Singing along

The Proclaimers, singing:

“My heart was broken / My heart was broken / Sorrow / Sorrow …”

Samuel: “My heart isn’t broken.”

John-Paul: “Oh, no? Why not?”

Samuel: “Because I always follow the rules of the road.”

Some of his interpretations are rather literal.

(The Proclaimers are wearing good pants.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Samuel has finished reading the Babar omnibus and is halfway through Little House in the Big Woods (which I first read only last year). Some days, he reads more than the required amount. He has caught the fire. His abuelo pays him $2 per completion.

He’s a good little (mercenary) book reader, but he’s too hard on the spines.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Abel now stands.

Daniel sings along with my Spotify favorites. Most are wordless, so he has to sing the violin parts (for instance). He has a favorite Beethoven piece: the “Turkish March” from The Ruins of Athens. I’ve known it all my life but only just realized it was Beethoven’s.

Awakenings; parks; Seusses; Mitfords, pt. 6

Warm-ish temps; constant rain patter. There’s nothing quite like reading Beowulf on the sofa, then dozing off, then waking – gradually and painfully – to the 1⁠-2⁠-3 punch of Modern Talking’s “Geronimo’s Cadillac,” “Brother Louie,” and “Cheri, Cheri Lady.” (The other songs in the queue were more soothing.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Karin obtained a puzzle with “thumbnail” sketches of the U.S. National Parks. Samuel spent hours gazing at the sketches and deciding which parks to visit. He’s keen on the Channel Islands (California).

I rose in his esteem by telling him which parks I’ve been to or seen from afar:

Acadia

Arches

Bryce Canyon

the Gateway Arch, glimpsed from I⁠-⁠70

the Grand Canyon, glimpsed from aircraft

Joshua Tree

Kings Canyon

Olympic, viewed from Vancouver Island (as in this photo, but not from so high up)

Mt. Rainier, viewed from Seattle (and see, again, the photo taken from Vancouver Island; I didn’t see this mountain during my stay)

Sequoia

Zion

I promised to go with Samuel to the Indiana Dunes. Poor boy, he rarely leaves the house, let alone the city.

He and Karin put the puzzle together last night, and this morning Daniel tore it up.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

ThriftBooks had a Seuss sale, and I bought a few of the immoral, discontinued titles (they were in a single omnibus, hee, hee), as well as I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew, which I’d been haunted by but hadn’t looked at since age four. It didn’t disappoint. I still don’t know how it concludes, though, because Daniel keeps slamming it shut before we reach the end. But I can guess.

As for the immoral ones, I re-read Mulberry Street and found mentions of a Rajah riding an elephant and a Chinese man using chopsticks.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I finished The Pursuit of Love (1945), Nancy Mitford’s fifth and best-loved novel. At last, some contrition. Aristocrats celebrated … and punished: not for being aristocrats, but for making un-aristocratic marriages.

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.).

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.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

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.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

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.

Coincidence? I THINK NOT!

Yesterday, the postman delivered these things:

(1) The latest issue of Harper’s, with Ian Buruma’s cover story, “Doing the Work: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Wokeness”;

and

(2) Elmer Gantry.

Then, today, my old history teacher, J.H., posted on Facebook about the article and the novel.

Someone has been snooping in my mailbox. …

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Daniel has been sleeping in until 9:30 or 10:00 a.m. and still managing to nap in the afternoon (today, from 1:30 to 4:00).

He’s most active around midnight, i.e., my bedtime.

Tonight he catnapped; but now, at 11:00, he’s vigorously “rocking out,” alternating between his little rocking-chair and Moby, his little rocking-whale.

Samuel is in the basement. He’s listening to nature sounds on Spotify. His bedtime routine is less eccentric than Daniel’s, but he’s increasingly particular about which track or YouTube video I play for him. He repeatedly changes his mind. Sometimes I’d like to just surrender the remote to him, but that’d be to abdicate my parental duty, wouldn’t it?

Bedtime music, pt. 153; body-text fonts, pt. 13: Goudy Old Style

Samuel has been asking to listen to Michael Stearns on Spotify, in the basement, late at night.

He curls up in an armchair, wraps himself in a blanket, and goes to sleep.

It’s cute, but he is becoming a quite heavy sack of potatoes. I’d rather not make a habit of carrying him up the stairs to his bed.

Tonight, both children are extremely wild and violent.

Meanwhile, in Florida …

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

This is Goudy, one of the “diamond-dot” fonts (look at the semicolons, colons, periods, etc. – well, maybe you can’t tell from this screenshot).

It’s especially useful in tight spaces, e.g. in narrow columns or where there is little distance between successive lines of text. Harper’s Magazine, which has been set in Goudy for many years, has got the best-looking body text of the famous magazines, better-looking even than The New Yorker’s.

A free variant, available in the roman and italic styles – but not in boldface – is Sorts Mill Goudy.

January 6 rolls around again

Every time I go online, I see that another attempt has been made to elect the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives … but no candidate has obtained enough votes.

Wikipedia says:

It is the 128th U.S. speaker election since the office was created in 1789. … Of the fourteen prior speaker elections that took more than one ballot, thirteen occurred before the American Civil War. The 68th Congress in 1923 [one hundred years ago] was the last time it took more than one ballot to elect a speaker, and the 36th Congress in 1859 was the last time it took more than nine ballots to elect a speaker. The record number is 133 ballots during the 34th Congress in 1855.

As of this writing, there’ve been thirteen inconclusive ballots. Rep. McCarthy inches closer to victory, but he hasn’t won yet. He needs to bring four of his party’s holdouts over to his side.

I am noting this because the newswriters deem it significant, though I myself am not sure that it is, except for this obvious point, that the Republicans aren’t a big, happy family.

My most vocal Republican-leaning friend, a longtime Trump supporter, has switched his allegiance to DeSantis for the next presidential contest. I wish I lived in Florida, he says. He lives in South Carolina (a hotbed of liberalism, apparently). He’s sworn never to vote for Sen. Graham again. That Graham supported the omnibus bill was the last straw.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Poor Samuel was weeping in his room just now because Spotify was playing this song in my room.

Some music affects him very strongly.

Lots of pictures of Beethoven

When I wrote that Samuel’s been saying “Beethoven is so sleepy,” I didn’t realize he’d go on talking about Beethoven for days and days. When Samuel gets sad, he says, “Beethoven is so sad.” When he’s scared, he says, “Beethoven is so scared.” When he pulls my hair, he says, “Don’t pull Beethoven’s hair.”

Beethoven has become the all-purpose surrogate.

When Samuel wants breakfast, he says: “Let’s go to the kitchen, Beethoven.” “Have some candy corn, Beethoven.” (I’m not sure when we last had candy corn in the house. I think our supply was eaten by the mice.)

Really, what kid wouldn’t be obsessed with Beethoven. There’s the music, of course – Samuel’s favorite compilation is Beethoven for Babies – and then there’s this portrait that comes up on Spotify.

I wondered what Beethoven looked like in other pictures.

I found some.

Little boy Beethoven. Not so unlike Samuel.

Youthful Beethoven.

(These are from the chronological sequence on this webpage.)

Beethoven standing by a park bench.

Beethoven resembling Marcelo Bielsa.

Brooding Beethoven.

A bust of Beethoven: no doubt, the one on Schroeder’s piano.

This artist, Hadi Karimi, makes 3-D likenesses of famous people. Beethoven, appropriately, is a subject.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My school friend, Hoku, has brought his family for a visit, one county to the north of us. I’ll do my utmost to see him.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Now, some sadder news. Our congressional representative, Jackie Walorski, died in a car crash today. The South Bend Tribune published this report.

Beethoven is so sleepy

Sweltering heat this week. So, no mowing.

And then, much rain – especially, these last three days. So, again, no mowing; but the grass certainly has kept on growing.

Our neighbors mowed when the weather permitted. Alas, during those all-too-brief interludes, I was indisposed to mow. Everyone else’s lawns were made much tidier than our lawn. Today, one of our neighbors took it upon himself to mow our lawn – the front, but not the back.

I am actively reading at least seventeen books. How did I get into this mess.

As I type this, on my bed, Daniel performs his night-time ritual, which is to lie next to me, shrieking, until I am able to bring up Spotify and put on some nice Vangelis or Beethoven or Brian Eno. Then he rolls onto his side and brings his hand forward to touch my shirt. He sucks his pacifier and quickly goes to sleep.

In his crib, in the dark, Samuel comments: Beethoven is so tired. Beethoven is so sleepy.

Yes, he is.

Exotica

Bless Spotify, it helps me to find relics I never would have sought out on my own. It leads me from one style of old music to another style of old music.

These last weeks, I’ve been subjecting the household to heavy doses of mid-century exotica.

Yesterday’s find was Yma Sumac’s “Chuncho.” It caught my attention when I was several hours into Ritual of the Savage Album Radio.

This music is best listened to very, very late at night.

Much cover art in this genre is, shall we say, insensitive, in the manner of the Peter Pan song “What Makes the Red Man Red?”; but the music is without words. How un-PC is it to listen?

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

“Where are you going for your holiday?” asked one of my grad school professors one summer.

“I’m going home, to Ecuador,” I said.

“That’s right,” she said. “I heard that you were from somewhere, er, exotic.”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The review of this book stirs up other memories. Sixteen years ago, I took the author’s seminar on the topic (ancient epistemology). I read some of these chapters, along with related primary and secondary sources.

The sessions were grueling for this Greekless first-year student. Much time was spent staring at Greek words on the board and sometimes listening to, sometimes tuning out discussions of how to translate these words. (The classicists surely benefited more than did the philosophers who were taking the course to satisfy their distribution requirement.)

The procedure was necessary for covering the topic, and it was salutory for me to see it covered in this way. But I wish the professor had begun with a bald statement of her distinctive (“well-known”) interpretive approach and its problems, roughly what the review’s first paragraphs provide.

Graduate study is hard. There are ways to make it easier.

Or maybe the professor did give a bald statement of her approach, and I just don’t remember it or it went over my head. That’s certainly possible.

I remember our director of graduate studies – an epistemologist – telling me that the course would be easy because “it’s all just epistemology.” Yes, it’s all just epistemology, but that’s little comfort when it’s so complicated to maintain that ancient and 21st-century writers are trying to answer the same questions.

Another treadmill

Some church friends who no longer run indoors have given us their old, ornery treadmill. The motor has a mind of its own. It goes faster than I instruct it to do. Yesterday, I had to keep reducing the speed until the display said I was running ten-minute miles; but surely I was going much faster, and when I dismounted, I was so tired I almost collapsed. I have no such trouble when I exercise out of doors.

Still, I’m glad to have this contraption. What with Halloween, Thanksgiving, our COVID quarantine, and the cold, November was the first month since July of 2020 in which I gained rather than lost weight.

Some days, I’m within 15 lbs. of my final target. At least, I think I’m within 15 lbs.; like the treadmill’s display, our scales are inaccurate, probably because the floorboards in this house are not evenly laid out. Each day I must take different readings until I get the same reading several times. Never before, in my personal experience, has the mode of any series of measurements been a more useful average than the median or the mean. Live long enough, and everything happens to you at least once.

Never been overweight? Just wait. Never been overweight and then lost that weight? Just wait.

In the seventh or eighth grade, I wrote a story about a thin man who drinks some delicious chicken noodle soup, decides that his life has been lacking, turns into a glutton, and becomes hugely and famously fat. At the apex of his fame (and size), he stops liking chicken noodle soup. He ends up thinner than before. I was reading a lot of Ray Bradbury when I wrote this story.

Spotify has compiled the statistics of my usage in 2021. I listen to Spotify more hours than 97% of all subscribers. Money well spent. I listen to Vangelis more than all but 0.05% of Vangelis’s listeners. Vangelis is whom I often choose for Samuel’s napping-time.

World Cup updates; “I love you”; Benidorm; the reader

With just five matches to play, we’re dragging ourselves over the finish line. Last month, in Colombia, we did some heroic time-wasting to earn a 0–0 draw. Kudos to our savvy goalkeeper, Alexander Domínguez, for wasting ten or fifteen minutes during his goal kicks; and to the VAR officials for annulling Colombia’s last-minute goal.

Then, a few days ago, we eked out a 1–0 home victory against cellar-dwellers Venezuela. We were so poor, the result was downright inspiring.

(In fairness, many of our regular players weren’t available.)

Tomorrow night, we’ll play in Chile. The Chileans also have been poor. Even so, they’re on a three-game winning streak and have climbed to fourth place, four points behind us.

If we so much as draw this game, our position will be very strong.

Colombia and Uruguay, the other nearest contenders, also have been struggling.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The Troggs (on Spotify): “Wild thing, I think I love you.”

Samuel: “I love you.”

He doesn’t say it to his parents; he only repeats what he hears from the TV. When he first said “I love you,” he was repeating a sign-language lesson from Baby Einstein.

Tonight he said, “Love Benidorm.” He really does love Benidorm, the little weirdo.

I think he can read or at least recognize words he’s seen in his books. Today, he recognized the word “summer” when it appeared on the TV; and, yesterday, when the word “Texas” appeared on the TV, he said “taxi.” He’s been doing this for several months.

Music albums of the 2010s

Contrary to popular belief, 2020 is the last year of the 2010s, not the first year of the 2020s. (The first year of the Common Era was AD/CE 1, not AD/CE 0; the last year of the Common Era’s first decade was AD/CE 10.)

So: this is a good time to publish some rankings.

Tonight, I offer my five favorite music albums of the 2010s. Bear in mind, I’ve hardly listened to anything new since 2013 or 2014.

2016’s Wildflower was an exception. I just couldn’t keep away from the Avalanches’ first album in sixteen years. (I’ve yet to listen to We Will Always Love You, released this month.)

Without further ado, here are the top five:

1. Destroyer, Kaputt (2011)
2. Grimes, Visions (2012)
3. Daft Punk, Random Access Memories (2013)
4. The Avalanches, Wildflower (2016)
5. Kendrick Lamar, Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City (2012)

Nothing very unknown or surprising here.

It’s not that I don’t listen to music any more: this year, I’ve averaged two hours per day on Spotify. It’s that I’ve been going back, again and again, to the well, the well being Julee Cruise.

read more »

Stir-crazy, pt. 2

Happy Easter. A strange Easter. A cartoon in my Facebook feed shows Jesus emerging from the tomb, peering out from behind the stone; a police officer threatens to ticket Him lest He spread disease. (By this point, Jesus surely is immune; but who’s to say His R0 must be zero?)

We turn, increasingly, to the Internet, and it responds with some generosity. On YouTube, we watch sermons, and FIFATV makes available classic matches. Spotify now permits the streaming of these calming albums:

• Mylo, Destroy Rock & Roll;
• Ulrich Schnauss, Far Away Trains Passing By.

(Tonight, Samuel sleeps to Marvin Gaye and the bird and the bee.)

Old churchgoing ladies have mailed cards and money to us without our asking. Other people have brought food. One brought a bag of apples – which we seldom eat; Karin sauced them. Another person lent a rake for yard work. In the back yard, where I’ve yet to even set foot, twigs accumulate from the trees, and the grass grows after rainstorms. Then the weather cools again.

Beethoven at bedtime

Our flimsiest bookcase is in the bedroom. Should Mishawaka’s earth shake at night, I’ll be pummelled by the novels of Dorothy Sayers. Some of them – The Five Red Herrings, Have His Carcase, Gaudy Night – are rather large.

(Josephine Tey’s books also are on the highest shelf.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Less bulky but also forceful is Beethoven at Bedtime, which Karin & I play to lull Samuel to sleep. On a good night, he’ll lose consciousness by the third track, “Piano Concerto No. 5 in E Flat Major” (which I know from Picnic at Hanging Rock).

This evening, however, he protests through most of the album. Karin turns on the “mood” light. I know that trick, too, protests Samuel, and he bleats all the louder.

And then something appears hilarious to him. He laughs and laughs.

Finally, he sleeps to Joe Baker’s Sound of Summer Rain.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I continue to apply for work (usually after Samuel has gone to sleep). My current effort is directed toward a college in Nevada. The campus has three regular faculty and twenty adjunct lecturers. Onsite teaching is done after hours in a high school building. I would be delighted to get this job.

Stir-crazy

We had our first visitors in a while: Edoarda & Stephen, who brought furniture for our basement. Of course, they didn’t stay long.

We had a brief visit, last week, from my Aunt Sally & Uncle Tim, who brought diapers and towelettes. Also, a church friend brought groceries, but he quietly set them on our porch and went away.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Karin goes to her office but rarely sees clients. She staffs the drive-thru and answers phone calls.

Excepting my brief hospitalization, it’s been longer than two weeks since I last went out beyond our driveway. I haven’t done so at all in the daytime.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Now is the time to turn one’s thoughts inward, to reflect that all the furniture of the universe is contained in the basement of the mind.

For Spotify subscribers who listen to the Orb:

Previously inaccessible tracks of The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld –

• “Little Fluffy Clouds”;
• “Outlands”;
• “Star 6 & 7 8 9”;

and

• “A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain that Rules from the Centre of the Ultraworld”

– are now accesible.

Mother’s Day

7:00am: I’m awake after a night’s sleep of three hours. At my first stirring, Young Chirpie Chirpington (Jasper) becomes hyper-alert and paces back and forth upon my body. He emits high-pitched noises.

Son, must you chirp so? Have you no dignity?

Ziva, the shyer one, merely pokes at my feet with her claws.

This is why it’s better for Karin to awaken first.

Zzz …

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

9:30am: One more hour of sleep, and then it’s off to our new church (we switched churches a few months ago). In Sunday School, the adults are slowly reading through 2 Timothy. As always, Paul is concerned that there shouldn’t be division among the believers, or useless arguing.

One woman suggests that there’s more useless arguing today than there was in Paul’s time – or even than when she was young. Today, people argue about things like politics. Or gender. Or the weather.

The weather? Karin & I are doubtful. Isn’t that one of the few safe subjects?

(Later, Karin’s mom suggests that the woman meant global warming.)

During the worship period, Karin & I watch over the nursery. (Due to Mother’s Day, the regular nursery worker is in the service.) This nursery has comfortable rocking chairs and a TV. Karin plays with the two small children while I download music from Spotify onto my phone.

We also view a part of Dumbo. As a Mother’s Day movie, Dumbo is appropriate, if sad.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

12:30pm: Surprisingly, it takes the better part of an hour to drive from church to Karin’s mom’s house. First we’re detained in an especially slow lane of traffic. Then we’re detained at a railroad crossing.

Calm down, Sweetie, I encourage Karin. Enjoy this nice, long, live version of “The Man-Machine” that I just downloaded.

Karin is not appeased.

1:30pm: We arrive at Karin’s mom’s house. The women sort through old photographs. I sleep on the couch.

3:30pm: We arrive at home. Karin sleeps in our bed. I sit in an armchair and try to write, but mostly I alternate between sleeping and sneezing (the night’s short rest has made me vulnerable to drafts).

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Tomorrow morning, it’s back to the office at IUSB.

Happy Mother’s Day, my dear Mom.

My fellow tutors; Spotify; Agatha Christie; the Cloth

Today my fellow IUSB tutors were whining about their classmates. Fortunately, Ana & David had gifted Spotify to me, and I’d brought earbuds. Soon I was enjoying sweet respite:

On the day I was born,
The nurses all gathered ’round,
And they gazed in wide wonder
At the joy they had found.
The head nurse spoke up,
Said, “Leave this one alone!”
She could tell right away
That I was bad to the bone.

Then one of the tutors picked up The Secret of Chimneys and made as if to read it. I almost jumped out of my chair. Should I say something? Probably not.

“I was just thinking about that very book!” I said, removing one earbud. “Just now, while walking to work! What an amazing coincidence!”

“I’m reading my way through Agatha Christie,” she said.

“That book is good, but the sequel is really good!” I said. (The sequel is The Seven Dials Mystery.)

“I like this one,” she replied. “It’s one of her earlier works.”

“She wrote, like, a million books,” put in the other tutor. “Have you seen the episode of Doctor Who that has Agatha Christie in it?”

The tutor who was reading Chimneys responded approvingly. Their conversation was thus rekindled. I put my earbud back in. I blamed myself for this turn of events.

“She wrote all her books upon a typewriter,” said the tutor who wasn’t reading Chimneys. (That was the final tidbit that reached me.)

As I again listened to “Bad to the Bone,” my thoughts returned to the possibility of becoming a chaplain. The other day I was on a university website, looking at faculty and staff vacancies, and one of them was for University Chaplain. It struck me that, as an educated, faith-filled person, I could meet most of the qualifications for the job. (I’d just need to get a Master of Divinity degree first.) Another Internet search revealed that there is quite a demand for chaplains.

I recalled that one of my own cousins had been thinking of becoming a chaplain. I, personally, had never much considered taking up the Cloth, but in these hard times, one must be willing to do all sorts of things.

A while ago, I said to Karin, “What if I were to become a minister?” (I’d been reading Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope.)

“No!” she said. She didn’t relish the prospect of becoming a minister’s wife.

“What if,” I said, “I did it as a joint venture with another minister who has a wife? She could do your duties. And the other minister and I could take turns at the pulpit – one week, he’d preach the Sermon, and the next, I’d preach the Refutation.”

Karin didn’t think much of this plan, either.