2022 Reading

 January

The Family Romanov (Fleming)
Call for the Dead (LeCarre)

The River of Consciousness (Sacks)

The Case of the Vanishing Blonde (Bowden)

Timeline (Crichton)

My Brother Sam is Dead (Collier)

Animal (Taddeo)

All's Well That Ends Well (Shakespeare)

Old Cookery and Ancient Cuisine (Hazlitt)

Macbeth (Shakespeare)

Trajectory (Russo)

Othello (Shakespeare)

My Struggle, Book 1 (Knausgaard)

Love's Labor Lost (Shakespeare)

Whose Body? (Sayers)

Angela's Ashes (McCourt)

Jesus and John Wayne (Du Mez)

Odyssey Book 15 (Homer) in Greek

Catch-22 (Heller)

Hamlet (Shakespeare)

The Beautiful and the Damned (Fitzgerald)

The Definitive Biography of P.D.Q. Bach (Schikele)

The Narnian (Jacobs)

The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction (Jacobs)

Watership Down (Adams)

Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village (Cooper/Johnson)

February

Norse Mythology (Gaiman)

Can You Forgive Her? (Trollope)

Clouds of Witnesses (Sayers)

Empire of Pain (Keefe)

How to Raise a Reader (Russo/Paul)

Julius Caesar (Shakespeare)

Bridge to Terabithia (Paterson)

Skink-No Surrender (Hiaasen)

Good-Bye to All That (Graves)

March

Pride and Prejudice (Austen)

Asinaria (Plautus) in Latin

Peril (Woodward)

The Day of the Pelican (Paterson)

Animal Farm (Orwell)

Murder on the Orient Express (Christie)

Odyssey Book 16 (Homer) in Greek

Book of House Plants (Lee-Faust)

The Art of Shaving (Zaoui)

Unnatural Death (Sayers)

Johannes Brahms (Swafford)

The Inimitable Jeeves (Wodehouse)

When the Buddha was an Elephant (McGinnis)

All Our Happy Days are Stupid (Heti)

The Garden of Eden (Hemingway)

The Whore's Child (Russo)

The Lightning Thief (Riordan)

Death on the Nile (Christie)

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (Sayers)

Metamorphoses Book 6 (Ovid) in Latin

To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee)

Shakespeare (Bryson) 

Right Ho, Jeeves (Wodehouse)

The Power of Regret (Pink)

The Color of Magic (Pratchett)

April

Burnout (Nagoski)

The Same Stuff as Stars (Paterson)

Elsewhere (Russo)

Fried Green Tomatoes (Flagg)

Mating in Captivity (Perel)

Damned (Palahniuk)

The Importance of Being Earnest (Wilde)

Taste (Tucci)

Strong Poison (Sayers)

The Golden Couple (Hendricks/Pekkanen)

Deliverance (Dickey)

Bittersweet (Cain)

The Sea of Monsters (Riordan)

The Five Red Herrings (Sayers)

Very Good, Jeeves (Wodehouse)

A History of Men's Fashion (Storey)

Hamlet (Shakespeare)

From Warsaw with Love (Pomfret)

Love and Saffron (Fay)

Odyssey Book 17 (Homer) in Greek

Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)

May

Have His Carcase (Sayers)

French Lessons (Mayle)

Slaughterhouse Five (Vonnegut)

Across the River and Into the Trees (Hemingway)

Bonk (Roach)

Joy in the Morning (Wodehouse)

Worst Class Trip Ever (Barry)

Sticking it Out (Niemi)

The Night Manager (LeCarre)

A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)

HMS Surprise (O'Brian)

Winner Takes Nothing (Hemingway)

Motherhood (Heti)

Murder Must Advertise (Sayers)

The Titan's Curse (Riordan)

The Man Who Was Thursday (Chesterton)

Mozart in the Jungle (Tindall)

June

Odyssey Book 18 (Homer) in Greek

The Gospels and Homer (MacDonald)

Home Improvement for the Busy and Broke (Salway)

Dear Mr. M. (Koch)

The Mauritius Command (O'Brian)

The Steal (Bowden)

Into the Deep (Ballard)

Breakfast of Champions (Vonnegut)

The Monuments Men (Witter/Edsel)

Farewell, Titanic (Pellegrino)

Pirate Latitudes (Crichton)

The Longest Race (Ayres)

Jaws (Benchley)

The Archaeology of New York State (Ritchie)

The Decameron (Boccacio)

Phedre (Racine) in French

The Letters of Abelard and Heloise (Abelard and Heloise)

The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare)

Hero (Korda)

Battle of the Labyrinth (Riordan)

The Internet is Not What You Think It Is (Smith)

The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt (Wilkinson)

Sink the Bismarck! (Forester)

A Year of Biblical Womanhood (Held-Evans)

We Came, We Saw, We Left (Wheelan)

Secrets of the Great Pyramid (Briar/Houdin)

Radium Girls (Moore)

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (LeCarre)

The Martian (Weir)

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (LeCarre)

July 

The Wisdom of the Myths (Ferry)

Lost Classics (Ondaatje)

The Writing of the Gods (Dolnick)

Mindfuck (Wylie)

Rationality (Pinker)

Ending Parkinson's Disease (Dorsey)

Odyssey Book 19 (Homer) in Greek

The Death and Life of the Great Lakes (Dave)

The Mismeasure of Man (Gould)

Turn Right at Machu Picchu (Adams)

The Cuckoo's Calling (Galbraith)

Nasty, Brutish, and Short (Hershovitz)

The Perfect Storm (Junger)

Loch (Zindel)

Digital Minimalism (Newport)

The Silkworm (Galbraith)

The Pastor's Bookshelf (Carty)

Our Man in Havana (Greene)

The Right Stuff (Wolfe)

Career of Evil (Galbraith)

August

Lethal White (Galbraith)

Apokalypsis in Latin

Troubled Blood (Galbraith)

The Art of Loading Brush (Berry)

Euthyphro (Plato) in Greek

The It Girl (Ware)

Odyssey Book 20 (Homer) in Greek

A Shropshire Lad (Housman)

A Cabernet of Plants (Mabey)

Pontoon (Keillor)

The Lake Wobegon Virus (Keillor)

Erebus (Palin)

North Korea Journal (Palin)

A Thousand Ships (Haynes)

The Maid (Prose)

The Storm (Buechner)

Breaking the Male Code (Garfield)

Odyssey Book 21 (Homer) in Greek

Charlie Wilson's War (Crile)

September

The Ink Black Heart (Galbraith)

Alexandria: City of the Western Mind (Vrettos)

Don Quixote (Cervantes) 

Cloud Cuckoo Land (Doerr)

After Doubt (Swoboda)

The Great Pearl Heist (Crosby)

Aeneid Book 7 (Virgil) in Latin

Sex on the Moon (Mezrich)

The Screwtape Letters (Lewis)

Don't Sleep, There are Snakes (Everett)

The Tempest (Shakespeare)

Nefertiti (Wells)

Beating Vegas (Mezrich)

Woolly (Mezrich)

Deep Work (Newport)

The Second Death of George Mallory (Messner)

October

Laughter in Ancient Rome (Beard)

To Save Everything, Click Here (Morozov)

Slouching Toward Bethlehem (Didion)

Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory (Ballmer)

The Good Nurse (Graeber)

Your Children Are Very Greatly in Danger (Murphy)

I, Claudius (Graves)

Odyssey Book 22 (Homer) in Greek

Ex Libris (Fadiman)

Cat's Cradle (Vonnegut)

Jayber Crow (Berry)

Endurance (Lansing)

Poirot Investigates (Christie)

All in a Don's Day (Beard)

November

The Escape Artist (Freedland)

After the Ivory Tower Falls (Bunch)

Odyssey Book 23 (Homer) in Greek

Book of Mythicality (Neal/McLaughlin)

How Should a Person Be? (Heti)

Sharpe's Tiger (Cornwell)

Sharpe's Triumph (Cornwell)

The Nine Tailors (Sayers)

Arms and the Man (Shaw)

The Corsican Caper (Mayle)

Candida (Shaw)

The Man of Destiny (Shaw)

Dinner with Edward (Vincent)

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Christie)

A Good Year (Mayle)

How to Inhabit Time (Smith)

Sharpe's Fortress (Cornwell)

December

Odyssey Book 24 (Homer) in Greek

The Sacred Journey (Buechner)

Serendipities (Eco)

Gaudy Night (Sayers)

The Winners (Backman)

Aeneid Book 8 (Virgil) in Latin

Lord Peter Views the Body (Sayers)

Heart of Darkness (Conrad)

Sharpe's Trafalgar (Cornwell)

The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)

Busman's Honeymoon (Sayers)

The Scapegoat (du Maurier)

Lament for a Son (Wolterstorff)

Sharpe's Prey (Cornwell)

A Year in Provence (Mayle)

Shakespeare's The Phantom of Menace (Doescher)

Sideways Stories from Wayside Homeschool--James

 James was the tallest child at Wayside Homeschool. He had always been the tallest, because he had always been the oldest. He would have been glad to let Owen or Felix take a turn at being the tallest or the oldest, but every time that they got a little taller or a little older, James had become even taller and older still. He felt that it was an unfair advantage.

James was learning Logic in school this year, which is the art of critical thinking. His Father read him the Logic assignment. 

"My dog doesn't like cats, and no mouse likes cats. So my dog is a mouse. Represent this argument in logical notation."

James scratched his head. 

Father explained it to him. James scratched his head again.

Father tried to have James put the argument into a system of letters where each letter represented a proposition. A proposition was a single statement. Then Father would have him falsify each statement by writing a squiggle in front of it. Then Father would have him convert the statement by switching the orders of terms, and invert the statement switching the quality of the terms, and then find the contrapositive by converting and inverting at the same time.

James scratched his head.

"Come on, James," said Father "if you don't learn how to use logic then you'll never be able to communicate clearly."

James thought that maybe if he wanted to communicate ideas clearly that he should probably steer clear of logic. That was a conversion of Father's proposition.

"Let's review necessary and sufficient conditions," said Father, "and we'll see how much you remember. Is rain a necessary or a sufficient condition for clouds?"

"Well," explained James, "you have to have clouds in order to have rain. But you don't need to have rain if you have clouds."

"Right," said Father, "so what kind of condition is rain for clouds?"

James thought for a minute.

"Sounds like wet conditions to me."

Father scratched his head.

"In any 'if-then' statement where if you have P, then Q follows, what sort of a condition is P for Q?"

James scratched his head.

"A conditional condition?"

"Not a conditional condition."

James wrote down a squiggle in front of the proposition, "if p then q," and put brackets around it.

"I didn't mean that you should invert that proposition. What kind of a condition is P for Q in the proposition?"

James said it that P was an invalid condition for Q, since the proposition (which he had bracketed) was negated by the squiggly sign.

"No, no, no!" said Father.

James counted each "no" and wrote three more squiggly signs in front of the proposition. He looked at it for a moment.

"So it is not true that it's false that it's incorrect that the proposition that if it rains then there are clouds is untrue?"

Father rolled his eyes rudely, and Mother, who happened to be walking by, told him to mind his ps and qs. 

"Let's practice spotting a fallacy. If I tell you that you can have ice cream only if you do all of your logic homework perfectly, and you do your logic homework perfectly, but then I don't give you ice cream after it's completed, did I lie to you?"

James asked what kind of ice cream was being offered.

"I would not have lied to you," said Father, "because you would have substituted the conversion of the original proposition for the proposition I made."

James said he wouldn't have lied because he didn't want to do his logic homework anyway. 

Father didn't want to teach the logic homework either.

They had some ice cream.

Sideways Stories from Wayside Homeschool--Felix

 Felix was in Kindergarten. He had the biggest head out of anyone in his house, including his parents. This was important, because in addition to being in Kindergarten Felix was the Grownup Teacher. It was Mother and Father's job to teach Felix about the letters and numbers, and how to read them. It was Felix's job to teach the grownups about all of the things that they didn't know.

Before Felix had been born, it had James and Owen's job to teach Mother and Father about how a child's house ought to be run, but Felix thought they hadn't done a very good job. They had been too easy on Mother and Father, and he was constantly having to correct some of the bad habits that they had slipped into. 

For example, Mother and Father were very confused about what constituted edible food. Sometimes they would get all muddled up and try to feed the children things that were barely even food--things like fungus, or squash, or eggplant. It wasn't their fault. Mother and Father were both very tired all the time, and Felix knew that they probably had just forgotten about good and wholesome foods like waffles, nutella, and ice cream cones. Felix reminded them.

Mother and Father were also always getting confused about how they were supposed to help the children in school. Father would tell the children to read books for 20 minutes, but it wouldn't even be five minutes later that he would come into the library and get all upset because he found Owen and Felix reading Spiderman comic books. He didn't even seem to realize that he'd asked them to read, but would ramble on about nonsense like "homework" and "essays." Felix sometimes worried that Father was being too silly, especially when he used nonsense words like "adverb."

Felix also had to teach Mother and Father a great deal about chores. Sometimes Mother and Father would get confused about who was supposed to clean up the dinner table or put laundry away. They didn't remember that they were the only tall people in the family, so they were supposed to do these things. Instead, they would ask James or Owen or Felix to do them. Felix was polite and didn't criticize Father's bad memory in front of the other students, but just waited until Father forgot all about "chores and responsibilities" and just cleaned up the dinner table himself.

Felix also had to remind Father about bedtime every night. Father would often say, in the very middle of the day when no one was tired, that it was time for bed. It never actually WAS bedtime...it was always actually the middle of a football game or of a matchbox car race or of drumming time, but Father mixed up easily.

Once James read a book about people who got confused while climbing high mountains because there wasn't enough oxygen way high up in the skies. Felix thought that Father and Mother probably got confused from oxygen deprivation because they were too tall. But, on the other hand, no one else was tall enough to drive a car yet, so it was good that Father and Mother were still around. Still, neither of them drove the car very well. They were both so slow that they got passed by other cars all the time. If Felix was tall enough to drive the car, he would win every race to the grocery store.

Felix was a good teacher, and he often lay awake at night thinking of what he might teach Mother and Father the next day. Oftentimes he would call to Mother or Father in the middle of the night over and over again until one of them came into his room. He wanted to make sure that his students were both okay and not too scared, and it was good to check in on them.

Sometimes teaching Mother and Father was frustrating. They never seemed to remember that each of their boys would like a drink on the table (and they kept the cups too high up to reach), and they had a very hard time recognizing what the perfect football field looked like. (For example, both the library and kitchen table would make excellent football playing surfaces.) They got cranky when they went too many days in a row without a nap, and sometimes they would spend hours on silly nonsense games like "work" and "income tax."

Still, Felix kept patiently at his job. He made sure that he corrected bad habits. After all, you only get one chance to raise a parent.

Sideways Stories from Wayside Homeschool--Owen

 Owen had blonde hair, freckles, and a big smile. He could make anyone laugh. He had started learning Latin this year. Father told him the Saying of the Day in Latin: "Mea culpa."

"My fault," explained Father.

"It's okay," said Owen, "I forgive you."

Father looked puzzled. Today they were learning the new vocabulary words for Lesson 6. Father explained how each word was pronounced and then had Owen decline or conjugate it. In Latin, nouns are sorted by declensions and verbs are sorted into conjugations. The lesson had more nouns than verbs, so Owen mostly declined to learn his vocabulary.

Father said that the first word of the day was culpa, culpae. Owen asked why Father said it twice. Father explained that each noun has different case endings according to its declension. He said that culpae was the form of culpa in the genitive case. Owen asked if culp-eye meant a fault in your eye, but Father said that wasn't the case.

The next vocabulary word was Maria, which meant Mary. Father had Owen list all of the case endings of Maria, but Owen stopped on the fourth one, accusatively.

Next Father tried to explain what fuga meant, but Owen ran out of the room. 

When Owen was sitting down again Father taught him the next word, which was luna. Owen declined Father's help. He already knew what luna meant from his mythology podcast, so he didn't need a teacher to moon about all of the possible derivatives he might know. Father apologized and said, "mea culpa."

Next Owen learned that unda meant wave. He asked if "undas" meant "you wave," and "undat" meant "she waves." Father explained that Owen was using personal endings, and that unda was really a noun. Owen tried not to take the disappointment personally. He felt a little underwhelmed, and waved his hand to ask for the next word.

The next word was Hispania. Hispania was 1st declension feminine noun. Owen though that if it was a feminine noun, it ought to be Herspania, but that wasn't the case either. 

By the time they reached the noun silva, Owen felt like he was lost in the woods. Learning so many new vocabulary words in a single day could make him feel cranky and sleepy.

He fought to concentrate as father taught him what pugno meant. He judged that they must be near the end when he learned judico, considering how many new words they had learned. Distraction kept seizing him as he tried to learn occupo.

Finally they were on the last word, scribo. Scribo means "I write." Father wanted to quiz Owen on conjugating personal endings before he let Owen go.

"How would you say that we, as a family, write?" 

"Scribimus!" shouted Owen

"And how would a group of very literary pelicans write?"

"Scribunt!"

"And how would a single frog write?" asked Father excitedly.

"Scribit! Scribit! Scribit!" shouted Owen.

Father wanted Owen to work on noun forms some more, but Owen declined.

Sideways Stories from Wayside Homeschool--Father

Father was the Grammar Teacher at Wayside Homeschool. He had kind brown eyes that always looked tired. Father had a terrible secret. He wished that he could tell his secret to someone, but he couldn't. Father was the only person at Wayside Homeschool who knew what an adverb was.

Father didn't want to keep this secret, really. He kept on trying to share his secret unsuccessfully. He would ask James, who is in 6th grade, what type of word might modify a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. (Father hoped that this hint within the definition itself would lead James to the right answer eventually.) James answered, "a describing verb" hesitantly. Then he asked Father to repeat the question bashfully. James was thinking about sports continuously. It was difficult for him to learn any grammar deeply, because ideas for games kept popping into his mind so vividly.

Father tried to share his secret with Owen trickily. He wrote the definition of an adverb up on the word wall boldly. Father pointed at the word wall demonstratively. The Word Wall was really just the wall to the dining room, but covered in Latin declensions, definitions of parts of speech, and number patterns completely. 

He asked Owen, pointing to the word wall expectantly, to tell him what kind of a word might tell him How, When, Where, How Often, or To What Extent. Owen was drawing eagerly. Father tried to redirect Owen to his grammar lesson, but doodling was all that Owen was interested in recently. Owen liked to draw on his homework everywhere. Even though Owen wasn't supposed to, he did it constantly. If it was up to Owen, he would have spent his school drawing entirely.

Father gave up on sharing the secret about adverbs with James and Owen eventually. He figured that he could tell his secret to Felix soon. Felix was a Kindergartner with a big head and glasses that he only wore occasionally. Father whispered to Felix quietly, "Felix, do you remember the definition of a noun?" Felix whispered back softly, "A person, place, thing, or idea." 

Father couldn't bear the secret of the adverb burning inside him hotly. He asked Felix if he wanted to know his secret conspiratorially. Felix nodded suspiciously. Father whispered gently that most words that end in "ly" are adverbs, mostly. Felix told Father that he preferred words that ended in the letters "E-L-I-X," proudly.

Yes, Father was trapped with his secret about adverbs unhappily. He bore it stoically, constantly, and everywhere, mostly.

VBS 2022

 Q: How did you like VBS this year?

Felix: Good

Owen: Very good, I didn't have enough of it.

Q: Owen, is that why you made your own VBS schedule for this morning?

Owen: I made it forever whenever day we could.

Q: What were your favorite parts of VBS?

Owen: I don't know. They were all so fun that I can't choose.

Felix: Water balloons. That was my favorite part.

Q: How was VBS different this year than last year?

Owen: Well, it was like pizza party. 

Felix: It had different songs.

Owen: So last time it was Knights of North Castle, and this time it was Food Truck Party.

Felix: What do you think next time is going to be?

Q: What kinds of activities did you do during Food Truck VBS?

Owen: We made pillows

Felix: We made shirts. We painted them.

Owen: We did science experiments, like seeing how popcorn can float and seeing how food coloring goes through shaving cream that is on top of a half-filled water bottle. You have to be able to look in. 

Q: Did you like being with a bunch of other kids every morning?

Owen: YES!!

Felix: Yes.

Q: How do you think James liked it?

Owen: I think he loved it.

Q: I think he's been hiding in his room ever since VBS ended.

Owen: Maybe he's secretly a shy guy.

Q: I don't think that's a secret.

Owen: Well, I do.

Q: Who were your favorite grown-ups at VBS?

Owen: Maybe the guy that looked like Aunt Martha.

Felix: My teacher. One of my teachers.

Q: And why were these people your favorites?

Owen: Well, the guy that looks like Aunt Martha is cute. 

Q: Did you like the new songs this year?

Owen: Yes, especially Manna in the morning.

Felix: Yeah, definitely.

Q: You two had a disagreement about what the real words are to that song, did you ever figure it out?

Owen: Yes, Felix now believes me, which is good.

Q: So the real words are...?

Felix: We got the manna in the morning and quail every night!

Owen: Worst of all, he was yelling "Manna in the morning and the quality night!"

Felix: "Clarity," is what I was thinking it was.

Q: What do you think Mommy and I did when you guys were at VBS every morning?

Owen: I don't know, but I bet I don't want to know.

Felix: I don't know. 

Q: Do you want to do mushroom and onion princess VBS next year?

Both: No

Bachelor Week

 I stood back, martini in one hand, poking at the massive fire spilling out of the chimneia with my makeshift poker, trying to steer bits of old Christmas tree that were now ablaze back into a safe burning area. Bits of what had been green grass underneath were scorched to the dirt. Once I’d smashed the last of the branches into the chamber of the chimneia I downed the rest of my martini and set the glass down on the lawn chair.

“Well,” I said “time to go climb a ladder.”

It was Bachelor Week.

 

J and the boys are at camp in Philadelphia, and I’ve been on my own since early Sunday morning. I went to church on Sunday alone, to the barely concealed disappointment of my congregation. They were all looking forward to seeing what sorts of mischief Curious George might get into during the sermon this week, and since it was just boring old me they now had nothing to do but listen to the boring old pastor, who hardly ever went flying out of the pews and smashing into the suspended area microphones. Several wished me well. “Enjoy the peace and quiet!” “Have some good time off this week!”

I HAVE enjoyed the peace and quiet. I picked up all of the books in the library on Monday and put them on shelves, and not a single one has returned to the floor since then. I vacuumed the carpet in there, and not a single LEGO has appeared in the meantime. I’ve come downstairs in the mornings and have done my morning warm-up on the couch instead of down in the basement, muted. And I’ve read, endlessly, for hours at a time.

I used the first full day to take care of Unpleasantness that I didn’t feel it would be fair to the boys to involve them in—I stood in line at the DMV to get my license renewed, dropped off a donation at Goodwill, and ran some errands to the post office. (Also, I went in and got a massive haul of used books, which is probably the most immediate example of returning to type from my college bachelor days.)

There were some home projects that needed to be taken care of—reinsulating an HVAC line that had rotted away, and cleaning out the garage—but mostly the difference between this week and normal life at home has just been the ability to take care of routine housework, like folding and putting away the laundry, without a wrestling match spilling over into freshly folded laundry stacks or the insistence of a small person that they are going to “help” turning into an emotional crisis.

J’s biggest request for me was simply to remember to eat, which I have done. I have a ham and eggs for breakfast, and enough veggies and chicken to make an enormous Greek salad every day. (I’ll be ready for a break from both for a while once she gets back.) I even walked up to the gas station and grabbed a frozen pizza, which was disgusting.

With the half-marathon over, I’ve been able to take untimed and unstructured runs every day, ambling through the woods and around the neighborhood with no care for a training schedule. I’ve taken apart my espresso machine, fiddled with it, and put it back together. I’ve practiced and left my horns lying out of their cases all over the sofa. But it really has been, mostly, reading. Book 20 of the Odyssey in Greek, bits of the Vulgate in Latin, some Euthyphro, a book about exploring Machu Picchu, a survey of the ecology of the Great Lakes, a Stephen Jay Gould book, and a delightful book about philosophy and kids by Scott Hershovitz.

J will be back in a few more days, and I can’t wait. I keep on waking up with a start in the middle of the night when I realize she isn’t in the bed. And the reading binge doesn’t need to stop when she gets back, because the boys are going to spend a few days with their grandparents. But I want them to come back too. It’s too quiet. I ordered their school books for next year (and wrote their instruction plans for the school district…) and as much as I’m enjoying the break, I’m looking forward to working on more Logic with James, starting on Latin with Owen, and starting Felix in Kindergarten.

But I’ll still soak up the next few days of having the library clean.

Early Summer Pictures

 

The five-year old with his cake

"Now that I am five, we can do school tomorrow!"

James came to my 4th of July baseball game/concert/fireworks

Feeding some friends before they leave for Australia...

One of the things you can do when you leave for vacation is thaw a turkey in your empty fridge....

The hotel had a pool

Not what we planned for, but still a good adventure

"Hi seagull! I love you! And I hope one of you becomes my pet! Or a dog!"

Exploring the trolley trail

J testing out her beach hat

Netsin's run

Sprinkler weather

I still don't take it for granted when we do this and I don't have to put anyone in a swimmy diaper

Date night along the canal

Zoo trip

Picnic lunch with Mom at work

"Which Greek god do I look like?"

Reading about some more Greek gods

Adventurer

5/29 GPC Sermon

 

16 One day as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a female slave who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. 17 While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you[a] the way of salvation.” 18 She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour.

 

19 But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities. 20 When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, “These men, these Jews, are disturbing our city 21 and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us, being Romans, to adopt or observe.” 22 The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. 23 After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. 24 Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.

 

25 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. 26 Suddenly there was an earthquake so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken, and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened. 27 When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. 28 But Paul shouted in a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” 29 The jailer[b] called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. 30 Then he brought them outside and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” 31 They answered, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” 32 They spoke the word of the Lord[c] to him and to all who were in his house. 33 At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. 34 He brought them up into the house and set food before them, and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.

 

Tomorrow is Memorial Day. For many of us, as Christians, this Sunday morning before Memorial Day Monday can be uncomfortable. Last year I read a wonderful trilogy of books—Ian Toll’s history of the naval side of World War II in the Pacific Ocean. They were long books, detailing every major engagement with the planning, logistical, and strategic components that went into them. They were a sobering reminder of the human cost of warfare. What our country did to get through WWII—even just in one arena and in one branch of the service—was staggering. Ian Toll made me proud to be a part of my country’s history. The costs that were involved in our story have to be remembered and celebrated. How close that contest came—and what the consequences would have been had it turned out differently—must be passed down.

On the other hand…I was driving back across the city last week and my boys spotted the billboard on 490 offering prayers for the victims of the Buffalo shooting. Julie and I hadn’t talked about it with them yet. I tried, while driving, to explain to them what had happened and what it meant. They had questions, and they were good questions. Why did this man think it was okay to hate black people? Why was he able to get a gun? Why can’t the president just make guns illegal? Why can’t we change the laws so that the president can make guns illegal? How come people on the internet are allowed to say mean things about people with black skin? I didn’t have answers for their questions. And I didn’t have an answer when the Texas shooting happened this week.

There is something deeply wrong—something evil--in our country and with our way of living together that this could happen again and again…and part of our vocation as Christians is to challenge, to name that evil, and to try to be a part of its healing.

It's in this tension of loving our country and celebrating its heroes, and also calling out the deep and seemingly insoluble problems that are tied up with our culture and its structures of power, money, and justice, that a slave girl has a lesson for us. She’s called a paidiske. That can be an affectionate name for a child, or a term for an enslaved person, or a leering term for a prostitute. Whatever her actual name was, and wherever she came from, our story is going to start with her, and as you’ll see, there was something special about her. She had a gift.

First, a word about worldview and context. As a warning, this is going to be a long walk for a short lesson, but the context about slavery and superstition in 1^st century Rome is essential to getting into why the characters in our story act the way that they do. We are going to put ourselves in the sandals of the first century AD, and part of that world, as inconceivable as it is to us that this could ever be normal for any compassionate person…is slavery. To understand the anger of the Philippian men at Paul and Silas, remember that they grew up in a world with slaves, had never heard of a world without slaves, and probably had no conception of a world which wouldn’t have them. Like any piece of property, slaves had their prices—probably about 1,000 denarii for a “used” slave, with as little as 500 denarii for a slave in poor condition to as much as 6,000 denarii for an “unspoiled” female slave. That context is especially important later on. Using some very back of the envelope math, that converts to something like 5,000 modern dollars for the lowest end to 60,000 for a highly desirable woman. Or, in other words, the market for slaves was roughly analogous to our market for cars. And yes, we all should feel revolt at putting a number on a human being in the same way that we price an automobile. The only defense of that system is that anything else was unthinkable—just as it is unthinkable to us except as a passing fancy that our descendants might someday judge us for putting similar prices on pollutant-emitting internal combustion engine driven vehicles.

The second element of the Roman worldview that will help make sense of our own relationship, as Christians, to the secular state that we live in and love, is Roman superstition. If you went up to Brittania, which was a Roman colony by this point, you would hear stories of fairies in the woods. Most of the druids had been driven out of France by this point, but the assumption was that in these wild places—the colonies, the forests of Germany—there were ghosts and spirits. In the fens of Denmark people whispered stories that eventually were handed down and became the story of Beowulf. There were spirits in the trees, dark gods that lingered in the caves of the mountains—and even aside from the outright “magical” superstitions, there were mountain lions, wolves, wild boar, and creeping snakes.

It was a dangerous, uncertain, risky world to live in. And one of the ways that people held together and kept their sanity in this world—a world where gods were everywhere and not necessarily friendly to human affairs—was to engage constantly in what we would regard as superstitious nonsense.

This looks ridiculous through the lenses of our worldview, late Western modernity. Think about checking the weather. A lightning strike for us just means pulling our phones out. The storm is expected to last until 8 PM—easy, scientific knowledge. This way of ours of separating meaning in the natural world from our own lives would have been as unthinkable in the first century as their way of detaching humanity from slaves is to us.

The interpretation of superstitious beliefs, events, and (critically), the payment for those services in Ancient Rome was licensed and controlled by the Roman state, and it was done by professional seers.

Professional seers, whatever their rank and station, were not trying to read the future. Even though we use the word ‘fortune tellers’ in many translations, they were trying to figure out what the will of the gods was for a given course of action, or given a new event. Julius Caesar is on campaign in Gaul Should we attack on enemy tomorrow? Caesar would regularly put off battles because his augurs would make sacrifices and get unfavorable readings. That was enough to keep the army in camp for another day. Whether or not (and, in our scientific, late Western mindset, we know not) these readings actually showed the will of the gods for Caesar’s battle plan, the reading of the sacrifices was an important part, a public part—even the center of the corporate life of the camp. So even if Caesar wanted to press ahead, though he’d received an unfavorable omen, he couldn’t—because all of the soldiers under his command would know that something was wrong about the liver of the pigeon. This was an essential part of who this community was, not a private and individual action like looking up your horoscope or getting scratch off lottery-tickets with your phone number, but a public good, like a weather report, or an amber alert, or a road closure sign. It was called “taking auspices.” There were five ways that someone could take auspices:

1 Ex caelo. From heaven. This was watching the sky, usually trying to interpret lightning strikes and unusual weather events. The senate, for example, was not allowed to meet during lightning storms, and there were also bits of knowledge actually approaching meteorological science rather than bald superstition that were passed down through this method.

2 Ex avibus. From birds. Oscine birds gave augury by singing, and alites by flight. Eagles, vultures, ravens, and owls were birds of particular importance, and it was interpreting the meaning of unusual bird appearances or bird behavior that the lowly haruspices had their best chance at earning employment.

3 Ex tripudiis. By dances. This is my favorite type of augury, because it involves the sacred chickens. In this practice the will of the gods was determined by feeding the sacred chickens and watching them to see if they ate greedily or not. The emperor Tiberius once (to the scandal of all who were present) threw the sacred chickens overboard after they refused to eat while waiting for a favorable auspice on his home in Capri. The tripudium was especially important on military expeditions, and probably (this isn’t too much of a stretch to imagine) because chickens always eat greedily. One of the games that my brothers and I would play growing up—we always had a couple dozen chickens—was to throw a single cherry tomato into the coop and provide color commentary to the cherry tomato football game that followed. Chickens ALWAYS eat greedily.

4 Ex quadripedibus. By four-footed animals This method was unsanctioned for official state augury, but regarded as even more reliable because it was unofficial. Crossing paths with an animal in ancient times meant something, and the bigger and/or snakier, and/or more unusual the animal, the more important the auspice was. Our superstition of black cats crossing our paths is a fossil of this practice.

5 Ex diris or ex signis. By signs or marvels. Sneezing, stumbling, flames, funny noises. St. Elmo’s fire. Anything not readily classified above.

We are most concerned next with WHO could take these auspices, and we start with the lowest and most unreliable class of auspice takers—the haruspex, or the haruspices in the plural. Again, their job was discerning the will of the gods, not predicting what was actually going to happen. Haruspices had a professional union, but no official status with the Roman state. They were like mall security—reassuring to know that they were there, but if there was a problem you would definitely assume that the real police were going to be called right away, and that the guy in the mall security office was going to hand the situation over as soon as possible. As easy as it is to make fun of them, Roman society couldn’t function without haruspices, because you needed to take auspices for practically everything—from naming babies to taking boat trips to throwing parties—and to do it without a cheap, everyday option would be prohibitively expensive.

Official Roman state augurs, however, were trained, sanctioned, and better-trusted. Though not particularly well-paid or of exalted standing in Roman society, augurs were necessary for every public transaction. The historian Livy says that “by auspices this city was founded, with war and peace led by auspices, all military and private affairs conducted by auspices…” Critically here, there is a tension in the balance of power, because the professional augurs were needed to validate auspices, but they were actually taken by magistrates—that’s a military term, and the same word that we heard in the passage—and it was the magistrates themselves who were needed to the actual spectio (or watching) and nuntiatio (interpretation.) Our word “inauguration,” literally means the bringing in of an augur—you would never swear in a public official or start an academic term or a sporting event without first taking auspices.

So we have haruspices trying to read these signs, and then we have a whole college of augurs reading these signs. At this point I’m summarizing Cicero’s summary of the “science” of augury from On Divination, and here’s what he says next:

"Speaking now of natural divination, everybody knows the oracular responses which the Pythian Apollo gave to Croesus, to the Athenians, Spartans, Tegeans, Argives, and Corinthians. Chrysippus has collected a vast number of these responses, attested in every instance by abundant proof. But I pass them by as you know them well. I will urge only this much, however, in defense: the oracle at Delphi never would have been so much frequented, so famous, and so crowded with offerings from peoples and kings of every land, if all ages had not tested the truth of its prophecies.”

Cicero is describing the most famous and most prestigious form of divination in the ancient world—the Oracle at Delphi, the incarnate spirits of Apollo called the Pythians.

He’s actually defending the Pythians against the charge that they may have declined slightly in recent times, but it is clear that even in a slump the Pythia remains the “Harvard” of professional seers. There’s the Pythians, and then there’s everyone else that competes for 2^nd place.

There were a number of “pythian” women at any time living at Delphi. They were famous for giving their answers in verse, and for crafting them very cleverly in terms that could be interpreted several different ways. (Even though this wasn’t helpful for discerning the will of the gods, this was generally regarded as being inspired and impressive.) A pythia was bold and did actually predict the future. A pythia was trusted because she regularly got those predictions right. A pythia was frightening because she foamed at the mouth and looked possessed as she spoke. Coming face to face with the spirit of the pythia (generally regarded as the god Apollo speaking through someone’s voice) was an unsettling experience, but as valuable as a whispered stock market tip from Warren Buffett.

The slave girl in this passage, having the spirit of divination? Echoun pneuma puthona. She was a pythia. We talked earlier about the economic realities of slavery in the ancient world, and how slaves were similar in value to cars in the modern world. When Paul cast out the pythia spirit, he didn’t just wreck somebody’s car. This was like losing ownership of an NFL franchise. A pythia was the GOLD standard of augury in a world that required augury for everything. Their “hope of making money” wasn’t reading horoscopes for pennies—it was of making a life-changing fortune. Paul publicly made the pythia spirit go away—it was an unthinkable amount lost, for both her owners, and (keep in mind, the magistrates are needed to interpret the prophecies) the magistrates.

Now, note what happens when real money gets involved, because this is where we suddenly pivot back to something recognizable in the modern world. Those that stand to lose big strike back immediately, by stirring up resentment against Paul and Silas because they are of a different religion. A different race. A culture not our own—traditions we Romans are not allowed to practice. They circle the wagons of their own religious and political traditions and use fear-mongering to play on the worst instincts of the crowd. The owners of the slave-girl have Paul and Silas thrown in jail by the magistrates (who, keep in mind, are needed to interpret and announce any augury that happens in Philippi) and they are locked away.

And here is the lesson for us--they don’t resist, and when the doors to the jail burst open, they don’t walk out. When we challenge something that big, we stand in the abuse of our oppressors and we don’t resort to our own legal rights, but we take their hatred until they have spent their hate and we have saved them. This passage ends with the jailer bathing Paul and Silas in his home, in the waters of hospitality, and Paul and Silas bathe his household in the waters of baptism. This is a new kind of living, one that has never been seen in the world of the 1^st century. It is a way of living that needs to be seen in the 21^st century—Paul and Silas did not take a legal case to the Supreme Court to insist on their religious rights, and they did not publicly defy the authorities or form a political action committee. Now, Paul is shrewd, and he does do something like this at other times—even challenging the Philippian magistrates in the next chapter. But when it comes down to his own rights in setting things right for this slave girl, he is not a baker arguing for his religious rights to avoid making cakes for gay couples—he goes to prison, and loves his jailer until they are washing each other in the waters of forgiveness and healing.

This has always been a part of the Christian vocation, and as much as we’ve struggled in this country and in this time to find a nuanced and appropriate way of being proud children of our country and also honest critics of our country, there are examples that show us how to be citizens of Jesus’ Kingdom. In fact, there are modern Christians who have challenged institutions as massive, as unthinkably embedded, and as profitable as the office of the Delphic Pythia.

In 2012 Megan Rice, a Catholic nun, entered the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge Tennesee illegally to advocate for nuclear disarmament along with two fellow activists. She went to prison for this. She was 82 years old. She went to federal prison.  It wasn’t her first time. She also served two six month prison sentences for protesting at the US Army School of the Americas in Fort Benning Georgia, where she was arrested for demonstrating against the US Military torture instruction which had taken place there.

In 1917, a 20 year old woman was arrested for picketing the White House on behalf of women’s suffrage. She went to jail, and would be imprisoned four more times for protesting against nuclear proliferation. Her name was Dorothy Day.

But perhaps the best known story, my favorite, and the one that we’re going to sing about momentarily, is the story of John Newton. The captain of a slave ship, Newton became a Christian aboard the HMS Greyhound in a severe storm. He read the Bible and decided to swear off profanity, gambling, and drinking. No one minded that. He also decided to devote the rest of his life to bringing down an institution that was massively profitable, and without which the world seemed unable to function properly. He became an abolitionist and took on the slave trade. He never went to prison. But he did both love his country and challenge his country’s deepest flaws.

May God give us the amazing grace to suffer on behalf of the slave girls, and on behalf of our country, until its deepest, most embedded, and unthinkably cruel faults have been cast out in the name of Jesus’ kingship, and we are being washed by and washing those who fought us the hardest. Alleluia, Amen.

Reasons I Am Lucky

 

Cappuccinos and Latin with James

Felix playing Hot Cross Buns

A big brother who likes to read stories to the littles

A gorgeous wife

Seriously, living with someone so pretty that you can't get used to it

Special access at ballgames

Chances to look really cool in front of your kids

Good food after long runs

New spring wardrobes

Mario Kart

 R: Explain, for your grandparents, who don't play video games...what is Mario Kart?

Owen: Well, Mario Kart is GREAT kind of game on the Wii, which is like a screen filled of games you can play. And you drive a car or a motorcycle or a lot of other things, and it's really fun.

R: What makes it so fun?

Owen: I really think it's fun because you're driving this kart, and it's like you're trying to get as much points as you can to win a cup, and it's really fun for another reason but I can't figure it out. Maybe it's a spirit.

R: What makes Mario Kart more fun than racing hot wheels cars around in your room?

Owen: Well you actually are racing, but you're doing it on the screen, not on the floor, and you don't have to hear wheels scratching and you don't have to heart plastic scratching sometimes.

R: What makes it more fun than other video games you've played?

Owen: I don't know.

R: How much do you love Mario Kart?

Owen: VERY MUCH!

R: If I offered you no dinner, but an extra hour of Mario Kart, which would you take?

Owen: Mario Kart.

R: If I said you could play an extra round of Mario Kart for all of the money in your bank account, would you do it?

Owen: Well...it depends on what I have.

R: You have $73

Owen: I meant if I already buyed enough things for me to give all my other money to you.

R: What is your favorite part of the races?

Owen: Well, my favorite part of the races is actually probably bonking off other racers' cars.

R: What makes that so much fun?

Owen: I don't know.

R: Who do you like to play as, and which race courses do you like?

Owen: Well my top three favorites are Luigi Circuit, Mushroom Gorge, and Peach Gardens.

R: I thought you didn't like mushrooms. You won't eat anything that has mushrooms in it.

Owen: You forgot that I said "SCREEN."

R: Why do you like Peach Gardens?

Owen: Well there are these big, black things that I think that are supposed to represent dogs, that I think most people think they are supposed to represent dogs, but I call them chompers.

R: And why do you like chompers?

Owen: Well, they're active. And they can be really fun to dodge.

R: Do you think that playing Mario Kart will make you a better driver when you are old enough to drive a car?

Owen: Maybe. 

R: Why?

Owen: Well, come to think of it, driving is a car is almost like driving a Mario Kart car, too.

R: How do you drive a Mario Kart car. Keep in mind, your grandparents have probably never played a Wii. They might not even know what it is.

Owen: Well, um...ugvhgh, Dad...mmm...it's like, it's like...<Dad!> hm hm! It's like you're driving a car, except the circle is a small rectangle and your gas pedal is a button on the steering wheel.

R: What about stop signs, turn signals, right of way, changing lanes, etc.?

Owen: Nope, nope, nope, nope.

R: There are no stop signs in Mario Kart?

Owen: You have signs. And I mean, like track signs. Not like sign signs. 

R: Are there obstacles or dangers in the road that you need to be aware of?

Owen: Did you remember the chompers? Well, and when you play this let me give you advice. Follow the track. Oh, and you should probably play the Mushroom Cup first.

R: Felix, do you enjoy playing Mario Kart?

Felix: Mm-hmm!!

R: Why do you like it?

Felix: Because there's so much fun when it's like driving a real car! And there's NOT much buttons on it.

R: Are you good at it?

Felix: I am good at it. But I always don't finish.

R: What are your favorite things about Mario Kart?

Felix: That it's really, really fun, and that you get to steer the kart in person and there's a chair, but not a chair at the table. <giggles>

R: Which character are you?

Felix: Baby Peach! And also a lot of guys. I also be Bowser. Sometimes, or Koopa Troopa.

R: Grandma and Grandpa probably don't know who Bowser or Koopa Troopa are...can you explain who they are? 

Felix: Bowser and Koopa Troopa are not really friends. Bowser is like a dragon, but he's a character in Mario Kart who has spikes on his back but can only roar. Koopa Troopa, she's a turtle and well, she's pretty small with a weird bike called a bullet bike.

R: What is hard about Mario Kart?

Felix: That there's lots of dangerous stuff, like guns and chompers. But, I really like the good thing is that it's very easy. Actually, sometimes it hard. Because you have to stay on the track. If you go into the grass, you'll go...so that's not on the track. And sometimes they do two paths, and you can go somewhere

R: What does Big George think of Mario Kart?

Felix: Big George...well, he can't really play Mario Kart. But he still thinks it's impressive, and fun. He would say.

R: In your own words, as if explaining to Grandma and Grandpa, who maybe don't know about Mario Kart, why do you like it?

James: Well, it's one of the few video games that I'm good at now. And I think it's kind of fun steering a car around some tracks.

R: Would it be as much fun if you played it by yourself without your brothers?

James: It might be nice. But chances are that may not happen anytime soon. Owen thinks we should all take turns getting a turn at playing full screen. But I don't agree with that.

R: Can you explain what full screen is to those who may not know?

James: You get a choice in Mario Kart about playing one to four players. We usually play three players. 

R: How likely do you think it is that you guys will get to keep playing Mario Kart now that we are getting healthy again and have to do our regular amount of school and work?

James: I just hope that we can get some nights off, because I've grown in playing all of this, and fortunately summer is coming up and that will make it more of a chance to play Mario Kart because hopefully we'll have some school off and Mommy and Daddy will be on break on jobs.

R: Don't you want to keep on doing school for as long as possible through the summer?

James: No.

R: Don't you love learning?

James: That depends on what it is.

R: Practicing declensions is probably your favorite thing to learn?

James: No.

R: Your favorite school right now is...?

James: Perhaps dictation. Or...something else.

COVID

 We got COVID. 

The call came in on a Wednesday afternoon between orchestra services. I was in a coffee shop getting some church work done when J messaged with the news that she had been feeling cruddy, taken a test, and found the second line at the T. We were shutting everything down.

It was complicated for me. I had to somehow get back into the hall and retrieve my lunchbox and my trumpets without exposing anyone else, make sure that I left all of my music for upcoming services, and also wait around to give a (masked) ride home to the violinist who had carpooled with me from Rochester. 

I spent the next few hours sitting in the parking lot (waiting for her to get out of rehearsal) sending emails to students, personnel managers, pastors, etc. The Smiths would be unavailable for 10 days. After the initial shock of it wore off, I actually began to look forward to the time a little bit. As long as no one got too sick, we were going to have some time without travel. We could catch up on the homeschool (read: Science Labs) that we were behind in, read books, drink soup, and finish writing Easter music. We could even clean the house. We could clean it thoroughly--as in wiping all the dust of the fan blades thoroughly. Once I was done with my emails, I made a couple of lists.

The first order of business was to stop for supplies, and that meant getting groceries, wine, and doing a Lowe's run. I had broken the pull-string on our bedroom closet light a few days before, and picked up a replacement socket, new bulbs, batteries, pea gravel, and caulk. I even picked up one of those $20 electricity testers, because why not make doubly sure that you are not going to get electrocuted when doing a bit of minor rewiring? The only things I couldn't find in my initial supply run were plumber's putty at Lowe's and COVID tests at Wegman's.

J's first 48 hours were pretty brutal. She pretty much stayed in bed, and I got the kids through homeschool and meals. Our friends and family must not have much faith in my cooking ability, because we had a lot of takeout delivered to our door when the news got out that J was down. (Thanks for the pizzas, everyone!)

Then the kids started to get sick--James first, and then Felix. It was difficult for James, who lost his voice, to strike a balance between being too sick to finish the rest of his school but healthy enough to play Mario Kart with Owen.

I, in the meantime, got to work. I hired a trombone player for Easter, put away three weeks' worth of laundry piles, wrote an Easter introit, paid bills, did dishes, and scrubbed the upstairs bathroom from top to bottom. It was filthy, and I cleaned every inch of it--I recaulked the toilet and the tub, I cleaned the grout, I wiped out the shelves of the medicine cabinet.

Our tub has always drained slowly, and I wondered about trying to clear out some of the gunk in the waste line that Draino wasn't able to take care of. There is a little access door to the tub trap in James' closet, so I made my way into his room and tried to make sense of the pipes. It wasn't terribly difficult to get the PVC apart and to get into the cast iron pipe, and when I did I pulled out several enormous loads of grit, hair, and who knows what else. 

"Hooray!" I thought "Now our tub will drain. What an easy job that I have just completed!"

And then I attempted to reassemble the tub drain. And that was where things went downhill.

I started at the tub end first, and then I couldn't get the drain to connect to the cast iron pipe. So I took it all apart, started at the pipe end, and then couldn't get the PVC pipe to hook back up to the tub. I took it all apart again.

I should mention, by the way, that working in James' closet is not very easy. The floor is coated with about 4,000 LEGOS, and our summer clothes are hanging down directly over you. There is very little room to maneuver in the opening itself, and the piping is jammed up directly against the wall, so you can only get at it from one angle.

Finally, I had the trap back together, and it looked like I only had one more connection to make, which was just a little off-center. I pulled on the pipe to get the two ends to meet.

Snap.

Something gave in a way that I could tell, right away, it was not supposed to give. The PVC hadn't broken, but the main drain pipe had come unsealed from the tub. I took a look. This was not good.

Resealing it, of course, would require plumber's putty. The one thing I didn't get on my list at Lowe's. Also, this was going to require another set of hands. My wife was sick with the plague, and I couldn't have any friends over to help while we were quarantined. As a matter of fact, I couldn't even pull the emergency chute of calling a professional plumber while we were quarantined.

I confessed what I had done to J ("Why were you working on this?" "Nothing was broken and you took it apart anyway?" "When can we take showers again?") and she very gamely tried to help me get the drain flange screwed in again with bare hands and a screwdriver. Things looked grim. 

I should probably mention that at this point we already were both several days past needing a shower and a fresh set of clothes. I googled whether you could check into a hotel room while you were supposed to be quarantining. 

We kept on trying to get the flange to catch the threads of the pipe underneath, and it was difficult to tell what was happening with the two pieces, or how tightly we were getting it sealed. Periodically we would run some water in the tub to see if we'd made a seal yet, and the space under trap was getting rather damp. I reached in again to feel in the dark for the seal and

ZAP

I wasn't expecting to get a shock during a plumbing project (I even bought the safety equipment for this!), but it turns out that there is a wire running to one of the kitchen lights under the bathtub, and that this light was on while we were working upstairs. I went to the kitchen and found water dripping steadily from the light fixture over the sink.

Botheration.

My friend Joe ended up putting some plumber's putty and a special drain wrench in a bag on his porch, and I picked them up and brought them home. We never did get a good seal with the plumber's putty, but I managed to seal the drain flange with silicone caulk, and that seal has held through two days and three showers. The bathroom is now a spectacular mess from all of the tools and gunk and trudging in and out, and the tub doesn't drain any faster than it did before.

I keep checking to make sure that nothing was leaking every time someone used the tub and I did find a drip of water under one of the PVC seals further down the trap.

"Not a problem," I said to myself "I have purple primer and PVC cement in the basement."

I brough the primer up to James' closet and reimprinted some LEGO marks on my knees this afternoon. I got everything all coated up, and then opened the cement to find that it had turned into gelatin.

If anyone is out there and willing to save us, please send scotch and moist towelettes.