Toronto Trip

So I took the kids out of the country by myself last week, because J was gone on vacation and if you’re going to do something interesting with your boys why not do something REALLY interesting?

And it went fine. They are good kids, and Canada is a relentlessly polite and welcoming place. Also, people go out of their way to help a Dad who’s alone with his little ones. I don’t think I had to open a single door for myself. It almost didn’t happen at all, though.

I (very fortunately) thought we ought to do some advance packing on Saturday morning, and it was at that point that I noticed my passport wasn’t where I thought it would be. (In the pencil organizer on the library shelves.) Wasn’t that odd? It wasn’t in the lockbox either, or in a trumpet case in the basement. Or in a jacket pocket. J thought that maybe she’d seen it on my nightstand up in our bedroom. I explained to the boys how important it was that we find my passport, and Owen thought that he’d seen Felix playing with it. The same Felix that likes to throw things away. (True story: Yesterday Felix emptied two large bins of dried fruits, spices, and other kitchen items into the trash can. Everything was saved. That we know of)

A few panicked hours later (including a call to the State Department that fortunately did not go through) I found it behind some Latin books one shelf down from where I thought it ought to be. (From now on I’m just going to keep it in the lockbox.)

So, with a valid passport and three original birth certificates, we started driving to Toronto. The boys naturally had lots of questions. How long would it take us to get there? Would it be as long as driving to Pennsylvania? Would there be snacks along the way? At what point in the journey would we see the Eiffel Tower?

We had beautiful weather on the way out, and the boys particularly enjoyed going over the Grand Island bridges. Owen’s allergies were acting up, and he did tell us all (in a tragic voice) that his nose was so stuffy that he wouldn’t feel better until his life was over. As we came up to the Canadian border I explained how we were just about to enter into a foreign country. James contradicted this statement and assured me that Canada was a state. It was the top state on his map. We had a talk.

We also had a talk about how some of the road signs would be in French, and how they might hear people speaking French and even need to say “bonjour” or “merci” themselves. They practiced saying “bonjour,” “merci,” “s’il vous plait,” and “au revoir.” Owen couldn’t do it without adding “stupid” on the end. James was fascinated by the idea that some people spoke French all the time. Also, I don’t think that he believes that English is an actual language.

Owen spotted the Eiffel Tower (for the first of many times) just outside Niagara Falls.

The border crossing went smoothly, and we began to talk about what they might expect once we arrived at the ROM. (Royal Ontario Museum) Owen assured James that “it’s okay if we touch just one dinosaur skeleton. It won’t hurt anything if we just touch one.”

“No Owen, that isn’t okay. You absolutely must not touch any of the dinosaur skeletons.”

“Yeah, but they have lots of dinosaur skeletons, so it is okay if we just touch one.”

“NO, OWEN. Not even one.”

<inaudible whispers to James>

We drove by the CN tower, got stuck in a traffic snarl, and eventually parked in the basement of a luxury condo complex. (There was a Whole Foods in the basement.) I unpacked the kids, loaded Felix into the stroller, and wheeled them into the lobby. Then I realized that we were supposed to take our parking ticket with us, so we went back to the van. I got our ticket out of the van and we went back to the lobby. I checked Felix’s strap and realized he was soaking wet. So we went back to the van again, feeling slightly nervous about how I’d only packed him one extra outfit for the trip.

And THEN we were on our way.

The kids did great in the big city traffic. They held onto the stroller at crosswalks, watched out for pedestrians, and were polite to everyone we met. James helped me carry things, and Owen kept an eye out for the Eiffel Tower. (“Owen, that’s in Paris. It’s on another continent.) (“No, I see it!”)

The fossil exhibit at the ROM really was spectacular. They have some big sauropods, an enormous pterodactyl, an allosaurus, a stegosaurus, a triceratops, and, of course, a T-Rex. I’ve brushed up on a lot of dinosaur height and weight statistics over the past few years and it still doesn’t really prepare you for how big those things are up close. We also got to see a mammoth skeleton and (to James’ delight) a sabre-tooth tiger.

There’s plenty to see at the ROM besides dinosaurs, of course. There were fantastic exhibitions from Greece, Rome, and Egypt, and Felix made sure that I didn’t get to really look at any of it. (I took him out of the stroller after we passed through the dinosaurs, and from that point on he just wanted to push his George around in the stroller as fast as I’d let him. He was, however, into the dinosaurs. He made continuous roaring/growling noises throughout the whole display.)

Owen was decidedly not a fan of the Ancient Egypt section. He was scared out of his mind of the mummies (which he called “mommies”) and had a lot of questions about what would happen if they came out their “chrysalis.” He was a bigger fan, though, of Ancient Greece. He found two amphora lids with striped patterns and declared that they were pieces for checkers.

The worst moment of the trip, behaviorally, came when we stopped in the museum cafe for a coffee. I told the boys they could pick something out to eat, but that we were going to be sharing. I think they would have been fine if they’d each got their own treat. Instead, we got two treats--a donut that James picked out and a piece of tiramisu that Owen chose. They were like animals. I tried cutting off some bites for Felix, and when I turned around Owen was leaning over the table trying to stuff the entire plate of cake into his mouth with his hands. James wasn’t much better. But he didn’t, like Owen, wander off to grab a napkin and then sneeze in a stranger’s face.

Felix, for the whole trip, was completely uninterested in food. I think he was just distracted. He had a couple bites of cake, but then just people watched and pointed out all the babies that he could see.

We made one more pass through the dinosaur section and then walked back to our car to head over “to the hotel we’re going to live in.” This, for the boys, was the real highlight of the trip. We got ourselves parked, Owen got an arm trapped between two automatic glass doors, and then we made our way up to check in. I negotiated down the parking rate (parking is expensive in Toronto), and then we took the elevator up to our very own double bed room, which smelled slightly of damp carpet.

James and Owen took the beds, I brought the pack and play up for Felix, and I slept on the floor in a sleeping bag. I figured this would be the simplest way to get everyone a decent night’s sleep. Within minutes their stuff was absolutely everywhere.

James had brought a miniature library of books about the Titanic and a couple of stuffed animals. Owen basically packed as many stuffed animals as he could fit into his backpack. James arranged his bed just so. Owen immediately was making acrobatic leaps from one bed to another. James objected every time he landed on “his” bed and messed up the covers. Felix just wanted a bottle. (I brought a quart of milk in a refrigerated pack and refilled plastic bags from the vending machines every 12 hours to give him bottles. We heated them up by running the coffee maker over the bottle without any grounds in it)

“We’re not going to nap,” I said “but I think we ought to have 30 minutes of quiet time before we do anything else.”

“Like swimming?”

“Yes, I need a little quiet time before we got swimming.”

TV on. Instant quiet time. They watched about 10 minutes of Star Wars. Fun fact, if you turn on Star Wars to the part where Luke and Han find out that Leia is on the Death Star you get to see about 10 seconds of Darth Vader, but all he does is stand in a hallway and look confused for a minute. James thought it was great and wanted to keep on watching. Felix and Owen both stood as close to the TV as they could without actually falling into it.

After I’d figured out how to get onto the hotel wireless (a big deal, since my phone was on airplane mode ever since the border) and checked in with J, I started changing them into swim trunks. We took an elevator down to the second floor, and Felix (who over the course of the day had been in an elevator about 12 times) did what he’d done on every trip: As soon as he felt it starting to move he ran over to me and buried his head in my legs, clutching my knees as tightly as he could. Except this time he confused me with the cleaning lady who we were sharing the lift with. I don’t know which of them was more surprised.

We finished stripping down in the locker room and showered off, then went into a sunny pool room full of big tropical plants. There was a decent sized cold pool and a little whirlpool tub in the corner, or as James and Owen described it “two pools!” One of the ways in which I’m not a great Dad is that I’ve done nothing to teach my boys how to actually swim. But they had a great time wading about and splashing. Felix and Owen both slipped and fell in multiple times, but neither of them seemed to mind after I’d fished them out. Felix just wanted to keep on walking around

Eventually another family came in and their son tried to play pool games with James (he was a much better swimmer) but had to settle for Felix, who ended up taking over their pool ball. (I tried to give it back, but the Mom insisted we keep it when Felix broke into tears. Canadians are so polite.)

We cleaned off and decided to head out for some dinner. The whole point of this trip, as far as the boys was concerned, was ordering a pizza. If you asked them to describe what we were going to do in Toronto, they would have said “We’re going to live in a hotel and order a pizza and go swimming and see dinosaur bones.” And the pizza was the nonnegotiable part of that. So we set of walking and looking for a place along Yonge Street where we could find a takeout pizza.

We walked a lot. And we didn’t see anything. But we did see a bunch of Lebanese places, and James got to asking me questions about what “shawarma” was. I described it, and he thought he might want to try to shwarma instead of pizza. Owen still wanted pizza. We walked another two blocks. Owen decided he could try shawarma too. Felix didn’t care about food at all. He kept seeing dogs and enthusiastically greeting them with a “HIII!!!”

We went into a shawarma place and got in line. Owen almost immediately cut his hand against the wall somehow and became a big sobbing mess until the head clerk offered him a beef sambusa. Somehow that made his hand feel better. And then James and Felix got free sambusas too, because Canadians are very nice.

We brought our spicy, garlicky, hot-saucy, raw-oniony shawarma back to the hotel room for the boys to reject and complain about. They devoured it. It’s amazing what the power of hunger (plus a long day and lots of walking and swimming) can do for picky eaters.

After dinner we FaceTimed with J for a few minutes, and then attempted to start putting them down to bed. James read Owen a Titanic book while Felix got another bottle, and I had the lights out by only an hour after their usual bedtime. My biggest problem that night was just being thirsty from the shawarma, and figuring out how to sneak out of the room to go get more ice for milk. Felix woke up once in the middle of the night and then passed right out again when I put a hand in his pack and play.

The next morning was all about cleaning up the colossal mess the kids had made of the hotel room. I turned on the TV again, and Owen found who SpongeBob SquarePants is. (He thinks he’s hilarious. He would have far preferred watching SpongeBob all morning to going to the Science Centre.) I picked up all their clothes and books and animals and got them dressed in going out clothes, then walked them to a little diner down the block for breakfast.

Our waiter was great and endlessly patient. He brought a booster for Felix right away and replaced our silverware every time the boys dropped theirs on the floor. (This happened about four times before I just asked to let them eat with their floor-dirty forks.) He advised that there would be enough pancakes on James and Owen’s orders that we wouldn’t need to order separately for Felix, and he chatted with James and Felix when I took Owen, who had assured me a dozen times at the hotel room that he really didn’t have to go to the potty, to the bathroom in a state of “I must go now or I’m going to explode crisis.”

I left Owen in the bathroom and checked on James and Felix. Two college girls haing breakfast in the back of the restaurant were giggling when I went back to the bathroom. Owen was screaming “DADDY! DAAADDYYY!” at the top of his lungs. The toilet had an automatic flush that was scaring him.

The food came and Felix ignored it. (There was a TV near us, and also two construction workers who kept talking to him.) James and Owen did a decent job on their pancakes, and my coffee wasn’t totally cold by the time I got a few sips.

We checked out of the hotel around 10 and drove over to the Ontario Science Centre. Huge parts of it were exactly how I remember from when I was 13...the Vandegraf Generator was in the exact same place, the marble run, and the play exhibit. The kids looked at bugs, experimented with barometric pressure, walked through a rainforest habitat, scaled a wooden bridge, found a turtle and multiple frogs, examined rock crystal formations, looked at aquariua, played with a wind tunnel, climbed through a cave, played with levers and fulcrums, zapped inert gases, banged on steel drums, and cranked engine parts. And that was all BEFORE the giant marble run. The best part for them, though, was the kidzone, because that was where they could get soaking wet. There was a big water table where you could do sundry experiments, and they were all soaked before we headed over to the planetarium.

It was in the planetarium where Felix finally reached the end of his tether. He basically hadn’t eaten anything in over a day and was in a big-kid exhibit. It was crowded because of all the school groups, and there was one particular group that we’d seen several times throughout the day that was rather ill-behaved. One group of girls had been playing tag in the lower levels, and apparently the game wasn’t over. A big girl ran up next to Felix, and then without looking where she was going took off running at full tilt and knocked him over, landing on him in the process. She ran off as soon as she realized what she’d done. I got him calmed down as best as I could (and found the girl and got an apology out of her) and asked the boys if they were ready to head home. We stopped at the Tim Horton’s on the way out for some coffee for the road and the one thing I could be sure Felix would eat--cheese.

We crawled through downtown Toronto in a rainstorm (you could still see the CN Tower clearly, though) and managed to find a Wendy’s just outside Missisauga where we got a little late lunch. There was another stop at Niagara on the Lake for souvenirs and a bathroom break, and we were back in our own house by 6.

I would do the ROM again in a heartbeat. It was a great museum, and the kids absolutely loved the dinosaurs. I think James got a lot out of the Science Centre (we had to find him a couple of times when he got interested in something and wandered off), but it was probably a bit over the heads of Owen and Felix. But anytime, and anywhere, I’d be happy to take these kids traveling and exploring again. They were champs about riding in the car, finding parking, and staying in a hotel room.

Final Owen quote, information he shared with the hotel clerk upon check-in:

“You know what’s weird about my Mom? She doesn’t even have a penis!”

Cleaning the Baseboard, Part 1

Of all the spots in the house, the southeast corner of the upstairs bathroom makes me the most anxious. It's the corner of the bathroom with the toilet, and that bathroom was always the eyesore of the house. While we laid in bed and looked over the Zillow ad for the first time, J remarked to me that "it isn't a good sign that there are no pictures of the bathroom." We've made some progress with it. We put in a nice threshold (there wasn't one), replaced the door handle that didn't lock, put in a recycled tile floor, and even repainted the tub. The tub repainting hasn't stuck though, (the bottom coat always peels away after a few weeks) and the grout got so dirty in the great Leaking Kitchen Ceiling fiasco of 2015.

It was during the Leaking Kitchen Ceiling fiasco that the southeast corner of the bathroom went from bad to dreadful. We'd made a mess of the baseboard and wainscot while putting the floor in earlier that summer, and then when the kitchen ceiling started leaking we made several vain attempts to figure out what was wrong with the leak. To make a very long and painful story short, a bad contractor from Craigslist spent an hour drilling into the cast iron pipe underneath our toilet and spattering flecks of sickly brown effluvium all over the new floor and the already dirty baseboard.

I feel anxious whenever I look into that corner because it reminds me that I haven't figured out a way to clean it up. Should I repaint? Do I just need to get down on my hands and knees and give it a really thorough scrubbing? Should I use some sort of multipurpose bathroom cleaner, or just a bucket of hot water and soap? Every few months I'll try to do just that and then get frustrated when it doesn't look any better, aside from having taken up the layer of dust and bathroom tissue shards that accumulated behind the toilet.

Nobody wants to clean behind the toilet. That's the real thing. I'd rather read. Or practice. Or anything else. I look at the stained/peeling/dusty paint and have this uneasy feeling that our grandparents would have kept their bathrooms spotless with once a week cleanings, even after mucking out the stables and making homemade applesauce and fighting in a World War earlier in the day. I'm a defective adult for not being able to look after my own living space. I must have missed this bit in home economics. I know that I took that course in high school, but I can only remember the bit about how to write a check and how store brands are indistinguishable from name brand cereals.

So I stand, with children of my own howling about my knees, unready for the task of giving them a sanitary bathroom. I end up dumping them in the bath. Felix fell off the toilet earlier while I was trying to floss and he was trying to be in my lap. Owen is upset because he fell off the stairs and because he doesn't understand that everyone else in the family has different standards of personal space. James is hiding somewhere, probably trying to avoid Owen. Felix and Owen are happy to be in the bath at first, but then Owen remembers that he needs to go to the bathroom RIGHT NOW so I put him (dripping all over the floor) onto the toilet seat. This is good, because I still don't know whether I should be using hot water and soap or some kind of cleaner, and now I have both all over the place.

I pull on my elbow length rubber gloves and start scrubbing away at the baseboard and the floor. Bits of dried grout that I didn't clean up properly from when I regrouted last summer get scraped off. I pick at stubborn patches of stained paint with a razor and it comes off a bit. I wipe off with paper towels and move onto the next spot, one tile at a time, careful to get up everything that I can possibly scrape off.

Eventually Owen and Felix lose patience for playing in the tub. Felix is crying because Owen is splashing him in the face on purpose. I douse Owen with a cup of water, but it doesn't deter him. He's just happy someone is paying attention to him.

I finish wiping the floor down and stand up to survey my work. It doesn't really look any better. The floor is shining, but you can still see the stains on the baseboard and the wainscot. I didn't even get around to the baseboard on the west side of the bathroom (which is in much better shape, but dustier, since the shelving we have there is screwed into the wall) because the kids pooped out too soon. After I get them out and dressed I take the plunger, the toilet brush, and the trash can down to the utility sink.

Again, do real grown ups actually clean these things? I guess they must. We've never even taken the plastic cover off of the toilet brush stand, and you can see that there's grime inside the plastic. I rinse them all and then scrub them with disinfectant. Some of the gunk inside the plastic trash bin is stubborn, and it's the same color as the gunk from the wall. Probably residue from the clean up of the Craigslist guy.

Next time I'll finish the bathroom and go into the bedroom. The knees of my jeans are soaked (from kneeling on the towel that I used to clean up after Owen's bathroom timeout) and my hands are all dried out. But I'm glad I tried, even though I didn't get anywhere. I suspect that someone who knows what they're doing would have been intensely frustrated if they'd watched me, kind of like how I feel watching James muddle through cleaning up his room without really paying attention to what he's doing. But there are stories to be told along the whole length of the baseboard, from that awful, anxious spot in the bathroom through the dusty stretches behind our bedroom furniture, even out to the leftover bits that I found in our basement and re-purposed into an ugly looking garden square. (Caring for a garden was another bit that I must have missed in home economics.) I'm going to keep writing about cleaning it all up. It's one of those child's-eye level parts of a house that holds a thousand unspoken stories in it. (I can still remember where the snag is in the bit of baseboard next to the heating vent in my parent's house where I'd lie down behind the couch on winter mornings, or squeeze in next to a brother who'd woken up before I did.) Maybe, just maybe, one of the stories that my kids will think of when they go into their child's-eye view of our bathroom is "that's the part that used to be really dirty before Daddy cleaned it up."

I just have no idea how, yet.

What We Did This Morning (turning into a letter)

Owen:
We went to the park. I don't remember what we did. There was a waterfall. Because there were many. We hiked. The waterfalls were my favorite to look at. They were huge. I loved the dogs. I think there were actually five. I made friends with them. James and Felix hiked too. Then we did the CAR WASH. That was fun. We got scrubbed and we got cleaned out. Then we went to Wegmans and we went to the restaurant. I got milk and drank it very fast. I ate chicken tenders and gave one to James. And french fries and ketchup and also some ice. And then we had <whispers> ice cream. A twist in a cone, no sprinkles. We got in a lot of muddy stuff. And I got some sandcastles.

James:
We went for a hike in the woods, we went to the tepee. We went over a long bridge and a short one. We had a lot of driving. I don't want to talk anymore.

Owen:
Hi Silas and Roland, how are you doing today? I hope you send a message. It was fun to see you the other day. Come here soon. You'll see a great thing in our house. We'll tell you what it is. A HUBCAP. We found the hubcap in the playground. We hanged it in our room after we went to the playground and we cleaned it on the front step. I want to show you how big our hubcap is. We got big pancakes from Grandma and Grandpa. I got the airplane kind. If it was warm out do you know what I would want to do with you outside? Play "hike football." Please come here very, very soon. Silas. Roland. That's all I want to say.
Love, Owen

Music and Book pairings

I.
Tomorrow we're performing a narration of Ferdinand (the delightful children's story about a bull who doesn't want to get trapped in society's expectations that he follow a traditional career path and would rather get stoned on flowers and look at pretty ladies) set to the music of Bizet's Carmen (the delightful adult opera about how if you give the lead role to a mezzo-soprano, lots of people will die.) It actually works pretty well, although the whole thing, inexplicably, ends with the "weak" cadence in the Toreador song instead of the final "strong" cadence which would make more sense. Maybe the arranger was afraid of the Bizet estate coming after him if he copied too directly.

This made me wonder what other story books could be narrated in front of an orchestra and which famous operas ought to be paired with them.

Story: Are You My Mother? (P.D. Eastman)
Opera: Oedipus Rex (Stravinsky)

Story: Where the Wild Things Are
Opera: Abduction from the Seraglio

Story: The Giving Tree
Opera: Fidelio

There have to be some more obvious ones, but I can't think of any in my pit stupor. Once I'm out from underneath the stage and get some fresh air I'll try to come up with some more.

II.
The plan to take the boys to Toronto is up and running. James and Owen have summarized it thus: "We're going to live in a hotel and sleep on the floor and order pizza and maybe go swimming. Also, we're going to see dinosaur bones and maybe climb to the top of the big tower." That's mostly true, although I'm not sure if it's worth it to do the CN tower thing or not. Does anyone have any thoughts or recommendations about the zoo, the waterfront, or Casa Loma? We are strongly considering the Science Centre and the Royal Ontario Museum at this point, and I don't know how much we'd be able to squeeze in on top of those.

III.
Felix is saying "shh!" It's more of a "th" than a "sh" sound. And it's adorable. He puts his finger to his lips and whispers "Thh!!! Th!!! Dada!" I'm not the loud one, of course. Owen is the loud one. It amazes me how loud he can talk, and how he can do it all day long. Also, he's been flipping out whenever someone holds Felix. If you have Felix on your lap, he needs to burrow in between the two of you. We've had to institute an "only two people in the chair at a time" policy. James, meanwhile, just desperately wants someone to take a picture of him mid-sneeze, but he can never seem to conjure one up when the camera is out.

Rowan Williams on Secularism (joined midstream)

Is there an historical, intra-worldly perspective that exhausts what can be said about our transactions and perceptions and self-perceptions? Is there a 'seeing' of the world from some vantage point within it that leaves no room for any seeing from elsewhere? If so, on the basis of the discussion so far, that would be a condition without the possibility of art, an ultimate secularity of the imagination.

And if this is correct, secularism fails by bidding for an ultimately exclusive, even anti-humanist closure; it looks to a situation in which we are not able to see the world and each other as always and already 'seen,' in the sense that we acknowledge our particular perspective to be shadowed by others that are inaccessible to us. This is a failure because it finally suggests that there is nothing beyond the processes of successful negotiation--or, in plainer terms, no substantive truth but a series of contests about sustainable control and the balances of power. Fundamental criticism--political, moral, credal--is thus rendered impossible. Those religious writers (John Milbank in particular) who have recently pressed the thesis that there is an innate 'violence' in secularism (a striking reversal of the received wisdom of modernity, for which religion is the inherently violent presence in culture) mean not that secularism is an aggressive ideology inviting conflict--it's meant to be precisely not that--but that, in having to criteria other than functional ones, it takes for granted contests of power as the basic form of social relation. And because history obstinately refuses to end and art continues to flourish, secularism in the sense that I have been outlining does indeed seem a doomed enterprise, bound to fail in what I have called its 'pure' form.

However, while we might be relatively confident of the moral and imaginative failure in general terms of a programmatic secularity, putting the question about secularism in this way also invites us to think about the varieties of secularist success. The dominance in our culture of managerial standards is too obvious to need much comment; it has changed the face of education at every level, and is the key to understanding why politics has become a mode of marketing. But there is a further and disturbing dimension to this which needs mentioning, and that is the effective secularizing of a great deal of religious discourse. Secularism as I have been defining it--a functional, instrumentalist perspective, suspicious and uncomfortable about inaccessible dimensions--is the hidden mainspring of certain kinds of modern religiousness. When religious commitment is seen first as the acceptance of propositions which determine acceptable behaviour--the kind of religiousness we tend now to call fundamentalist--something has happened to the religious identity. It has ceased to give priority to the sense that God's seeing of the world and the self is very strictly incommensurable with any specific human perspective, and is in danger of evacuating religious language of the pressure to take time to learn its meaning. Wittgenstein's remark that religious language could only be learned in the context of certain kinds of protracted experience, particularly suffering, is a very un-secular insight, since it assumes that to be able to make certain religious affirmations is bound up with how we construct a narrative of difficult or unmanageable times in our lives. There can be no descriptive pre-empting of religious meanings by requiring instant assent to descriptions of reality offered by straightforward revelation. All the major historical faiths, even Islam, which is closest to the propositional model at first sight, assume in their classical forms an interaction between forms of self-imaging and self-interpreting, through prayer and action, and the formal language of belief; that language works not simply to describe an external reality, but to modify over time the way self and world are sensed. To say that fundamentalism represents a secularizing moment is to recognize that there has been a dissociation here between language and time, so that the primary task (function) of religious utterance is to describe authoritatively and to resolve problems. It is not easy to restore to this kind of religious ethos the awareness of subject and object alike 'being seen' which I have suggested as basic to the non-secular vision.

However, the wheel comes full circle. Secularism fails to sustain the imaginative life and so can be said to fail: its failure may (does) produce a fascination with the 'spiritual.' But its very pervasiveness in the first place means that this spiritual dimension is likely to be conceived in consumerist terms--either in the individualized funcionalism of much New Age spirituality or in the corporate problem-solving strategies of neo-conservative religion. Secularism and fundamentalism feed off each other; in reflecting on the first form of the question in my title, the implicit lament for the apparent weakness of the 'modern' project, it wouldn't do us any harm to note that the restriction of religion to the private sphere doesn't necessarily guarantee a moderate and compliant religiosity. The very insistence of the prevailing cultural instrumentalism is just as likely, or more likely, to reinforce elements in religious language and practice that are themselves impatient with inaccessibility, time, and growth. A private inflexible faith confronts the managerial public sphere in a mixture of mutual incomprehension and mutual reflection.

Lamberton Conservatory Visit

Felix found a "bebe." And also some quail

James and Owen were the first to discover the turtles

Then Owen found a turtle on the loose

Does he eat people?

Felix among the cacti. Don't touch, Felix

Owen watching a duck shove a turtle into the pond. Bummed I didn't get a picture of that.

Another free-range turtle

Felix among the ferns

More exploring

Smile, James

Felix made friends with another kid. (Charlie) Charlie was waiting there to meet another kid named Felix.

Felix is also the only kid who holds still long enough to have his photo taken

Smile, James

Owen found a big bucket of dirty water, of course

Curls

The big kids

One turtle (Chuck Norris) was in solitary confinement for biting. Owen sympathizes.

Right before he tried to put George on the turtle's back

Philosophy Mock Draft

1. Arizona Cardinals
Baruch Spinoza (University of Leiden)
Attempting to turn around the Cardinals after a dismal season will mean that the coaching staff and players must rediscover the conatus, an innate striving that when conscious of its own appetite accompanies consciousness of oneself. Coach Kingsbury is also hopeful that the first major European Jewish philosopher will mentor the NFL's first Jewish quarterback.

2. San Francisco 49ers
Rene Descartes (University of Franeker)
Descartes is expected to provide explanations to the 49ers many doubts about their own existence. Why are they called the San Fransisco 49ers when they play in Santa Clara? Do they really have a QB? If so, why didn't anyone see him last year? How can they have know they've fixed the position if they only saw him play six games? Descartes apparently assured Coach Shanahan and GM John Lynch in pre-draft meetings that they could verify their existence merely by having the faculty of consideration.

3. New York Jets
Georg Willhelm Friederich Hegel (University of Jena)
Having just missed out Descartes the Jets select the father of analytic philosophy in hopes of establishing a proper analytics department. Hegel, however, is expected to repeat his habit of rubber stamping whatever decisions the Prussian state/front office finds acceptable despite their lack of intellectual rigor.

4. Oakland Raiders
Niccolo Machiavelli (Florence)
Jon Gruden resonates with Machiavelli's tactics of intimidation, dominance, and deceit. Having driven out any potential rivals for power in the front office and the locker room Gruden and Machiavelli will now maintain tyrannical power over the Raider franchise. 'Tis better to be feared than loved.

5. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Simone de Beauvoir (University of Paris)
Although not a perfect fit for the Buccaneers' offensive scheme and perhaps a reach at number 5 overall, the Buccaneers have to make this move from a PR standpoint now that they've doubled down on Jameis Winston as their starting QB. Will the author of The Second Sex change the narrative of Winston's sexual assault scandal? Trading down is also a possibility for the Bucs here.

6. New York Giants
Galen (Pergamum)
Desperate to extend Eli Manning's final years and still hedging on drafting a successor, the Giants turn to the father of ancient medicine in the hopes that he will be able to balance Manning's humors through his tried and trusty methods of leeches and herblore.

7. Jacksonville Jaguars
Arthur Schopenhauer (University of Jena)
Doug Marrone and Tom Coughlin find a perfect fit for their hard-nosed and miserable style of football by drafting the man who described the human condition as a "pendulum between boredom and suffering." Everyone's favorite pessimistic atheist will be sure to point out that medicore football and an apathetic fan base don't matter since we're all going to die anyway and the best we can hope for is a quick annihilation.

8. Detroit Lions
Diogenes the Cynic (Sinope)
In a move to bolster weak ticket sales the Lions bring aboard someone even more cynical than their own fan base. Diogenes greets the Detroit public by insisting that the Lions definitely aren't going to win more than six games and that he only wants to be honest man. Diogenes has apparently moved his ceramic sleeping jar into an abandoned Chrysler factory and defecated on the astroturf at Ford Field.

9. Buffalo Bills
Thales (Miletus)
Having lived from 624-546 BC and generally recognized as the oldest major philosopher, Coach McDermott thinks that Thales has the maturity and experience to be the feature back in running back room featuring youngsters LeSean McCoy and Frank Gore.

10. Denver Broncos
Vilfredo Pareto (University of Lausanne)
The original defender of elitism comes to the Mile High City to verify that Joe Flacco is indeed an elite talent and that building a team around him is a worthwhile exercise despite calls for the Broncos to actually draft and develop their own QB talent.

11. Cincinnati Bengals
John Rawls (Princeton)
In an obvious push for small-market team interests, Rawls will help the Bengals argue that in a thought experiment where all 32 owners are randomly relocated to unknown cities of differing resources the "veil of ignorance" would dictate that revenue ought to be distributed more evenly than it already is. Rawls will also challenge that the Bengals should get to play in an easier division and that rich teams shouldn't be allowed to hire their own private scouting staff.

12. Green Bay Packers
Thomas Hobbes (Oxford)
The "Leviathan" star comes to Green Bay to justify a social contract where Aaron Rodgers, himself unaccountable, is licensed to control and dictate every decision on his team. Without a strong sovereign men are incapable of commodious living--this pick is all about empowering number 12.

13. Miami Dolphins
Milton Friedman (Columbia University)
The Dolphins listened when Friedman suggested that high end QB play wasn't necessary for an NFL team to win, and he has plenty more to say about how the game should be deregulated and penalties should be worked out among the players and referees with unrestricted on-field bidding. Friedman is also a good fit for Florida's low state taxes.

14. Atlanta Falcons
Erwin Schroedinger (University of Vienna)
Dan Quinn brings the famous physicist on board to explain his theory of quantum mechanics and how in a subatomic event the Falcons might be a team with an established franchise QB in his prime with dangerous weapons and a talented defense and yet simultaneously be a pile of burning garbage.

15. Washington Redskins
John Stuart Mill (University College, London)
Owner Dan Snyder is preparing for the inevitable congressional hearing over his franchise's racist name and merchandise by bringing in the original advocate for free speech and a utilitarian ethical theory. If the offense caused by a racially charged word creates some suffering for indigenous peoples but also generates lots of merchandising money for a billionaire, how can you calculate the correct course of action?

16. Carolina Panthers
St. Augustine (Hippo)
With Cam Newton's chastity project underway the Panthers look to support their franchise QB by bringing in a brilliant theologian and rhetorician who turned his inner sexual monologues into one of the most brilliant autobiographies ever written. Quocumque fugies deus te videbit.

17. New York Giants (via Cleveland)
Marcus Aurelius (Rome)
The great Roman emperor/stoic philosopher is the Giant's second pick in the hopes that he will ease Manning's ignominious decline into old age and defeat by reminding him to practice virtue and remain unperturbed by losses, fumbles, interceptions, and incompetent offensive line play. The teammates might also share a connection over the fact that they both were less highly regarded than their more popular family members despite having similar career accomplishments.

18. Minnesota Vikings
Aristotle (Stagira)
The Vikings reach out to the greatest of Philosophers for the monumental task of classifying Kirk Cousins. What IS he? Surely he can't be called a franchise QB, but he isn't a journeyman either. His contract doesn't appear to be that of a placeholder, and his statistics seem to tell yet another story. If anyone can work out a genus and the differentia from the available evidence it will be the father of deductive reasoning himself.

19. Tennessee Titans
Plautus (Lycopolis)
Mike Vrabel chooses the original clever Egyptian who recycled Plato's work into a new philosophical school without having Plato's literary talent to help the Titans become the new Patriots without having Tom Brady on their roster.

20. Pittsburgh Steelers
Soren Kierkegaard (University of Copenhangen)
The Steelers plan to use Kierkegaard to confront Roethlisberger's ambivalence about retirement. Is he terrified of death? Is he more terrified that he will continue playing forever? Is it the locker room culture of existential angst that has led to the departures of Leveon Bell and Antonio Brown?

21. Seattle Seahawks
Anselm (Canterbury)
Despite strong arguments from those within the organization to spend the pick on Gaunilo of Marmoutier, Pete Carroll decides to draft the former archbishop of Canterbury and his famous ontological argument. Anselm will demonstrate that since Russell Wilson is a quarterback than which a greater cannot be conceived, and that since existing on the roster is clearly superior to not existing on the roster, therefore Russell Wilson is demonstrably the player that Seattle should place at the center of their franchise plans.

22. Baltimore Ravens
John Locke (Oxford)
The Ravens are naively optimistic that human nature is a tabula rasa--what appear to be crippling deficiencies in Lamar Jackson's mechanics can almost certainly be overcome by experience and introspection.

23. Houston Texans
Sun Tzu (Qi, Zhou kingdom)
Bill O'Brien wants to strengthen his tactical acumen by bringing aboard the famous author of the Art of War. Tzu has already advised QB Deshaun Watson to be serene and inscrutable and is planning a complex zone-based defense since "all war is based on deception."

24. Oakland Raiders (via Chicago)
Blaise Pascal (Clermont-Ferrond)
Pascal deeply impressed Coach Gruden in pre-draft workouts by demonstrating the binomial coefficients of his arithmetical triangle. Some within the organization are suspicious, however, that Coach Gruden is more interested in Pascal's ability to count cards (looking forward to their Las Vegas move in the near future) than in his pensees or mathematical acumen. One anonymous source believes that the front office has completely misunderstood Pascal's wager.

25. Philadelphia Eagles
Pythagoras (Samos)
Though some within the organization about Pythagoras' commitment to vegetarianism and total secrecy regarding his philosophical tenets, Pythagoras' numerological explanation of play-calling and the motion of the planets has won over Coach Pederson.

26. Indianapolis Colts
St. Thomas Aquinas (University of Paris)
Coach Reich plays up his return to conservative ground-and-pound football by drafting the 13th century scholastic. Aquinas apparently demonstrated five proofs for the superiority of his play-action offense, and the ideological fit between the venerated Catholic saint and the deeply religious Reich makes lots of sense.

27. Oakland Raiders (via Dallas)
Jean-Paul Sartre (University of Paris)
Unsure of how to spend their final 1st round pick and nauseated by the cheap theater of the draft process, the Raiders hope to challenge the spiritually destructive conformity of the NFL's imperialist attitudes. Having heard his name repeatedly mispronounced at the introductory meetings, Sartre puffed on a cigarette, shrugged, and remarked that he was "condemned to be free."

28. Los Angeles Chargers
Heraclitus (Ephesus)
The Chargers organization is still trying to work out some translation issues with the verse-speaking Heraclitus, but there was an immediate connection once they realized that the "divine fire" which Heraclitus claims is the animating principle of the universe is the very logo on the Chargers' helmets. A contract impasse might be coming, however, since Heraclitus continues to insist that all things flow and that he is incapable of stepping in the same river twice.

29. Kansas City Chiefs
Francis Bacon (Cambridge)
Coach Reid isn't actually interested in Empiricism or Sir Francis' discovery of the scientific method--he just heard "bacon" and made a bit of an impulse pick here at 29 overall.

30. Green Bay Packers (via New Orleans)
Chrysippus (Soli)
The former of student of Cleanthes and head of the Stoa assures Packers players and fans that they must all practice virtue to reach ataraxia until the souls of Bart Starr and Vince Lombardi once again transmigrate and the cycle of Packers greatness is gloriously renewed again.

31. Los Angeles Rams
George Berkeley (Trinity College, Dublin)
Is a tree falls in the wood, does it make a sound? If a franchise wins a conference title but no one shows up to watch them play, are they actually a real team? Berkeley comes on board to explain perception theory and abstraction. Coach McVay has already sent copies of A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge to all staff and players in advance of OTAs.

32. New England Patriots
Friedrich Nietzsche (University of Basel)
Coach Belichik insists that Nietzsche will bring great value to the Patriots organization. Apparently the two see eye-to-eye on the moral immunity of the Ubermensch and the inutility of old fashioned ethical categories like "fairness" or "good and evil." "Yes," Belichik commented of the pick "all that matters now is the will to power."