Pacho vs. Piero

Happy birthday to Mary.

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Some old-ish news:

For the second straight year, an Ecuadorian will win the UEFA Champions League. Paris Saint-Germain (the holders) and Arsenal will contest the final. Willian Pacho plays for PSG, and Piero Hincapié plays for Arsenal.

Both play for the national team, and they used to be teammates at Independiente del Valle.

I don’t care which club wins the Champions League. Arsenal once were purists; now they’re pragmatists. PSG are delightful to watch, but one can muster only so much enthusiasm for a propaganda arm of the Qatari state.

What about the players? Should I cheer more for Pacho or for Piero? Pacho won last year, and Piero hasn’t won. (Advantage: Piero.) But Pacho is likelier to play more minutes. (Advantage: Pacho.)

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Recent news:

CR7’s club failed to clinch the Saudi league title because of this very late “own” goal:

Body-text fonts, pt. 48: Simoncini Garamond

Perhaps my favorite Garamond. The happy average of Garamonds “Monotype” and “ITC”: not too twiggy, not too fat. Spiky serifs; short descenders.

Sample 1: Mary Westmacott, i.e. Agatha Christie, Absent in the Spring (in an omnibus):

Sample 2: Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickle and Dimed:

If that doesn’t excite you, I don’t know what would.

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Happy Paw Patrol-themed birthday, yesterday, to Daniel. We invited his cousins to help him to empty his piñata.

It has become customary among our families to offer a piñata whenever a child turns a year older. Our boys had accumulated enough candy to fill a kitchen cabinet. So, we recycled as much of it as we could into yesterday’s piñata.

We told the other parents to put their children’s gleanings into the next piñata, then into the next one, and so on.

Happy birthday to Abel

He turned one. He slept most of the day because the doctor gave him five shots.

More appealing, if less vital, were these gifts:

Cupcakes.

Onesies (i.e., bodysuits).

Wagon, Radio Flyer, plastic, small. For giving rides to stuffed animals. (Did I mention he walks now?)

Dog, white with black spots, plastic, noise-making, profoundly disturbing to Samuel.

Literature: Fortunately, by Remy Charlip. Not really meant for Abel’s age-group (he doesn’t object). Amusing to Samuel. Mildly disturbing to Daniel. Both reactions are correct.

Most of these gifts were from Karin’s dad’s family.

Abel was to have had a little party at my parents’ house, but my mom slipped on some ice and broke her arm. She’ll have surgery later this week. Last night, when I called, she was in high spirits: adequately drugged, surrounded by other progeny.

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Here is another quote about the postman Courtney Elliot, from The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole:

Courtney Elliot has offered to give me private tuition for my “O” levels. It seems he is a Doctor of Philosophy who left academic life after a quarrel in a university common room about the allocation of new chairs. Apparently he was promised a chair and didn’t get it.

It seems a trivial thing to leave a good job for. After all, one chair is very much like another. But then I am an existentialist to whom nothing really matters.

I don’t care which chair I sit in.

I don’t think I would leave a university if I didn’t get a Chair, but I might if I didn’t get a chair. Some intellectuals (e.g., Victor Hugo, Sam the Architect) stand before a desk to work, but I’m not so vigorous as to do that.

Not just any chair would do. I would need a sofa, or at least an armchair from Goodwill.

Birthday bots

From the New York Times:

“Seattle Reign’s Laura Harvey Says ChatGPT Inspired NWSL [National Women’s Soccer League] Tactics: ‘It Said Play a Back Five, So I Did’”

Arise, analog sportsmen! Defeat your tablet-toting foes! Remember Clint Eastwood! (You know, from Trouble with the Curve.)

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From the Division of Alumni Affairs and Development (at Cornell):

Make a birthday wish, John-Paul! The Clocktower would chime just for you if it could! On your special day, we’re sending you heartfelt wishes from the Hill. Here’s to another amazing year ahead!

*Update your info*

*Stay connected*

I got this more circumspect greeting, too:

We would like to wish you a Happy Birthday from the employees at the South Bend Clinic Pharmacy.

Sadly, I received no messages from fast food restaurants urging me to claim birthday rewards. (Those, I appreciate.)

What the bots didn’t know was that I’d been waiting for this birthday all my life. When I was very young, my favorite number was four. I liked forty-four even better. (Liking something better than one’s favorite thing is a heady concept, like infinity plus one.) I wanted to weigh forty-four pounds; and when I did, I stayed at that weight as long as I could. I couldn’t wait to turn forty-four years old.

Well, yesterday, I did. My dream has come true.

Scotland 3, Greece 1

I post this effusively-narrated goal in honor of a favorite movie of Karin’s that we saw this weekend (after a wedding, no less): So I Married an Axe Murderer (1992).

Roger Ebert calls it

a mediocre movie with a good one trapped inside. … The good movie involves a droll and eccentric Scottish-American family whose household embraces more of the trappings of Scottishness than your average Glasgow souvenir shop.

“I don’t know if a market exists for feature-length Scots-bashing,” Ebert continues, “but the domestic scenes … had me laughing out loud.”

Not me. I guess the times have changed. What I kept thinking was, more should have been made of the parallels with Chabrol’s Le boucher.

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I wrote an entry called “Gastrointestinal Woes” and read it to Karin. She didn’t veto it, exactly, but her evident discomfort persuaded me to excise most of it.

This paragraph remains. (TRIGGER WARNING !!!)

Karin’s mom gave Samuel a “sensory” swivel chair for his birthday. (A chair like this one – a cheaper one, maybe.) Samuel named it “Mr. Spinner.” He and Daniel had great fun spinning in it until Daniel puked up his breakfast Pop-Tart. I heard the howling and saw the mess and thought it was blood until I noticed the sprinkles.

The excised bits were much worse.

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.

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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?

The inner ring

It seems these days I have to read the New York Post for good news.

“Woman Rushed to Hospital with Appendicitis, Gets Shock of Her Life: ‘He Just Came Out of Nowhere’”

(She had a baby.)

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My kindergartener is trendier than I am.

At the library, Samuel started singing “Soda Pop” from Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters, and some middle schoolers joined in. Glances of mutual recognition passed between Samuel and the middle schoolers.

It was suddenly clear that I was “out” and they were “in.” It evoked a feeling described in C. S. Lewis’s “The Inner Ring” (which I happened to be reading).

I didn’t mind being “out,” but it was all too gratifying to see my child “in” with his betters.

He doesn’t care about being “out” or “in.” He just likes having friends.

He checked out this book because the girl on the jacket reminded him of a friend.

Karin met other friends of Samuel’s today. She took time off from work and joined his class on a field trip.

“It’s my mom!” Samuel told everyone. “And it’s her birthday!”

Happy birthday, Love.

Dandelions, again (redux)

I mowed on Saturday. The next morning, when we left for church, the dandelion stems already had perked up.

They were taller at lunchtime. By the day’s end, they were “in flower.”

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Happy birthday to Mary, my sister.

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This year, I’m reading all of Jane Austen’s novels: one chapter each day. It’s almost like reading a daily comic strip, the dosage is so small.

First novel: Sense & Sensibility. Poor, decrepit Colonel Brandon, on “the wrong side of thirty-five.” (Oh, to be thirty-five again.)

Good-night.

My take

Who do you want?

Barabbas!

(24 Hour Party People)

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Happy birthday, yesterday, to me. I watched Liverpool torch Leverkusen. Guy Fawkes fireworks exploded all game long. People like that sort of thing, you know?

My mother was unwell but still brought me a cake.

The weather was how I prefer it. At night, I put on I Know Where I’m Going! for more of the same. The boys wouldn’t let me finish it.

Happy birthday to Samuel

He turns five tomorrow. Quite a ritual awaits him at school. He’s to carry a globe around the classroom five times while his teacher and classmates sing to him and eat granola bars. Photos of his short life will be displayed.

Karin & I worry about the singing, which Samuel doesn’t always take to; but we’ve drilled the expectation into him, and he bears it stoically.

He now seems to like school. He was downright excited at the bus stop this morning after what must have been a too-long Fall Break.

(The driver took the wrong street but quickly turned around and came back for Samuel.)

He’s losing various perks: the WIC vegetables, the books from Dolly Parton, the visits from privately funded social workers. But he wouldn’t eat the vegetables, anyway; and he continues to peruse the books that arrive for Daniel.

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I ought to mention, today I saw one of the brightest “firework displays” of my lifetime: Madrid’s and Dortmund’s rehash of last season’s Champions League final. I have no love for Madrid, but my goodness, what talent, what tremendous self-belief. Pedigree is real.

My (cat) lady love

Happy birthday to Karin. I found an age-appropriate gift at Goodwill: a volume of James Herriot’s Cat Stories (large-print).

We celebrated at a Mexican ice-cream shop. Nachos, jalapeños, elotes, tortas, paletas, and ice-cream, washed down with mineral water: What could be better?

The shop’s Instagram page has a photo of ice-cream with spicy Cheetos in it.

Celtic 4, Chelsea 1

I’m sunburnt because yesterday I attended the pre-season “friendly” between these clubs, at Notre Dame Stadium. Chelsea’s fans came in droves; Celtic’s, who were fewer, cheered better. The Chelsea faithful commenced their exodus after Celtic’s fourth goal.

Martin watched Cameron Carter-Vickers, his compatriot, perform flawlessly for Celtic.

David’s aunt- and uncle-in-law, who’ve been visiting from Honduras, saw their compatriot, Luis Palma, score Celtic’s third goal.

Kasper Schmeichel was Celtic’s best performer. As for Chelsea, Raheem Stirling, of all people, was the brightest spark. He fizzled out ten minutes after coming on.

David, Stephen, and I had hoped to see Moisés Caicedo, but he was absent. So were Cucurella, Fernández, Palmer, and others. Trevoh Chalobah, whom I consider the club’s best defender, is in the doghouse and didn’t make the trip.

I know it’s the preseason and teams aren’t giving it their all, but this was the first time I’d seen players look worse live than on TV.

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I also have terrible heartburn today. I ate serving after serving of chili at my niece Belladonna’s birthday party. She is two. She is a winsome little thing.

Copa América

Biden and Trump are debating, but I’m watching Bolivia vs. Uruguay.

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Uruguay and Argentina are the cream of this tournament and should reach the final. I’d say that apart from them, only the Colombians have much of a chance (but I’d be speculating, since I missed their opening game).

By “much of a chance,” I mean about three percent.

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Among the also-rans, several teams have had matches spoiled by red cards: Ecuador, Peru, and the USA.

I’m a modest person … I don’t like to gloat … but Ecuador’s red card was the least stupid of the three.

A Panamanian also was red-carded; but his punishment came late in the game, and it was for a proper, honest-to-goodness patada.

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Happy birthday to my dear friend, Grace, the Salvationist.

Today also is the fifth anniversary of my dissertation defense. (I just pulled that volume off the shelf. For a double-spaced work, the typesetting really is aquittable.)

It must also be the fifth anniversary of my last meeting with Dick Miller and Nick Sturgeon. 🥺

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R.I.P. Kinky Friedman, the Jewish Texan who wrote hilarious murder mysteries, set in Manhattan, in which he cast himself and his friends as detectives. (This description barely scratches Friedman’s surface.) I learned about him during the first lecture of my first college U.S. history class. I have no idea why he was mentioned, beyond the obvious fact that he was too important to omit.

More dead philosophers

Two lovely parties this weekend: one, yesterday, for the seventieth wedding anniversary of Dorothy & Gene, from church; and another, today, for the first birthday of my niece, Penelope.

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Two more philosophers have died: Daniel Dennett and Charles Parsons.

There have been several remarks along these lines: Dennett was one of the greatest recent philosophers. I don’t agree, but he was a wonderfully lively writer. He was … opinionated. This is from the first page I looked at, in the preface of the new (2015) edition of Elbow Room:

The varieties of free will worth wanting, the varieties that underwrite moral and artistic responsibility, are not only not threatened by advances in (neuro-)science; they are distinguished, explained, and justified in detail [in the book]. There are other readily definable varieties of free will that are incompatible with what we now know about how human beings control their behavior, such as “libertarian freedom” or “agent causation.” They don’t, and can’t, exist, but although some philosophers still take them seriously, they are of only historical interest, like mermaids and leprechauns.

Now that’s confidence. (Is there much historical interest in leprechauns?)

I don’t know if Parsons was unconfident, but he was no Dennett; lecturing, he’d pause mid-sentence for minutes … then carry on. (Brilliantly, it’s said.)

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Robert Adams advised the dissertation of one of my dissertation examiners (Derk). My recent browsing of Adams’s work inspired me to find out more about my other examiners’ advisers. Nick’s was the formidable Gilbert Harman; I don’t plan to write about him tonight. Dick’s adviser was Rogers Albritton. Now here was a unicorn – a philosopher so great, he barely published; whose few publications read like spillage from a sloshing cauldron of rich, still-brewing philosophy soup ( fanesca, perhaps); whose notebooks have been mined for posthumous publication. (Cf. two interesting obituaries, here and here.)

By the way, there will be a memorial conference for Dick this Saturday. I wish I could attend: to honor and learn more about Dick, and to see my Salvationist friend, Yvonne, Frank’s widow, whose health is failing.

Back to the WIC doctor’s

… went the children yesterday. Daniel is in the 99th percentile, height-wise, and Samuel is in the 42nd; when he was Daniel’s age, he was in the 5th or 8th or thereabouts, so he is coming up nicely. We collected our WIC points and, to celebrate, bought McGriddles and hash browns (not with WIC points). Later my parents came over for Daniel’s birthday, and we ate burgers and chocolate cake. Daniel received cards, motorcars, dinosaurs, and books; Samuel, whose birthday it wasn’t, received a road map of Kentucky. And The Hobbit. Today I scolded him for coloring over Tolkien’s maps.

Samuel’s Hobbit is a gift for me, in a way, because I get nervous whenever he pulls my Hobbit off the shelf, which he started doing after he watched the cartoon starring John Huston and Orson Bean. I bought myself an extra Hobbit, too, just in case.

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“Indiana Bill Threatens Faculty Members Who Don’t Provide ‘Intellectual Diversity’ ” (Inside Higher Ed).

Ours is the latest state to have its universities meddled with.

In John Williams’s novel, Stoner (1965), a young academic ruminates with two colleagues about the purpose of the University:

“And so providence, or society, or fate, or whatever name you want to give it, has created this hovel for us, so that we can go in out of the storm. It’s for us that the University exists, for the dispossessed of the world; not for the students, not for the selfless pursuit of knowledge, not for any of the reasons that you hear. We give out the reasons, and we let a few of the ordinary ones in, those that would do in the world; but that’s just protective coloration. Like the church in the Middle Ages, which didn’t give a damn about the laity or even about God, we have our pretenses in order to survive. And we shall survive – because we have to.”

The speech is recalled later in the book:

“Gordon, do you remember something Dave Masters said once?”

Finch raised his brows in puzzlement. “Why do you bring Dave Masters up?”

Stoner looked across the room, out of the window, trying to remember. “The three of us were together, and he said – something about the University being an asylum, a refuge from the world, for the dispossessed, the crippled. But he didn’t mean Walker. Dave would have thought of Walker as – as the world. And we can’t let him in. For if we do, we become like the world, just as unreal, just as … The only hope we have is to keep him out.”

Is it a good idea to sponsor a refuge for brainy misfits? Maybe; maybe not. But force it to look like the world, and it’s no longer a refuge from the world; it’s no longer a university. It’s just another department of the world, doing the same things the world does (but issuing lots of publications). Which makes it redundant, inefficient, and certainly not worth paying for, doesn’t it? I see what you’re really up to, GOP.

Another one bites the dust; Daniel’s birthweek, pt. 2

Why haven’t I seen videos of the great Jenna Marbles in a long time?

Ah. (Wikipedia)

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For his birthday, we decided to encourage Daniel in his new interest: astronomy. We bought him a moon. Actually, it’s a spherical polyester dog toy.

It has a happy face and lots of craters. What more could you ask of a moon?

Daniel keeps saying it’s a fish.

Karin’s tender heart

I am James John
I have my helmet on

One more of Samuel’s imaginary people.

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Happy birthday to my grandpa. He is ninety-six. We went to his house for cake and ice cream.

Upon our return, a friendly kitten greeted us on our lawn. Then, while Karin & I were moving the children from the car to the house, I realized that the kitten, too, had ventured indoors.

Kudos to Jasper & Ziva for not attacking it.

Karin picked up the kitten and cradled it for a bit. I made her put it back outside.

The beastie was very calm with us. I think it’s used to people; it probably belongs to some neighbor. I suspect we’ll see it again. Karin left it some food.

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I may start keeping track of scholarly articles and monographs that acknowledge or are dedicated to me. The number is greater than you’d think. Quite a few mention audiences at Cornell University; I may not have said anything to the philosophers who gave those talks, but I was a member of those audiences.

Today I saw this especially pertinent dedication in Eric Olson’s book, The Human Animal: “To the unemployed philosophers.”

Racing; gift-getting

A colleague of Karin’s gave our boys a small, looped racetrack and two battery-powered racecars that look like dinosaur heads. Samuel and Daniel have been fighting over this wonderful gift most of the day. Mercifully, Daniel napped, so Samuel got a long turn by himself, and then I took Samuel to the grocery store and the library, so Daniel got a long turn by himself. Now they’re both playing with the racetrack again. I was going to write that they’ve gotten along better in the evening, but Samuel just shoved Daniel in the face.

“What a beautiful race,” Samuel keeps saying as he watches the dino-head cars tailgate each other around the track.

Each car occupies the full width of the track. So, no passing (or, as they aptly call it in Australia, overtaking).

“I feel this race is rigged,” says Karin.

But occasionally Daniel will pick up one of the cars, waltz around the room, and put the car back down in a random position on the track. So, this race is a bit like Snakes and Ladders.

I forgot to mention, last time, that I turned forty-two, and my parents had me over to eat baked chicken, which is my mother’s specialty (or has been since she found the recipe on the Internet a few months ago). I have been asking people to buy me fonts (which they won’t do) or used bookcases (which they promise to keep their eyes peeled for). My parents brought over a nice bookcase yesterday and I’ve filled it with overflow from other bookcases. I could use at least one more. My mother-in-law sent a birthday greeting by email, remarking on the fine, sunny weather; but I prefer gloom, and anyway it was the wrong day. I sent her a brief thank-you and a thumbs-up.

A day at the “farm”

Last night, Daniel outgrew his crib.

For several hours today we trudged through a corn maze. The boys walked most of the time (Daniel was attached to a leash). Advice: Don’t try to walk small children through a corn maze unless you know the way out.

After we found the exit, we encouraged the boys to bounce upon a large, inflated cushion. Then we encouraged them to roll around with other youngsters in a pit filled with uncooked kernels of corn.

We stood in a long line and eventually bought donuts. While Daniel was eating his, he plucked a wasp off the picnic table and tried to eat it; now, his lip is swollen.

I would be remiss not to mention my other precious child, Samuel, whose birthday is tomorrow. He’ll turn four. I remember my own fourth birthday. I suppose that for better or worse, a lot is now happening to Samuel that he’ll remember for the rest of his life.

Sammy, did you like the farm?

Oh, yes.

Would you like to go again next year?

No.

Birthdays; mischief; the Fruit of the Spirit; a word association; a walk; a rogue motorcar

Happy birthday to Karin; to my sister-in-law, Ana; and, apparently, to quite a few of my acquaintances.

Here’s an old photo of Karin and her dad.

My parents baked Karin a cake. Daniel got it all over himself, and we had to toss him into the bath.

We asked Samuel if he wanted to bathe; he demurred. Later – too late – he apprehended that we were respecting his stated wishes, that we in fact didn’t intend to bathe him. He grabbed some fistfuls of cake and judiciously applied them. So we bathed him after all.

Daniel, whom we’d dried and partly dressed, climbed into the water again.

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This morning, I was urging Samuel to be patient, which got him onto his favorite Sunday School topic – the Fruit of the Spirit – and so we read from Galatians 5, which also mentions walking along with (beside, behind, in step with) the Spirit; which made Samuel impatient to take a physical walk; which we did take, along the perimeter of the nearby school. We observed the physical education students riding bicycles upon the running track. I never got to ride a bicycle in P.E. in my day. … Even stranger, a few yards ahead of us, a car casually drove over the grass and mounted the sidewalk and ambled behind the tennis courts and into a parking lot. I could hardly believe I’d seen this, but I checked the grass, and the tracks were there. What was so strange was the nonchalance of it, as if it were a familiar route for that car.