK. I remind myself that I’m married now and that being sick and married is immeasurably better than being sick and single, which was how it was for me in grad school.

Lately, at the high school where I work (and from which I’ll be taking tomorrow off), certain English teachers have been assigning Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder.” In that story the carelessness of one man leads to the disastrous, apocalyptic election of a ruthless president named Deutscher.

People are taking this Trump business very hard.

Trump’s actions so far have not been to my liking. But I refuse to give in to despair. I’ll continue to think kindly of Trump, if only by dwelling on how lousy the opposing candidates were. For example, they did nothing to check the lie that America is great. Trump at least acknowledged the falsehood of that belief with his slogan “Make America Great Again.”

What? Trump the most honest of the field? Doesn’t the sheer frequency of his lying disqualify him from that?

It doesn’t. The other day, I read this passage by Mark Twain that puts the idea rather well:

When whole races and peoples conspire to propagate gigantic mute lies in the interest of tyrannies and shams, why should we care anything about the trifling lies told by individuals? Why should we try to make it appear that abstention from lying is a virtue? Why should we want to beguile ourselves in that way? Why should we without shame help the nation lie, and then be ashamed to do a little lying on our own account? Why shouldn’t we be honest and honorable, and lie every time we get a chance? That is to say, why shouldn’t we be consistent, and either lie all the time or not at all? Why should we help the nation lie the whole day long and then object to telling one little individual private lie in our own interest to go to bed on? Just for the refreshment of it, I mean, and to take the rancid taste out of our mouth.

Interpreting a funeral

Antonio Valencia poses here with the medics of Manchester United, thanking them for quickly healing his broken hand. He came back from his layoff earlier than expected. He was the “man of the match” last weekend, versus Arsenal.

On Friday, Karin’s grandma died after a long illness. The funeral was held this afternoon, and I played a large part in it: I interpreted, into English, the speech given by one señora Máxima, whom Karin’s grandparents had known when they were missionaries in the Dominican Republic.

It was a lovely and very long speech. It included:

(1) Stories of how the dead woman liked to bake. (A bake shop, named after her, is now operated in the Dominican Republic by sra. Máxima’s niece.)

(2) Accounts of the dead woman’s unfailing cheer, and of her submissiveness. (“Who is this person who is being talked about?” wondered Brianna. Indeed, my own memories are of a sassier, stronger-willed woman.)

(3) An acrostic of the letters D-U-L-Z-U-R-A which, sadly, was not translatable.

(4) Detailed greetings from quite a few members of the Dominican church.

Afterward, my interpreting was praised by many of the mourners. It was nice to be recognized, but I felt like collapsing onto a sofa. Translating a half-dozen single-spaced, typed pages in front of so many people was like shoveling a mountainload of bricks.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Martin & Mary have flown to Houston to spend Thanksgiving with Ana & David. While they’re away, Karin & I will look after Bianca.

The election

For my birthday, I’ve been asking for books by G.K. Chesterton.

Today at Bethel I spent one class session making the students read Borges’s “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” and the other making the students take a quiz. I was able to sit quietly at my desk. Such are the sessions that I truly love to teach.

Tomorrow, due to the election, I’ll enjoy six hours off from work. Whom shall I vote for? Not Trumpie, and not Hillary. I’d vote for Hillary if Indiana were a “battleground” state; but, according to the polls, Trump is certain to win here, rendering my vote causally irrelevant. And so I plan to use my ballot to declare my preference for a decent human being.

In Ecuador, the people simply stage a nice coup if the president turns out to be a knucklehead. (Setting aside the “coup” that was held against him in 2010, the fact that our current president has been in power so long is one indication that he isn’t such a knucklehead.) Our military is obliging in this respect. It allows coups to proceed against the unrighteous. Not so in the United States, or in any country where a rebellion would be put down by the invincible and loyal guardians of the regime (and where, moreover, the civilians would be at a loss as to how to rebel). I quote from Chesterton’s essay about Rudyard Kipling:

Now, Mr. Kipling is certainly wrong in his worship of militarism, but his opponents are, generally speaking, quite as wrong as he. The evil of militarism is not that it shows certain men to be fierce and haughty and excessively warlike. The evil of militarism is that it shows most men to be tame and timid and excessively peaceable. The professional soldier gains more and more power as the general courage of a community declines. Thus the Pretorian guard became more and more important in Rome as Rome became more and more luxurious and feeble. …

In the U.S., no institution is more important than the local Pretorian guard, which is constituted by the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and so on. This guard was built up ostensibly to defend citizens from aggressors and would-be aggressors (the British, the Native Americans, and the Spanish; and, later, the Germans, the Japanese, the Soviets, and the terrorists). But its chief function, which no one discusses, is to be so big and powerful and disciplined that civilians could never overthrow the likes of Trumpie or Hillary – or any knucklehead who should be elected.

Rosaura; born in blood and fire; monsters’ offspring; Leibniz; I know what you did last summer; down a dark hall

I haven’t had much time for blogging, but during the last few weeks I’ve managed to read good-sized portions of several books. They haven’t been difficult books (not even Leibniz’s Political Writings have been very difficult; for one thing, Leibniz digresses at key moments to promote the use and development of microscopes). Nor have they been lengthy books. But they’ve all been “top quality.”

Some more titles:

(1) Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America, by John Charles Chasteen. My Spanish “beginning” students will be tasked, after Thanksgiving, with reading this. It’s the liveliest general history of Latin America that I know of.

(2) Rosaura a las diez, by Marco Denevi, with notes and cuestionarios by Donald A. Yates. This is an Argentinian mystery novel, in the fashion of Wilkie Collins. (Yates’s introduction goes so far as to say that Denevi’s only literary influence was Wilkie Collins.) Rosaura was recommended to me by my Uncle Tim, who read it in high school. Right now I’m forcing my Spanish “intermediate” students to read it. How they struggle.

(3) I Know What You Did Last Summer, by Lois Duncan. Until recently, I only knew this as the lousy slasher movie that came out when I was a youth – the movie with the hook-handed killer known as the “Fisherman.” Lo and behold, the tale began as an early-’70s novel. The novel has no “Fisherman.” It does have narcissistic teenagers in a hell of their own making, a hell of regret, of jealousy, and of fear. This is not a merciless book, but it is a deeply unsettling one.

Duncan was quite prolific, quite expert at writing this sort of thing. I’ve started reading another of her grim offerings, Down a Dark Hall.

(4) Children of Monsters: An Inquiry into the Sons and Daughters of Dictators, by Jay Nordlinger. Each chapter treats a different dictator and his offspring. Hitler – did he have children? Mussolini. Stalin. Mao. The Ceausescus. Castro. Gaddafi. Saddam Hussein. Mobutu. Bokassa. Amin. Pol Pot. It reads a little like Kings and Chronicles, especially when it covers the dynastic dictatorships (the Kims, the Duvaliers, the Assads). Though it’s wryly written, it’s still a bit of a chore to get through. The chapters are nevertheless worth reading in the given order, because they set the stage for one of the most compelling characters: Idi Amin’s son, Jaffar, who manages to be both a peace advocate and a “chip off the old block” (many dictators’ children have tended to be one or the other, but not both). With Jaffar it’s as if the psychological pieces almost fit together, and it’s poignant. (If only the dictators had been more like Jaffar, instead of, you know, murderers.)

Nordlinger has written a book which is “on the other side of the looking-glass” to this one. It’s about the recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. I intend to read it soon.

The fall holidays

Three immanent fall breaks:

• the high school’s (Fri. of next week, and then Sat., Sun., and Mon.);
• IUSB’s (Mon. and Tues. of next week);
• Bethel’s (tomorrow).

Yesterday’s Spanish session wasn’t very well attended, and so it went much better than usual. It may’ve been the best session I ever taught. (Afterward, the student in front of whom I tore my pants stayed awhile to tell me that my lecture was crystal-clear. She’s a very kind, encouraging student.)

I began the session by showing soccer replays. “Look at how rapidly the ball travels in the high altitude,” I said. I taught about the elevation of La Paz. Then I showed photos of that city. The students gasped. Then I told them about El Alto, La Paz’s suburb, which is even higher and more populous.

I continued lecturing about the soccer replays. “Here is Ecuador’s first goal. See Antonio Valencia’s perfect first touch. The player who ends up scoring the goal is Énner Valencia, who almost got arrested during the previous game for not paying his child support.

“Here is our tying goal, scored, near the end of the game, by the same player.”

“One question,” interjected an athlete in the back row. “Ronaldo or Messi?”

“Messi plays better,” I replied (to his disgust).

“Can we watch replays of the Cubs?” asked a skinny young man in the back row.

“No.”

Then I taught about the impersonal se (as in: se habla español en Bolivia) and about the se which disavows responsibility (se me olvidó la tarea). This was the most crystal-clear part of the lecture. I was very pleased with how well I taught that day.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The previous day, little Ziva’s uterus was removed. The surgery was completed by mid-afternoon, but Ziva was groggy all evening: her jumps were too low for their intended surfaces, and her head kept on bobbing sleepily.

Now her belly has a large, shaved patch where the surgery was performed.

Despite these ignominies, she recovers more of her strength every day.

Learn ’em up good

At last the dreary fall weather has arrived, which has put me into a very good mood. Also, my Spanish students – both groups, the Beginners and the Intermediates – have figured out that to get decent grades, they must memorize when to use the different verb tenses. And so their quiz scores are becoming more respectable.

For that matter, my command of Spanish grammar is becoming more respectable. I can now tell you what the pluscuamperfecto is. Before, I couldn’t have done so, though I would’ve had no trouble using that tense.

Having run out of episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit to watch (I’ve now seen most of them two or three times), I’ve been casting my net wider. Karin & I tried out and rejected CSI Miami. It was rather soulless. Last night, on YouTube, I watched an episode of the long-running German/Austrian/Swiss police-procedural show, Tatort. It was very good: it had some vacant buildings in it, and a lot of rain, and the detectives themselves were adequately weathered. But I realized that scenery and weather weren’t enough for me. I also needed to understand the dialogue. This particular episode had English subtitles, but I would need to learn German to view all of the 900+ episodes.

Quiz

The grammar quizzes that I write have been getting more and more ridiculous. This week’s quiz questions were about Condorito. Here is an excerpt (with the blanks already filled in):

Don Cuasi and doña Treme write a letter to their daughter, Yayita, to warn her about her rakish boyfriend. We’ve always been proud of you, daughter, they say; we expect that you haven’t hidden anything from us; we don’t believe that you’ve dissimulated. But we fear that Condorito has been playing us all for fools. Though he’s promised to lift weights every night, that lousy bird hasn’t been eating an adequate dosage of protein (meanwhile, every week, he has smoked). His arms have been turning thinner and weaker. We don’t believe that he’s been trying to do any exercise. … Love, Your Parents.

This passage is very strange, says Mary.

Well, that’s what happens when one must work from a very puny vocabulary list.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

For the second time since she moved in with us, Ziva is “in heat.” With one arm, she drags herself all over the carpet. Jasper is sometimes responsive to this, sometimes not, but never (so far as we can tell) *consummately* responsive. … Fortunately, Karin has scheduled an operation for Ziva, to take place a few weeks from now.

A conspicuous tear

A quick note to say that last week I was extremely busy teaching Spanish.

My favorite quiz answer so far: “A Melanie le gusta jugar el hammer y shotput.”

I wrote it on the board. “What’s wrong with this sentence?” I asked.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

At the college library, whilst I was talking to a student who’d come to my office hours, I leaned forward in my armchair to write on a piece of paper, and my pants loudly tore open from the back to the very front. I wasn’t super pleased about it. It must have been terrible for my poor student. … However, I carried on like a pro, teaching about syllabic stress. I wonder how well my student was able to concentrate on that lesson.

Let me record that of all the people with whom I’ve discussed this so far, Stephen has been the nicest. “I’m sorry that that happened, John-Paul,” he said.