The “51st state,” pt. 2

A message from my high school French teacher and gentle fellow blogger, Madame Lorrie:

Good evening, JP – I just read your recent post regarding our sovereign nation. Most Canadians are spitting angry at the US President. I am one of them. We are refusing to purchase goods made in the USA, even groceries, which makes for some creative shopping. Stores are responding and are sourcing fruits and vegetables from countries other than the US with great success. We will not be traveling to the US for the foreseeable future.

I do thank you for the link to the list of Canadian literature. I have read 18 of them, mostly the fiction works, in my CanLit courses and my French courses. Alligator Pie is a fun book that my grandchildren enjoy listening to. Lots of rollicking rhythm and pure silliness that makes us all giggle.

We will not be conquered!

Hope you and your family are doing well.

I really ought to set up a decent commenting function for this blog.

Madame always was the best commenter.

Bless Canada. And Panama, and Greenland (and Denmark).

P.S. And Gaza. And Ukraine.

I shudder to think what other places will be added to the list.

Euros

Congrats to Turkey – now Türkiye – and to Georgia for contesting the best match, so far, of these Euros. Thrilling stuff, especially the closing minutes.

Congrats to Romania. Congrats to Germany for rising from the dead. Anti-congrats to Ukraine, England, and (shudder) Scotland.

The French underwhelmed in their first match – except for N’Golo Kanté, now of the Saudi league, who returned to the national side after a two-year absence. He was astounding. I think he covered every square inch of grass. He made his excellent teammates, Rabiot and Camavinga, look ordinary.

If he keeps it up, he’ll be the tournament’s best player.

“But how does one stream all of this soccer, John-⁠Paul?”

Subscribe to ViX ($6.99/month); access:

• the Euros
• the Copa América (beginning Thursday)
• Argentina’s and Brazil’s World Cup home qualifiers
• the UEFA Champions League (fall, winter, spring)
• various domestic leagues (Mexican, Colombian, etc.)
• telenovelas
• telenovelas about soccer

Should you choose not to subscribe, there is some free content as well.

I am not being paid to recommend ViX.

I had an entertaining dream last night. As well as I can recall, it involved hostage-taking, jewel-thieving, and deportation to Texas under the witness protection program.

Safe return; tragedies; election; Baby Owen’s welcome

I’m back in South Bend, delighted to be with my own family and delighted by how delighted they are that I’m back.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The big news is the tragedy in Israel. As with the Ukrainian tragedy, I have nothing useful to say, and I’m reluctant even to share others’ links, although my Internet go-tos – friends and foes – have offered up plenty of material. I’m doing my utmost not to condemn Joe Blow on the street or in the pulpit for taking this or that stance, for confidently allocating blame.

The other news is that Daniel Noboa, Alvarito’s son, is Ecuador’s President-elect. The populists hounded the last President, a businessman, out of office. Now the people have elected another businessman to replace him.

Ecuador will play soccer against Colombia tomorrow.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

This is one of the better birth announcements I’ve seen.

Owen appears to be his parents’ fourth child. (I barely know these people, but all my memories of them are favorable.)

Behold the principle of diminishing returns.

Fantastic beasts

Here is an interesting note about the Ukrainian artist Maria Prymachenko. It says that her themes and artistic style, as well as her country’s circumstances, were similar to those of Pablo Picasso. (Picasso, it turns out, admired Prymachenko.)

Not an outlandish connection; but right now, I’m primed to associate Prymachenko’s art with Blake’s paintings of fantastic beasts.

(As I’ve mentioned here and here, the Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk has explicitly connected her own work with Blake’s.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

An update on our infestation:

Jasper has caught and killed three mud-room mice.

Ziva also has been hunting. She caught a mud-room mouse and brought it into the house. It ran away before she got around to killing it, though.

Since then, we haven’t seen any trace of that mouse. It probably didn’t survive long.

Karin found the hole in the mud-room through which the mice have been entering from the yard. We’ll put copper wool over the hole. That should keep them out.

On leave; personal limitations; quietism; body-text fonts, pt. 1: Cochin

The weather has turned, dramatically. Temperatures approach the sixties (F).

Karin has been on leave for two weeks:

0.5 weeks in the hospital;

1.5 weeks at home, in front of the TV (all of us, not just Karin), with the occasional visit to the doctor.

We are quite fattened up, due to well-wishers’ generous gifts of food – mainly, pastries and pasta – and our failure to exercise. Daniel, who has been jaundiced, is swallowing more milk now that his tongue-tie is severed.

Samuel loves Daniel. He is, if anything, too affectionate.

I have been reading about Russia’s war with Ukraine; and I’d begun to write about it, when I decided I have nothing of value to say about this distressing event. I daren’t even repeat which pundits’ remarks I’ve found interesting. (This is not meant as a comment on anyone who has been remarking on the war or relaying others’ remarks. It’s just a comment about myself.)

It’d be better if I only talked about what I had for lunch (meat loaf, potato salad, pie), or if I started a new, utterly trivial series of posts. “Body-text Fonts, with Samples from My Own Bookshelves.”

Yes, that’s more my speed. This month’s font is Cochin.