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.

Felix

 We have been reading old blogs at the dinner table, and there are dozens of entertaining old James stories. James was the first, you see, so we wrote about him a lot. 

There are also dozens of entertaining Owen stories, because even though Owen wasn't the firstborn child, he definitely was (and is) the very Owenest. The child demands to be quoted.

There aren't enough Felix blogs. Felix is content to do his own thing. A few days ago, for example, he taught himself how to ride a bike with training wheels. And when I say he taught himself, I mean that he went outside completely independently (we were working on school with the older two), managed to get his helmet on, and figured out how to work the pedals, which had been a source of frustration to him the day before. We learned that Felix knew how to ride a bike because someone happened to look out the window and notice that he was biking up and down the sidewalk. ("Felix, come inside! You aren't allowed to be out in the front without a grown-up.")

He is a mix of baby and big kid at four and a half years old. He still sucks his fingers, snuggles his George, and requires a daily "neck hug." But he also initiates conversations with unknown adults about which greek gods and goddesses they prefer, asks for prayers for endangered animals in church, and routinely solves his older brothers' math problems when they talk them through out loud.

His intestinal tract is in perpetual crisis. He denies that anything is ever wrong, and we fear to go out without a change of clothes still.

He barters in the complex currency of football cards, desirable LEGO pieces, helmets, and hockey pucks. He's been taken advantage of early and often by his big brothers, and this has taught him to drive a hard bargain and to make sure that an adult witnesses the transaction. I wonder if he might end up in finance. 

His head is still comically enormous for the rest of his body, although he's grown into it a good deal since his toddler phase. He pull 4T and 5T shirts over the thing without requiring grown-up help, and he routinely does. It isn't unusual to find him wearing 3-4 layers of shirts (he remembers about his football jersey or Lightning McQueen shirt, and just pulls it on over whatever he's already wearing) and 6-7 socks per foot.

He eats so slowly that sometimes he doesn't finish his breakfast until we are clearing the table to put out lunch. ("I'm going to still eat my oatmeal, just leave it out.")

He doesn't get as many stories read aloud to him as his older brothers did at his age, but he memorizes what he does hear in only two readings. ("The picadores were afraid, and the matador was scared stiff!")

He looks huge when you are with him in the house alone all day, but when you see him in a grocery cart at Wegmans you realize what a little guy he still is. His little years are coming to an end soon--he'll be in Kindergarten in the fall. He's been a treasure, especially since we've known he's our last one.

He is a good kid.

Phone part 2

 Duolingo, or "Baby Owl," as it is known to the boys, is the one app on my phone that they are regularly allowed to play with. I am strongly considering getting them an iPad just so that they can't make off with my phone every time I'm home doing school with them. James has an account to learn Latin, and Owen is theoretically learning Spanish. It's hard to make much progress when the only aural practice you get is on a little phone speaker with a math lesson competing in the background, but at least he's learning to pay attention to grammar and that there might be different words for the same thing in the world. My own Duolingo account I use mostly to practice French (which I do every day) and recently Modern Greek, which I've also been good about keeping up with on a regular basis. I finished the Latin course a long time ago, and wish that they would add more onto it. (It only had two main "trees," so there wasn't a whole lot of course to do.) I've also made a stab at the Modern Hebrew course and the Arabic, but haven't touched either in a long time. The French is good practice, though, and I'm currently keeping up a 1000+day streak. Some of it is incredibly useful practice (conjugating verbs in all of their different forms, practice de/du rules) and some of it is ludicrously useless. (Je vais acheter un helicoptere rose)

The next app is OverDrive, which is my link to Kindle and Audiobooks. I have an account through the Monroe County Public Library System and also (thanks to either Martha or Calvin, I don't remember which) the New York Public Library System, which is open to residents of the entire state. Listening to Audiobooks has been a relatively recent development for me, and there are certain books (like Chernow biographies) that I wouldn't go near on an audiobook. My favorite books to listen to are ones that I already know and want to internalize even further, or good mysteries. I am listening to To Kill a Mockingbird on my drives right now, and then will keep on going through the Lord Peter Wimsey and Hercule Poirot stories once that's finished.

A recently unused app (I've gotten away from using it for my warmup) is Seconds, an interval timer that is theoretically designed for athletes to exercise with, but that I repurposed for trumpet practicing. Every couple of months I write something on a post-it note in thick capital letters and stick it to my stand in the basement. It's always some variation of "You're playing too loud, shut up!" or "Take your time, idiot. Rest more often and don't spend your whole hour with the mouthpiece screwed into your teeth." Sometimes, when the piccolo trumpet is involved, the language is even stronger. The Seconds app, like these post it notes, is an attempt to save myself from my own worst instincts. It beeps insistently at me every 6-8 minutes and forces me to rest. But then again, I have to actually turn it on, which I haven't been recently. Might be time for another post-it note...

Our bank app (we are with M&T) is next, which is pretty boring, except that now whenever I login I can see the boy's savings account totals as well. In a perverse twist of fate, it's possible to transfer money from our main account into their savings accounts, but when they "owe" us money I have to actually go to a bank and fill out a physical form. Owen still owes us $13.25.

I keep eBay in business. I'd like to think that I break even with buying mouthpieces, because I sell a lot of mouthpieces too. But eBay does pretty well preying on the eternal optimism of trumpet players who think "if I could just get this but with a flatter rim or with a little bit bigger backbore." Here is my complete list of "saved" eBay searches. (I get a notification every time a new item in one of these comes up) 

Bach 25A C Trumpet (it's a rare leadpipe configuration that I'd love to have on a spare C trumpet. Yes, if my wife is reading this, I know that I only need one C trumpet)

Bach 7DW (piccolo mouthpiece)

Bach 7E (piccolo mouthpiece)

Bach 7EW (piccolo mouthpiece)

Bach Artisan Piccolo Trumpet

Bach ML Bore C Trumpet (I don't think I'd buy one of these...but it's nice to keep an eye open)

Balibaris Trench (I tried one of these coats on at a men's clothier in Paris and loved it, but it cost 500 euros brand new...)

Buffalo Bills Lapel Pin (Go Bills)

Cornet Underpart (possibly to build a hybrid piccolo mouthpiece with)

Curry 1.5 Mouthpiece (the rim combination for my regular mouthpiece)

Curry 7 Trumpet Mouthpiece (for high notes)

Curry 7P cornet (I actually have one of these...I should delete this search)

Curry 8.5P (piccolo trumpet mouthpiece)

Getzen 3810 Cornet (I don't have a C cornet...)

J Crew 38R slim (It's nice to get a new jacket)

J Crew 38R White Tuxedo (The white tux that I've had since my first RPO gig is way too big)

Ludlow Dinner Jacket 38R (Another name for the same search as above)

Malacca Walking Stick 

Parkhurst Boots 11

Schilke G Trumpet (Would just be fun to own)

Severinsen Akright Bel Canto (This is the trumpet that Maurice Murphy recorded the Star Wars movies on)

Youtube is the next app on my phone. Current video history: Josh Allen Stiff Arming/Trucking people; an Aebersold backing track to On the Sunny Side of the Street (this is like jazz karaoke--it's a combo playing the chord changes so that you can practice improvising over it), A Last Week Tonight episode, then about 10 games worth of highlights that the boys watched on a Monday evening while I was practicing in the basement and J was out teaching.

BPM is a great app, although it only has one use. You tap the screen, and it gives you exactly the beats per minute that you are tapping. It's like a reverse metronome. You can use it to figure out how fast something is going that you don't have an exact marking for. (It's great for settling arguments)

SPQR is my Latin dictionary app, and the right below it is my Ancient Greek Dictionary (just called Ancient Greek) which is by the same developer. Both apps come with some vocabulary cards and texts, but are mostly useful just as straightforward dicionaries.

Keeper is our password app. It's annoying in that it flashes an upgrade screen to you every time you log in, but it does store all of our passwords securely, and J and I can pool our info in the same place.

Quizlet is a flashcards app that I love. This is another reason why we are thinking about an iPad for the boys. I currently have decks to review of Ancient Greek particle rules, Taxonomic names of animals, Cocktails by ingredients, Ancient Greek preposition rules, Capitals of Canadian provinces, countries of the world by map identification, etc...

The last app on my front screen is the HondaLink app, which is completely useless. I thought, when I downloaded it, that I'd be able to see my fuel efficiency and other driving data. It turns out that those features are only for hybrid vehicles. I need to delete the app.

Bonus story: Owen was driving everyone nuts and generally entertaining himself by being obnoxious when he declared that he was now big enough to fight me and win. J asked me to please fight him. I came in from the other room and told him, "I'm going to enjoy this." Sensing his mistake, he tried to run away. I picked him up, pinned his arms behind him, and sat on him. Then I tickled him until he couldn't breathe and begged for mercy. As soon as I stood up he scrambled over to the stairs and yelled, "I won! I beat Dad! I mean, it was at least a tie!"

My Phone

 I don’t know if you can tell a lot about a person by how their phone is organized, but I think that there is at least one useful rule for snap phone judgments: The person who has a red bubble alert for 1,000 (or 10,000) unread mail messages probably does not get their library books back on time.

Going from the top left corner, my phone starts with my mail app. (I don’t have it in ‘permanent’ bottom row, and I don’t ever have 1,000 unread messages.) My email address is the first bit of evidence in the growing case that I am becoming an old man. I’ve had a yahoo email address for years, and that’s already bad news—maybe not quite as bad as a Hotmail or an AOL address, but still not a young person’s mail server. But it isn’t just that I have yahoo mail, it’s that I can’t figure out how to use any other mail platforms easily. Each of my university jobs has tried to set me up with a gmail-hosted school email address, and I invariably send emails before I’m done writing them by hitting enter, or being unable to find something that I flagged for later. The big downside to using the yahoo account (which I know) is that some servers automatically flag it as spam, which gives my college students a ready-made excuse to pretend that they never received the emails telling them when they were supposed to have their lesson or what they were supposed to be practicing. It may be an old man’s email, but it’s the email I know.

 

Next up is the calendar. This is the app that makes it possible for J and I to be married to each other, because there is automatic sharing. This app is also the arbiter of all final misfires about scheduling problems. (Did you put your gig in the calendar? If I can’t see it in the calendar, you don’t have a gig.) Looking at the calendar is how we know how many babysitters we need. (Answer: A lot of babysitters.) If you know of any more babysitters, please tell us. We’ll pay them really well if they can drive themselves here. None of our kids even poop their pants anymore. At least not very often.

 

The next app over is photos. I’m always telling myself that I should take more photos of the kids or more photos of J, but my camera roll is actually full of boring things like photos of weekly rehearsal sheets or of lesson plans for the kids that I didn’t want to write out twice. Out of curiosity in writing this I opened up my photo library and noticed that I had 83 selfies. I think I’ve owned a smartphone for about 10 years now, and there is no way that I’ve taken 83 selfies. I investigated, and there were about 80 photos from when one of the kids (mostly Owen) got ahold of my phone and took photos of himself making faces at it, and three great selfies (that I did take) of me with J in a two-piece that she’ll probably never let me post online, even though (or possibly because) she looks really hot.

 

The last app in my top row is the camera, which is apparently (as evidenced by the rest of my camera roll) mostly used for taking videos of myself practicing in the basement. That camera has seen a lot of etudes. It is yet to record me throwing the trumpet against the basement wall in frustration, although we’ve come close a few times.

 

The Weather app is up next. This time of year you only get bad news. My saved weather places are Syracuse, Buffalo, Rochester, Paris, Marrakech, Toronto, and Rehoboth Beach. Any one of the last four options sounds spectacular right now. (It is only 19 Fahrenheit in Toronto as of my writing this, but I’d still be down for a Canada trip)

 

The Settings app is a chance for Apple to try to make some money off of me, because they can perpetually remind me with a little red pop-up bubble that my iPhone hasn’t been backed up in 20 weeks. (And that my iPhone can only be backed up when it is connected to power.) I’ve fiddled with my iCloud settings enough to squeeze out some extra backups, but I think that I’d need to delete all of my message history to actually accomplish another backup. Or I could pay $12 for a little bit more storage…but it feels like that would be a moral failing.

The next app is my first non-Apple application—a practice tracking app called Andante. It’s pretty bare bones, but it times your practice sessions throughout the day and also keeps stats. There is a simple recorder, metronome, and notes app built in. I can see from the app that I’ve been playing the trumpet for an average of 3 hours and 14 minutes each day this week, and I can look back and see what I did during each session. It’s the sort of app that I’m tempted to require my students to buy, but I don’t want to encourage them to lie to me any more than they already do.

Next up is the notes app, which is one of the best features of my iPhone. I think that it’s worth having a smartphone just to keep a list of all of your employer’s addresses, phone numbers, and EIN numbers. (I did our 2021 taxes today, so it’s on the brain.) Here’s a sampling of some of my notes: A saved pdf of the mileage form for Houghton College, a saved pdf of my vaccine card, a list of all of the terrible things that happened to our cars from November to January of this year that I was going to turn into a blog but decided was too whiny/depressing, a list of LOC call numbers of rare books to look for whenever I’m in a public library, a list of gift ideas for my wife, a shopping list from July of 2021 (I guess I can delete that), the original sketch of repertoire ideas for our movie music recital, a page of quotes from the kids that I thought I would turn into a blog at some point and never got around to.

Owen, standing on the beach at Lake Ontario: “Is there a lot of mud here at Lake Ontario?”

Me: “Yes.”

Owen: “Nuts.” Whispers to himself  “Stingrays…”

 

James, pacing close to me then walking away, then pacing up again, and walking away again. Finally working up the nerve to ask: “How do you say ‘goo’ in Latin?”

 

Felix, sagely: “Know something that’s cool? Birds are airplanes. BUT…airplanes are birds.”

 

I also have a note reminding me of where we keep our spare key. (It’s a secret), a list of movies that we want to see at some point, a list of donations that we made to a Goodwill in 2020 for tax purposes (I guess I can delete that now), a sketch for a trumpet method book that I could write (an update to the Arban “Art of Phrasing” using modern music, our travel bucket list (Scotland, Morocco, Maine, New York, Montreal, Key Largo, Boston, Greece, France again), a list of our regular babysitters and babysitter ideas, a list of Flock of Uncles repertoire to try, the police report number from when Owen scratched up an SUV, a different note reminding me of where we kept our previous spare key before I looked for it and couldn’t find it when we were locked out of the house (I guess that can be deleted now), a list of the scientific names of several species of lily, and the measurements several windows around our house.

 

In a similar vein, the Reminders app is incredibly useful. I currently have overdue reminders to clean out my trumpets (I try to do this once a month), to write a Valentine’s day card to J, to clean the kid’s room, and to publish a blog. (I’m about to check that one off). The reminder to clean the bathrooms is going to go off tomorrow. I get a reminder to clean them once every two weeks, alternating with cleaning the kid’s rooms. I don’t feel guilty about whatever state they are in until I get the reminder. (I’m probably going to feel guilty tomorrow, because I don’t think there is any way that either the bathrooms or Owen and Felix’s room is going to be clean by the end of the day.) I also have stored future reminders to submit the boy’s 3^rd and 4^th quarter homeschool reports, to write to various grandparents, and to check to see if a pair of boots that I’d like are back in stock.

 

Yet another listing app is Clear, which one of my teaching colleagues introduced me to back when I worked at LCS. Clear is great, mostly just because it’s a very satisfying swiping motion when you cross things off of your to-do list. There is some redundancy with the Notes app, but I have 16 lists on my Clear app in various stages of completion. There’s the main “To-Do” list, which has mundane stuff like sending out my teaching schedule and answering various emails, and then there’s “Stocking Stuffers for J” (I guess that can be deleted), “Winter 2022 projects, “IKEA” (we are hoping to make a first-ever pilgrimage sometime this year and are looking for kitchen storage) “Date Ideas,” “Sacred Music Projects,” “Things to look up on Youtube,” (what does just v. even temperament actually sound like on a piano, how can I do a better job of wrapping presents?) “Things to look for in Libraries,” “Things to do with the Boys” (swimming lessons, an aquarium visit, making a pinata, etc.), “Trumpet Ideas,” “Household Projects,” “Long Term Expenses,” and “Blogging Ideas.” (That folder is empty most of the time.)

 

The last app for now is TE tuner, which is absolutely the best 4.99 I ever spent. Not only is it a great tuner, but you can adjust it to several different intonation systems and set the key signature, then slow down your playback so that you see exactly which notes are flat and sharp within the key that you’re working in. (Unfortunately, the tuner only ever has bad news for me. Slow, sad, out of tunes.) This one I DO make my students buy. As a slight consolation for all of us who struggle against the trumpet, the app gives you a green smiley face when you happen (by some strange coincidence) to hit a note in tune.

 

I had intended to write about all of the apps on my phone, and I’m only through the first quarter of them! It turns out that this was a more fertile idea that I had initially thought. Part 2 coming sometime soon…