Things Literary

I.
It's time for some translations of the Patristics into modern English. Calvus, do you have any recommendations for recent translators? Currently reading some Gregory Thaumaturgus and the translator (pace to any of his descendants) is so stuck in the conventions of the 19th century that he makes the Greek almost unreadable. (I don't have an actual copy of the Greek text, I'm just looking at through the excessive footnotes.)

II.
As difficult as it is to read the Patristics in high 19th century literary scholarly English, George MacDonald can make the same sort of language interesting and perfectly accessible. There are still just as many thous, thereafters, and therebys, but they are all strung together with a natural cadence suited to reading aloud and perfectly intelligible. In fact, I'm enjoying listening to Phantastes much more than I enjoyed reading it as an undergraduate.

III.
I ordered Evelyn Waugh's Scoop on Amazon and am almost finished with Officers and Gentlemen, the second book of the Sword of Honour series. I think it was Orwell that made a derogatory remark about "great writers who converted to Roman Catholicism and then could talk about nothing else." Just like Chesterton, Waugh doesn't seem to be able to write anything without including a tortured commentary on the joys and difficulties of being a Catholic, somehow separated from the rest of the world, within the story.

IV.
Speaking of early 20th cenutry English Catholics, I've been listening to Hillaire Belloc's History of the French Revolution, which is one of those many subjects which are immensely important in the history of the world and which I know next to nothing about. So far the book has been pleasant listening, and the most interesting nugget I've taken away is the idea that the Revolution (and the ensuing struggle with the other powers of Europe) was the first major international conflict fought over abstract ideals. (Although I think Belloc would be quick to admit that it was fought for other supplemental reasons as well.)

V.
Hektor venturing out to meet Achilleus, then turning to run beside the two heads of the Scamander. After years and years of reading, I just have a few hundred verses left in the Iliad.

VI.
Perseus turning the wedding guests to stone with the head of Medusa after rescuing Andromeda.

A Parable

Once upon a time there was a husband and a wife, and they went to a grand party. This husband and wife neither lacked for food and clothing, nor did they have much in the way of riches, for they both were honest workers.

At the party there was much fine food and drink, and the host offered up many splendid games. The last game of all was for a prize of wondrous worth, a diamond of exceptional size and beauty placed upon a velvet cushion. What should happen but that the husband chanced to win the game, and the diamond was brought to them.

Immediately the wife was overjoyed and kissed her husband, for she thought of how fine she would look with such a beautiful diamond set in a ring or in a necklace with her in her most beautiful clothes. Her husband was also overjoyed, for he thought of selling the diamond and paying off their lenders or of making some investment with the money.

Well, they went home that night and their joy was soon spoiled when they began to talk of what they should do with the diamond. They fell into a quarrel, and when they went to bed that night each was angry with the other, although the wife consoled herself by thinking of the diamond on her finger, and the husband consoled himself by thinking of the fat bag of coins the diamond would bring.

They quarreled again in the morning, and again the next morning after that. Soon the wife could hardly but look at the diamond without her heart rising in spite at her husband, who would deny her the first truly fine thing that had come her way all so that he could faster pay off some banker. The husband could neither look at the diamond without thinking of the waste his wife would make of their good fortune, especially since she already had several precious rings, and even an old family diamond of her own, albeit of a much smaller and duller cut.

They placed the diamond in a box and put it on a high shelf out of their sight and reach, but the thought of the fine ring and the bag full of coins gnawed inside both their hearts, and their table and bed were no longer happy as before. Both wished that the diamond had never been won, but neither could they go back to the time before it was in their house, even though they no longer even looked at the stone.

In the end, the wife relented and told her husband to sell the stone to a jeweler. He paid his debts and still had money left over, but no gift that he could make his wife would assuage her bitterness, and he also was bitter, for he knew that always she looked at her old finery with disdain and thought of the diamond that had been gained and lost.



This is actually a true story that I heard about on a Freakonomics podcast, explained there in terms of "the dangers of a windfall" in intimate relationships. You can tell this sort of story using the language of scarcity, incentive, and cost. The economic lesson seems to be that when a couple unexpectedly has the means to improve felt but previously impossible needs in an either/or scenario, it puts extreme pressure on a relationship to discover how differently each partner perceives the value of a given opportunity.

We know all about this. The hardest times in our marriage came from the best phone call I ever received. Our prize diamond led to our darkest days, and apparently that's sort of normal.

At any rate, I highly recommend the podcast. For the record, here's the diamond:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/FREAKONOMICS-CHARITY-DIAMOND-1-000ct-F-GIA-Princess-VS2-/121623148342?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c514df736

In Praise of Hamways

It's awfully nice to know that you're dropping your child off with people who love him dearly and who he loves so much that he won't even want to get in the car with you when you pick him up. And I'm not even talking about his grandparents.

James spent Monday with our young-parents-with-two-kids friends while I was stuck in the (opera) Pit of Despair. He didn't want to get in the car when I came to pick him up.

That's because he was with his best friend, Alexa. We originally met the H-ways because Alexa needed a sitter, and J was recommended. She wasn't particularly fond of us at 11 months old, but she and James learned to play together even before they could walk, and she has become his favorite friend in the whole world. Consider: She is only person to whom he will voluntarily hand over Steven Bear. (This is some sort of ritual with them, as soon as he comes into her house) From there, they carry on a program of running through the house pushing a trolley (shopping cart) and stroller as fast as they can while giggling at each other and achieving the sort of happiness that is only attainable to a three year old with their best friend.

But we don't just love Alexa. We love Mom H, who is one of J's musical colleagues, a fellow Anne of Green Gables enthusiast, and her most regular texting corrrespondent. And we love Dad H, who is one of the friendliest fellows you'll ever meet, was enormous help to us in the purchase and settling of our house, and is such a good Dad to his two kids that it makes you smile just to watch him with them. And, of course, we love little Lachie, who isn't quite fast enough to keep up with James and Alexa as they whirl through the downstairs, but has finally shown some signs of warming up to me after a frosty first year of screaming whenever he saw me.

They have a beautiful home about two miles down the road from us, and it's James' favorite place to visit. No matter how many times we've told him we're going to visit an aunt or an uncle, if we start a conversation by asking "Do you remember where we're going today?" he'll always give a hopeful answer of "Alexa's house?" And once we're there, he and his partner in crime start to immediately raise the conspiratorial chorus of "Can we stay for lunch? Can we stay for nap? Can we stay for dinner? Can we spend the night?"

And usually we would like to stay for lunch and nap. The company is funny, gracious, and relaxing. They eat great food, they ask interesting questions, and tell hilarious stories. In short, they're exactly the sort of grown-ups that we'd like to be. (When we grow up)

And they're exactly the sort of people that you feel great about when you drop off your little bear for the day. Apparently he jumped on the trampoline, messed about at the water table, and played a Princess board game with Alexa multiple times. But he forgot to tell her about hockey, so he wants to go back tomorrow and tell her about it, so he says.

Hockey

I feel good about going out to sporting events. It makes me feel like I'm actually participating in the social and cultural life that couldn't be found anywhere outside of Rochester, unlike staying at home and reading with a glass of wine. So far this year I've been to a basketball, hockey, and baseball game. Going to a football game will mean I've hit all four major sports, and James has already told me he wants to go.

We went with Pax, and it was typically difficult to get parked, get tickets, and negotiate the mass of humanity to get to our seats. James was immediately engrossed in the game. He found the puck (or, "hockey ball" as he called it) right away, and had no problem following the action of the "teams." I bought him a cracker jack at point, and then a white hot after he was brave enough to use one of the Arena's toilets. (Thank goodness for family restrooms)

It was a great night to be out for a game, aside from the fact that the Amerks lost. It was the second to last game of the season, so everything was pretty full, and everyone there was excited to see what would happen with the Sabres. Shortly after we left in the third period, we got the news we were waiting for: they lost to the Blue Jackets and clinched 30th place in the league. (Connor McDavid scored 5 goals in his game just as we were watching the scores come through.)

James stayed engaged the entire time we were there. I asked him repeatedly whether he was ready to leave yet, and each time he answered that he wanted to stay to the end of the game. Secretly, I think he wanted to stay past the end of the game to watch the zambonis come out and clear the ice one more time. As soon as we were out of the building he was asking Uncle Pax whether he remembered the zambonis, how one was blue and one was yellow. They are sort of like tractors, but they aren't tractors. His favorite was the yellow. We ought to buy one for our house.

We dropped Pax off at his place, and he brought out three hockey sticks from his garage for us to take home. Once we finally pulled into our own garage (past 10 PM), and I unbuckled James, he immediately climbed up into the front seat to grab a stick.
"Daddy, can we stay up and play some hockey tonight?"
"No, we need to go to sleep now. It's way past our bed time."
"Can we play hockey in the morning?"
"Yes, we can play hockey as soon as you get up."
"Okay, the blue stick is going to be mine. Can I keep it in bed with me?"
"No, I think we'll leave the sticks in the garage."

While we were saying prayers that night he prayed for the zambonis.

They hockey game was the first thing that he talked about when he was up the next morning. I'd guess that we've played nearly two hours of hockey throughout the course of the day today. He's declared at various times that we need some more ice in the house, that we need to go buy a puck, that he's "falling down like the teams did at the hockey game" and that we can take a break for lunch because the zambonis need to clean the ice.

I think we're raising a hockey fan now. And knowing that we're going to get either McDavid or Eichel in Buffalo? It's a pretty exciting time to be a little boy discovering hockey...

Brothers

Things that the boys can do together as of April 2015:

-Take a bath. This involves Owen kicking vigorously and occasionally attempting to roll over while James pours water over his legs.

-Read a book. James reads the book from memory and turns the pages while Owen doesn't pay attention.

-Sit on the couch. James awkwardly puts his arms around Owen, who immediately begins to sag to one side. James is almost immediately uncomfortable and asks someone else to take him.

-Go on a walk. James looks for dogs in the stroller and Owen falls asleep in the carrier.

-Build a carrot garden. James plants wooden "carrots" on the floor with blocks and gives one to Owen, who puts it in his mouth

-Have a conversation. Just not in English.

-Complain about supper time. Owen kicks in his bouncer and makes whimpering/shrieky noises until someone picks him up, and James alternates between complaining about what's on his plate and quoting entire episodes of Curious George.

-Go to the grocery store. Owen stares up wide eyed from the back and looks bewildered when strangers poke their heads over his carseat. James reminds whoever is pushing that we need to get a cookie. (Lest they forget.) He also informs us that Owen would like to ride in a steering wheel cart with him as soon as he is big enough.

-Party crash their parent's love life. Both boys are adept coordinating their nighttime howls so that just as one is finally lulled back to sleep the other can take up the loud refrain of needing something to eat/someone to hold them/read them a story/change a diaper. They work in tandem so that they each can get a little rest.

-Wait expectantly for the other to get up. For James, to immediately ask where Owen is when he gets up in the morning or after a nap, and for Owen, to give an enormous, beaming, face-engulfing smile as soon as he sees his big brother.

Baseball Season

At 4:00 I go into James' room to wake him up from his afternoon nap. He looks up in bleary-eyed confusion for a moment, then realizes that it's me and immediately sits straight up.
"Are the kids gone from school? Can we go play baseball?"

I make him try to go potty first, but he's already telling me about where he's going to stand, and by the time I've found my fleece he's already holding his red plastic baseball bat. I get his shoes on and he insists he'd rather wear his winter coat than a jacket. It's cold out, so I pull on a wool hat and gloves, then get my baseball mitt and a real baseball. (He won't have anything to do with a tennis ball or racquetball at the baseball diamond.)

We walk out the front door and down the steps to the sidewalk, then cross the street with the familiar liturgy of looking left, right, acknowledging any traffic, and hurrying across to the primary school parking lot. James almost breaks into a run as we approach the baseball diamond. For some reason he insists that I stand at third base while he inspects home plate and declares that he's ready for a first pitch.

He is entirely serious. He stands directly on home plate, not beside it, then taps the dirt twice with his bat and stares at me expectantly, waiting for the pitch. He tells me to throw it fast. I lob him an underhand pitch from about three yards away, and he swings and misses. The ball rolls to the fence, and he dashes off to retrieve it immediately, then runs up to home plate again and throws it back to me. He takes his stance, taps the ground with his bat, and watches me expectantly. He still hasn't smiled.

I throw another pitch, and he gets closer. This time as he throws it back he tells me I should throw it with my glove, "like in George." I make a show of performing a more traditional wind-up with the ball in my mitt, and only toss it underhand at the last second after seeming to twist my whole body into the throw. He actually connects with the ball a bit this time and it rolls forward a few feet into the grass. He's too surprised to remember to start running towards first, and instead leans forward and throws it back to me again.

He continues to hit one for about every dozen he misses, but still won't run the bases once he connects because "he needs to hit a real home run." At one point I ask him if he's cold and would like to go inside, since the wind is picking up and his cheeks are flushed. He says yes and we begin to walk back down the sidwalk, but about halfway up he changes his mind and says he'd like to play more baseball.

We return to the diamond, and I pitch to him some more. He swings in about the same spot almost every time, so I get a little better at throwing the pitches about where he's going to swing. He still won't smile as I pitch to him. He is singularly focused on practicing batting. Finally a brother and sister come to the playground and watch him at the fence with their dog. James doesn't notice them for several minutes, but he grins when he sees the dog.

When he's finally ready to be done practicing baseball he takes a couple turns sliding down the slides and riding the swings, and I play right along with him on the empty playground. His fingers are downright icy when I hold his hand to walk back. I ask him if he wants to play on the swings tomorrow too.

Maybe after we play some baseball.

The Week that Was

Cleaning House
This was supposed to be Spring Cleaning week. I had grand designs of scrubbing our home till it shone, of dusting, mopping, vacuuming, and organizing. Every time I walked through the downstairs for the several weeks beforehand I brandished a helpless fist (I was usually holding Owen or a trumpet) at the stack of unanswered mail on my desk and swore that I'd get to it over Easter break week. Every time I ran a load of laundry down to the basement I'd look over at the tottering and unsorted heaps of CDs atop the music files and think about the hours some evening that I'd finally put them all away. I was going to vacuum behind furniture. I was going to put away the last of the Christmas decorations. I was even looking forward to scrubbing out the toilets.
A Home Depot trip ensured that I had everything I needed to get started. I brought back a new hose and bucket, lots of dangerous-looking chemicals, paint, primer, rubber gloves, new sponges, even some grout cleaner. "We don't have any grout in the house" said J. "There's a little in the tile around the tub" I answered. "If you try to scrub around the tub it's going to take all the paint off and then you're going to have a worse mess than the one you started with." "Well, now I'll be ready if we ever put in some some tile somewhere else in the house."
I made some good progress, especially on Tuesday. Most of the downstairs was dusted and swiffered, and at one point all of our laundry was done. I got behind some of the furniture, and had one coat of paint on a hanging closet door. Then tragedy struck.

Getting Sick
J sensed it first, and she knew she wasn't feeling well. I took James and Owen down to Wegmans to pick up some Pepto-Bismol and ginger ale while she rested on the couch, and I could tell by the time we got back that she was going to be done for the night. As I worked to get dinner on the table and keep James on the potty according to his schedule, I noticed that I was feeling a little ache in my stomach as well.
The first assault hit us just as we were putting the boys down to bed. There will be no need to give details, save that for the next seven or eight hours we kept up a twisted game of "whose turn" to the bathroom and then shivering back to bed. I'd pull the covers over my head with my teeth chattering, hoping to catch a few minutes of sleep before the next wave hit, and I eventually started falling into fitful, obsessive dreams about whether a word I'd read earlier was spelled "sepelierunt" or "sepelierent" or "seplierunt" or "seplerient." The other dream was about trying to get a bunch of files in the right order, over and over again.
When light started to break in the next morning I looked weakly over at J, and we attempted to make a plan for the boys. We agreed that we would let James watch TV all day if we could just keep him from hanging out in our room and picking up the germ. We found out as soon as we entered his room that he'd caught the bug as well.
It was then that we called Mom. It's hard under normal circumstances to say enough about the remarkable woman who is my Mother, but the fact that she willingly walked out of her office that morning and drove to a house of plague to carry around a screaming infant for four hours while we lurched around trying to keep down wheat crackers and water further confirms that she is a saintly woman. Owen was thoroughly uncooperative for her, and we basically just kept on trying to launder whatever James was throwing up on. (There were lots of things that went through the laundry, including George and Steven.)
Around naptime we all seemed to reach a point when we are all definitely convalescing, and I feebly tried to resume cleaning the house. I think I dusted for a few minutes in the downstairs living room, then feebly laid down on the carpet, curled up, and admitted defeat. We went to bed early for the next few nights, trying to save up energy for:

Bill's Wedding/Easter
J had not only a wedding, but three Easter services to plan in which she was wearing the hats of orchestra conductor, librarian, personnel manager, gig contractor, pianist, choir director, secretary, taxi, and breast-feeding mother. I was in the wedding party, and had my own three services to do, though, mercifully, I was only directly responsible for the music in one of them.
We made it to the rehearsal dinner on Friday at about 85% health, not having eaten a full meal yet since being sick, but anticipating that we'd be able to get through the rehearsal dinner. The rehearsal went as such things usually do, and the dinner afterwards was pleasant enough.
We were in an odd position at this wedding of knowing lots of people there in an odd secondary sort of way, but only knowing the groom with any sort of intimacy. For example, James' pediatrician officiated the wedding, and I chatted with Owen's pediatrician in the cocktail line. The wedding was held at LCS, and one of my students was out on the dance floor, whose uncle (also in attendance) worked at a church related to GPC and was in a band with old quintet-mate of mine. Two GPC attenders were there who brought up the groom through Boy Scouts. A former student of mine (who I brought in to play piano with my jazz band) was the last bridesmaid in the wedding party. It was all very odd.
The wedding day itself was wonderful, though. I had fun traipsing about with the six other burly, gun-firing, conservative-voting groomsmen, and even got to drink a beer in the LCS parking lot after the ceremony. Bill was what every groom ought to be--terribly nervous, then ecstatically happy and in love with his bride. Owen did well for the part that he was present for, and then we shipped him off home with a babysitter. The photographer took great shots in Mt. Hope Cemetary, on the Susan B. Anthony Bridge, and in City Hall.
Once J and I were able to sit together we made lots of small-children talk with the other couples at our table and then I danced badly and envied Lux in the beautiful Harro East ballroom. We probably went home too early, but Easter morning still rolled around way too quickly.

We were risen, indeed, but Sunday night we descended unto sleep rather heavily.