Our House Poet Speaks Again [Lily]

A Day in Kolkata
Written by Lily Hartley

Kolkata is a nice place to stay;
On the streets kids laugh and play;
And many a dog runs ‘round astray.
At eleven o’clock you get tea on a tray!
But all the fun will end one day,
‘Cause when Monsoon comes right your way,
The air is thick and the sky turns gray.
At first, rain comes down in a nice spray,
But soon it beats down on the streets all day;
And all you can do is hope and pray
The rain will end soon; preferably today.
But when the sun comes back one day,
You can go outside, and once again you may
Enjoy new things in Indi-ay
‘Cause here, they do things in a different way;
A way that makes things so happy and gay.
But over all, I have to say
That Kolkata is a nice place to stay.

Diwali Report (Concise version) [Emma]

Saturday was Dewali, which is the festival of lights. My family and I walked around the city for a little bit and looked at all the lights that were set up. The best part was when we got back to the apartment and watched everyone set off fireworks in the parking lot. Most of them were these ones that looked like big fountains, or smaller ones that spun around on the ground. My mom, Lily, and Clara all went into the apartment pretty soon, but me and my dad stayed outside for a long time. There was one later on that shot a bunch of little fireballs up into the air and they were all hitting the building and bouncing off. There was also this one guy who bought big fireworks. They were like the ones you see on the Fourth of July. There was also one that shot confetti everywhere, which was all sitting on the ground getting burnt up by other fireworks afterwards. The most dangerous things were the bottle rockets. At first it was just the adults setting them off and it was fine, but later the kids started setting them off and there was one that went backwards, hit the building and bounced off and landed three or four feet from me and my dad. The adults helped them after that. It was fun.

Last week Clara had a birthday party. There was somewhere around 30 kids in our apartment and they were all running around and screaming. They played Pass the Pillow, which is the same as Hot Potato except there’s no song that goes with it, you just play music and stop it at a random time. They were yelling too loud and couldn’t hear the music though. We attempted to get them to play Dead Dog, but either they had too much energy or didn’t understand that dead dogs can’t yell. Then we brought out snacks, which they were very excited about and there was more yelling and shoving of people. Over all it wasn’t as bad as I expected. They didn’t break anything and my hurt toe only got stepped on twice and one of the times was by Lily.

Diwali Report (Loquacious version) [Lily]

I, Your Humble Narrator Jr., (I think that name fits because of the many comments saying I’ll end up like my dad, Your Humble Narrator. But I still wonder whether those are supposed to be compliments or not) will take this time to tell you readers about Diwali. (Which is pronounced Divali, by the way. It makes my parents frustrated when I pronounce it Diwali, but I actually don’t do it on purpose, but of course they don’t believe me.) Diwali is celebrated all over India. But that’s not what you want to hear, or what I want to base this post on. If it were what I wanted to write about, my posts wouldn’t be your favorite to read. (Thank you, by the way, to those of you who have commented that mine are your favorites. Mine are my favorite too, and not only because they are the only ones that I read.) What I, Your Humble Narrator Jr., would like to write about is the festivities.

Well. All of the kids buy fireworks. Except here, they call them “crackers.” (I prefer saying “fireworks” though so I don’t start think my tea time snack will explode in my mouth.) On the official Diwali, they blasted them till midnight, which I approved of because it meant I got to stay up till midnight, due to the noise. Some of them were very interesting, like the ones that spin really fast, shooting sparks everywhere, making a pschoooooookkkkkk sound, then suddenly, “BOOM!” The loudest explosion ever. Or the ones that shoot up a fountain of sparks in to the air, each of which explode in their own mini firework. I can not think of a sound to describe those. A few bottle rockets hit neighboring apartments, as well as ours, and one rocket even bounced off the apartment and landed about a meter away from my dad. When one exploded, a tiny parachute floated down from the sky, and oddly, my dad caught it perfectly without even moving.

We also walked around town and saw the pandals. The goddess in them was a shade of navy blue with a necklace of heads around her neck and her tongue sticking out, standing on a white guy. Quite attractive, right?

Well, that is all for now, because Your Humble Narrator Jr. has a Gandhi report to work on.

Unsafe at any Speed [Jim]

Yes, Clara’s birthday party was a rather raucous affair. Indeed, the only time that there was even something resembling calm was when Janet decided, on the spur of the moment, that it was time to play that always popular American Party Game of “Dead Dog.” [For those who do not know this most excellent game, it is played thus: All children pretend to be dead dogs. Whichever child resembles a dead dog for the longest period of time ostensibly wins, though all parents known that it is the adults who are the True Winners when every child is suddenly quiet and still.]

As for the question of a noted Engineer regarding how a rectangular cake could optimally be made to serve 41 people, I will note that this is exactly the problem with the Western Mindset. It seems that Westerners have this odd notion that all pieces of a cake should be the same size, but here in India, such linear thinking is eschewed. Obviously some people prefer larger pieces of cake than others and in India, the Cake Place People are able to discern how large a piece of cake each of the Customer’s Guests will want. I don’t know how they do this since I too suffer from a Western Education. The only other alternative that has occurred to me is that when they say 41 people they mean “41 other people.” Again, we Westerners have this strange Idea that the Customer is a Person, so perhaps a cake that serves 41 people serves 41 People plus the Unperson named “Customer.”

By the way it was a vegetarian cake—no eggs, since many Hindus don’t eat eggs. Picture a thin layer of cake at the top and bottom, with a thick layer of mousse or whipped cream or some such substance in the middle.

And Happy Diwali! It just ended, but Greetings of the Season nonetheless. Diwali (pronounced Dih-vah-lee) is the big Fireworks holiday. Kolkata does not have any of those strange bans of fireworks so prevalent in the US. And no “Safe and Sane” restriction either. Lots of Very Unsafe and Very Insane Fireworks. Great Fun. Emma and I stood out in the back of our apartment complex for a few hours watching people set off these marvels of Unsafe Explosions. Bottle Rockets ramming into the side of the building were not uncommon. One rocket in particular hit the side of the building, and ricocheted downward, landing about 3 feet from where Emma and I stood before exploding on the ground. Emma did not even flinch, making her Dad Very Proud.

At the Diwali Party in our apartment building, Clara and I won silver coins. It was the first time either one of us had won something at a Diwali Party. It is rumored to be Lucky to win a silver coin at Diwali, but I suspect this is one of those ex post prophecies—if you believe it is Lucky to win a coin, then to say winning a coin brings Luck is rather tautological. Then again, I don’t believe in Luck, so I am rather the cynic about such things.

There are two more Holidays this week. But, then there is a run of a few weeks with no Holidays. This Wednesday is also a Holiday at Emma, Lily and Clara’s School. It is the first Holiday their school has had since classes began in the second week of August. It seems that at Emma, Lily and Clara’s school, the Administrators see no need to close school for Indian Holidays since the Pupils are not Indian, nor do the Administrators see the need to close school for the American Holidays, since the Pupils aren’t in America. Emma, Lily and Clara seem to think this system is a trifle Unjust. So, the Administrators, out of sheer Kindness and Goodness, have decided to let them celebrate the end of Ramadan on Wednesday with a whole day of no School.

Other Notes:

1. Phelps was a good choice for the Nobel Prize in Economics. He is one of those guys who did enough to merit the Prize, but not so much that there was a big rush to award it to him. The Nobel Peace Prize is another odd Political Choice—microfinance is one of those great ideas but has had mixed-to-poor results in every independent study I have seen. How this sort of thing brings about *Peace* is beyond me.

2. I am very grateful for the Arizona Cardinals.

3. On October 31 [which oddly is Not a Holiday in India—I am not sure how they missed the opportunity to have another Holiday] I am giving an exam in my microeconomics course in the Retail Management program. I suspect it will be quite disastrous for a portion of the class. The students in this program seem to be all over the map in terms of intellect, aptitude for school, and desire to learn. On top of this, I am teaching economics and not management which presents an odd problem—some of the class has never had an economics class, others in the class have a masters degree in economics. I am expecting a tremendously large variance in scores.

4. They keep saying the monsoon season has ended, but then it keeps flooding again—for my recent exploits trudging home through knee deep water, you may reread any of the previous accounts of such journeys.

5. I hear that Mount Holyoke had a Teach-In Against the War. Sorry I missed it. Of course, it might have been nice if it had been a Teach-in About the War with people speaking on both sides of the issue; I understand that having speakers on both sides of an issue is the sort of thing they did at places which encouraged Thinking and Learning. I think they used to call such places “Colleges,” but such institutions became Extinct a Long Time Ago.

6. I was run into by a bicyclist today on the way home. He was traveling the wrong way on a one-way street. Janet had no Sympathy, but she did have a Moral: Look Both Ways Before Crossing a One Way Street in India.

7. Book Reports:
1. Amis, Time’s Arrow
A Failed Book. This is one of those books where the Author couldn’t decide whether to write a Comedy or a Social Statement. So, what could have been a very Amusing book ends up being a Tiresome Holocaust Story. The sad thing is that the premise of the book had such marvelous potential, which has now been destroyed. Does one applaud the author for having such an interesting idea or Scorn him for destroying it. If Leonardo had put a mustache on the Mona Lisa, would he deserve credit for painting a great work of art before the Mustache or scorn for destroying it?

2. Chattopadhyaya, Srikanta
Janet convinced me to read this book. It was the first modern Bengali novel, written in four parts spanning 1917 to 1933. The first two parts (1917 and 1918) were extremely good. Written around the time of Joyce, the book made an interesting comparison between East and West. The last two parts (1927 and 1933) were tedious, quite tedious. It’s too bad; the Novel had the potential to be Great.

3. Orwell, Animal Farm
Emma has to read this for School this week, so I though I would reread it. An inspired little tale. I suspect Emma will be Most Unhappy with the fate of Boxer.

4. Simon, California Suite
I think I saw the movie version of this decades ago, or maybe I just saw the commercials for the movie. My only memory of the movie is that it had Bill Cosby, Alan Alda and Tennis. I read the play. Dull. Very Dull.

My Career as an Event Coordinator [Lily]

Yesterday, Clara had her seventh birthday party. At first, we weren’t going to have anyone besides our family there, but then we decided to have Clara’s friends over for just cake. So my mom and I are going out to Kookie Jar, one of the best bakeries in Kolkata, and when we get there they give us a book of cakes, and we find the ideal cake for Clara – a Fairy Land cake. Then we see a little card that said MINIMUM SIZE: 4 POUNDS. It doesn’t sound that big, but it turns out it feeds forty one people at the least. But it’s a fairy land cake, and anyone who knows Clara well would know she is crazy for fairies. So we just decide to open up our house to all thirty kids in our apartment – just for cake. But then they’re expecting us to have snacks and games! So we go out and buy balloons, three bottles of soda, four bags of Lays potato chips, and vegetable puffs. Then we come home and make cheese and mustard and peanut butter and jelly finger sandwiches (now, when I say that, I don’t mean we put all those toppings on one sandwich, I mean we made two kinds of finger sandwiches: cheese and mustard sandwiches being one, and peanut butter and jelly being the other) and Emma and I blew up balloons and put streamers all over the walls (I actually managed to make a big princess on the wall out of streamers) and then we were told by our neighbor to hide all our valuable stuff or the kids would destroy it. At five o’clock, the kids were supposed to come, but living in India, that means five thirty. Oh my goodness. They were the loudest bunch you could imagine. I was supposed to pour the soda, but I couldn’t even reach the table, they shoved me out of the way! Five seconds after you poured a bowl of chips, they were gone. Thank goodness they only stayed till six!

After the party, (and cleaning up the potato chips and cake crumbs that covered the floor) we went out to a nice dinner at Red Hot Chili Peppers and got great Chinese food and fancy drinks. Well, all in all, I guess the kids had a good time, so it doesn’t matter I almost went deaf from being in the same room as those kids.

You Say It's Your Birthday... [Clara]

Today is my last day being six. Tomorrow I’m going to have a birthday party. There’s going to be snacks and balloons. There’s going to be a lot of people there, but they’re not going to bring presents. A few days ago, Lily and my mom went out shopping and bought my present and ordered my cake. Lily says my cake is a Batman cake, and my dad says it’s a Spiderman cake. I think my party is going to be very fun.

A few days ago, my mom and dad went out to dinner and Lily and I were watching High School Musical. Lily dressed me up as an Indian princess. We used a Bratz bracelet as a nose ring. It was very fun. We used sheets and a scarf and made it into a sari. It was very cool.

Some People Have Too Much Free Time [Lily]

Right now in home school, Emma and I are doing a report on Mahatma Gandhi. I happened to receive an e-mail with jokes on it (now this was one of those annoying chain mail forwarded e-mails, so it had pretty lame jokes. One thing I wonder about those kinds of emails is who originally wrote them.) and I stumbled on a pretty clever one about Gandhi (and when I say “clever” I don’t mean it’s that funny) so I decided to post it on our blog:
“Mahatma Gandhi walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.”
The person who wrote that joke must have had a lot of spare time, to think of a phrase about Gandhi that was similar to the word “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” (At first I spelled this word wrong, so it had the red squiggle thing under it, so I right mouse clicked on it, suspecting it to say in faded grey letters, “no spelling suggestions,” but it actually had S-U-P-E-R-C-A-L-I-F-R-A-G-I-L-I-S-T-I-C-E-X-P-I-A-L-I-D-O-C-I-O-U-S, (well, actually it said supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, but supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is spelled S-U-P-E-R-C-A-L-I-F-R-A-G-I-L-I-S-T-I-C-E-X-P-I-A-L-I-D-O-C-I-O-U-S, so I decided to type S-U-P-E-R-C-A-L-I-F-R-A-G-I-L-I-S-T-I-C-E-X-P-I-A-L-I-D-O-C-I-O-U-S rather than supercalifragilisticexpialidocious because the right mouse click thing tells you the spelling, although supercalifragilisticexpialidocious tells you the spelling, too, it is easier to see the spelling in S-U-P-E-R-C-A-L-I-F-R-A-G-I-L-I-S-T-I-C-E-X-P-I-A-L-I-D-O-C-I-O-U-S) so that settles the “How do you spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?” question. (Of course the person asking that question wouldn’t know how to spell it, obviously, so it would be more like, “How do you spell that word from Mary Poppins that sounds quite atrocious?” (Well, they’d most likely say the word rather than giving the explanation, but Heaven knows how they would spell it, because like my dad once stated they might not be “the brightest tack in the box.” (See, it’s supposed to be either “the brightest bulb on the tree” or “the sharpest tack in the box, but “the brightest tack in the box” just doesn’t work, you know?) But since I’m typing it, rather than saying it, I can just write “How do you spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?”) But for anyone that cares, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is spelled S-U-P-E-R-C-A-L-I-F-R-A-G-I-L-I-S-T-I-C-E-X-P-I-A-L-I-D-O-C-I-O-U-S.)
I just wanted you readers to share the dull laughter that is caused by that joke by the person who had lots of spare time to think it up, as well as twenty other lame jokes like, “A man walked in to a restaurant with a slab of asphalt and said to the waiter, “I’d like to buy two sodas; one for me now and one for the road.” Why does the world even need that kind of joke? It’s not that funny or educational or anything.
Well, the main reason I even made this blog post on this topic was to tell the Gandhi joke. And now that I’ve told it, I’m done. So I hope you enjoyed the joke!

Why I am (Laying, Lying) on my Bed (Circle one) [Emma]

Yesterday my sisters broke my toe. Everyone seems to disagree on what happened though. I was lying on my bed and Lily and Clara were fighting about something. Lily pushed Clara and Clara fell really hard onto my foot. All my toes bent backwards and one went into a funny position and broke. Lily said she barely touched Clara and that Clara fell really hard on me on purpose. Clara said Lily shoved her as hard as she possibly could and that she couldn’t do anything about it. If you ask me, they’re both exaggerating. Anyway, my toe is now swollen and purple and I can’t bend it. It’s really hard to walk too.

Paean to Propane [Jim]

Shocking News for those of you that know her: Emma has managed to either sprain or break her toe. It seems that Lily pushed Clara onto Emma’s toe, bending said Toe backwards to the point where excruciating pain ensued. Emma is now limping around. Sadly, we neglected to pack Emma’s crutches.

The course of Life in the last week in the Hartley Household has been primarily determined by the lack of Propane. Our propane tank, used for the stove, ran out of gas on Friday. So, we called the place that takes care of such things,. And they duly promised to bring us new propane “tomorrow.” Saturday came and went with no new propane. Subsequent days saw a repeat of this lack of propane. Today, one of the neighbors took pity on us and lent us their spare propane tank to use until they deliver a new one, which will presumably be “tomorrow.” Now a lack of Propane may not mean much to many of you, but consider this—without propane, we have no means to boil water. Without boiled water we have no drinking water. Well, OK, we can buy drinking water at the store right next to our apartment. But, even more importantly, without boiled water, we have no water to make the Elixir of Life Itself—and being Coffeeless is not a good state. There are coffee shops, but, this being India, they do not open until 9 or 10 AM—which is a tad late for one’s first cup of coffee. Also, without Propane, we have no means to boil our milk, which, since the delivery of milk continues even in a Propaneless world, means that the refrigerator rapidly filled up with unboiled milk. And finally, without propane it is difficult to cook dinner. So, the moral is, be sure to express a little gratitude for Propane the next time you think about it.

Monday was a strange day in these parts; a set of political parties decided to call a 12 hour strike in town. So, almost everything closed for the day. There were no taxis running, so the streets were quiet. It was strange. The point of the general strike eluded me even after reading all about it in the paper. But, I think its real purpose was to take care of an insidious problem with the calendar—Last Monday was unfortunately the date of two separate Holidays (the last day of Durga Puja and Gandhi’s birthday). One of the papers quoted somebody who is one of the Somebodys organizing the strike who noted that since everyone only got one Holiday instead of two last week, the strike would make up for that fact by given everyone an extra holiday. This, I note was the only explanation for the strike that made any sense to me. Also, I can note that the Communist Party of India (Marxist) opposed the Strike, for reasons which were also unclear.

Michelle asked for more details on the proprietary vs. open-source software panel discussion. That Michelle asked for more details is of no surprise to anyone who knows her—she is, after all writing her senior thesis on such a topic. She also, I should note, thinks I am generally quite wrong in my thinking about such topics. Indeed, during the whole panel discussion, I kept thinking that if Michelle was on the panel, she would have duly shredded my arguments. But, the details. The essence of my argument was that proprietary software provides greater incentives for innovation; without control over the end product it is hard to get financial rewards for your efforts (hard is not the same as impossible, I should note). Thus, at the cutting edge, I suspect proprietary software will always be in the lead. Moreover, there is an enormous advantage in software when everyone uses the same operating system, for example. If all computers have Windows, then I can sit down at any computer and use it; without standardization, there would be enormous switching costs when using different computers. It is harder to have standardization with open-source software because the software is easily modified. In the Indian context (which was the point of the panel), I find it likely that Microsoft will dominate the market as computer use spreads. Linux is just too complicated and has no standardization. From the question period, I think most of the audience agreed with me—the other guy got all the skeptical questions. However, I am not sure that people actually agreed with my underlying argument. The problem here is that everyone uses Windows, but almost nobody actually pays for Windows—piracy is big, and I mean *big* here. So, for most Indians, there is no price differential between proprietary software (like Microsoft) and open-source software (like Linux). If both are free, it is hard to argue for things like Linux.

We fired our cook. It wasn’t a good situation. It turned out that both our maid and our neighbors across the hall had deep animosity toward the cook. We are not quite sure why, since all the discussions are in a language we do not understand. Moreover, the cook was charging quite a bit by Indian standards, and then telling other servants in the building that they were underpaid—this was not going over well with some of the neighbors. In the end, we decided that harmony in the household was rather important. Servant politics is a fascinating thing, though since we don’t understand the language, we have no idea what all the issues are. Anyway, our maid has said that she is happy to cook for us. With no propane, however, this has not been a concern yet. Also, Janet feels a certain measure of guilt for firing someone, so if you ever want to see Janet look anguished, just say to her “I cannot believe that you fired some poor cook.”

Clara’s birthday is next week. She will be 7. It is hard to believe that Clara is so old. She is a great kid.

Book Reports:
1. Wilde: Lady Windermere’s Fan
The Decay of Lying
The first is a typical Wilde play; amusing and quite clever. The second was an interesting discussion of the problems with the Realism in 19th century Art. The essay provides an early argument for the later development of magical realism in literature.

2. Emerson, Essays
I read a few of his essays in the last week. I have never been a big fan of Emerson. Nothing has changed.

3. Ackroyd, Hawksmoor
This is one of those modern novels that I suspect is beloved by professors of English. Cleverly written, with a very good prose style. The story leave just about every question raised in the book hanging at the end—there is zero explanation about how everything that happened could have actually happened, which is probably the point of the book. Probably. The only way to figure it out would be to reread it at least one more time, but there is no reason to assume the book would reward a rereading; I suspect it isn’t a Great Book.

4. Pound, Cantos I-XXX
Cantos 1 to 30 were the first published set of the cantos. I have browsed the Cantos before, but I finally just forced myself through the first 30. In essence, this is the sort of book for people who think the plot of Finnegans Wake is too straightforward.


5. Nietzsche, TheBirth of Tragedy
A terribly uneven book. A few parts of it (a very few parts) rise to the level of interesting, but the bulk of it is simply terrible. Very overrated in the Nietzsche canon.

Durga Puja in Spartan Prose [Emma]

During Durga Puja, we went around Kolkata and looked at the pandals a lot. Pandals are the things that idols are kept in. They are really big and very elaborate. My favorite one was made of plywood and it had tons of designs carved in. At the top, there was a big chandelier carved out of wood. The idols were up on a stage in the back like they always are. There were pieces of wood painted blue and white and shaped like clouds around them. In this one, Durga was standing on the world. Another cool one looked like you were walking into these stone ruins. There was a big statue in the middle and some smaller ones that were up on a ledge on the side that were broken. The cool part was that the whole thing was made of Styrofoam.

Every day we went downstairs and had dinner with everyone in the apartment. People eat with their hands here, so that’s what we had to do. It was kinda hard at first, but there were these puffy bread things called luchi that you rip up and then you can eat with them and that was easier. There were a lot of potato dishes. There was also really good chutney and deserts.

Clara Enjoys her Holidays [Clara]

Yesterday I went in the back of a truck to a river to dump out an idol. There were lots of kids and adults. It was very crowded. Some adults went in cars. There were other trucks where we were going, dumping out idols too. The idols weren’t very big; they were just small ones. There were people on the streets selling stuff on our way and I got a long balloon and a horn.

[Editor’s note (Jim): On the last day of Durga Puja, the idols are all dumped into the river to commemorate Durga’s return home. Our apartment building had a house idol and Janet and Clara went with others from our building down to the river to dump the idol. The “small” idols that Clara mentions are 8-10 feet high.]

On Durga Puja every day for lunch and dinner we went down in a big room to have lunch and dinner. There was rice and dal a lot and there were desserts and chutney. There were a lot of kinds of chutney every day. There were gulab jamens sometimes. During Durga Puja there were games downstairs in that same room and Mom got to play musical chairs. She got out on the fourth round.

[Editor’s note: Our apartment complex had an extensive set of activities the whole time. This included meals for everyone in the apartment.]

A few days ago, we were going out looking at idols at Durga Puja. There was one that was very big and it was filled with gold and all the gods were very colorful. There were designs on the walls that were made out of gold. The inside and the outside were made out of gold, except for the gods. There was another pandel, it just looked like dirt with fake trucks and cars on a road on it. But when you walked inside, it looked like a pandel and it had all the gods inside it too. There was also another pandel that was just made out of wood. I liked that one too.

[Editor’s note: It wasn’t real gold, but it sure looked like it. The second picture above is one of the pandels--they are made with bamboo poles, and some of them, including the one above are huge. The third picture is one of the Durga idols. The normal sized ones are at least 10-12 feet high.]

Lily is in the Newspaper [Jim]

In case you are not a regular reader of Dilbert, then a) you should be, and b) you do not want to miss reading the strip for October 2. You can find it at www.dilbert.com under comic archives. This strip is noteworthy because it is, as far as we know, the first time that Lily has ever appeared as a character in a major comic strip. Of course, the author kindly altered Lily’s appearance in the comic, but don’t let that fool you—Lily is obviously the one talking in that strip.

In other news:

1. Durga Puja is at an end. Pictures and commentary coming soon.

2. The fantasy baseball championship game has ended. I won 7-6. Boy, was it close. How close? Well, if over the whole two weeks my batters had one less hit or one more out, Craig would have won. Similarly, if Craig’s batters had one more hit or one fewer out, he would have won. On the pitching side, Craig would have won if I had had one fewer, or Craig had one more, win, save or hold.

3. The promised World Series prediction: Yankees win. The NL is a mess; oddly I can imagine any one of the 4 being the sacrificial lamb for the Yankees at this point. I guess I’ll stick with the Mets as my favorite, though without Pedro they are going to have a rough time. The Padres may be able to take them if they pitch well enough; the Dodgers could win if they get lucky and the Cardinals…well, who knows what is up with them. I’m afraid it is going to be a sad year for the NL. Alas.

4. I am *not* talking about it. I am in complete denial.

5. Book Reports:

1. Forster, A Passage to India

I figured it was about time I read this book. It is good, but not quite Great. He does a good job catching many of the nuances of Indian culture; I have no idea whether his portrayal of the British is accurate or not—there aren’t many Britishers (as they are called here) left.

2. Bond, A Bear Called Paddington

I picked this up for Clara to read, and decided to reread it. I haven’t read one of his books since I was a kid. I love Paddington Bear. I think I am going to reread the rest of the series.

3. LeCarre, The Secret Pilgrim

LeCarre is a lot like Graham Greene, but long since he got pegged as a Genre Writer and thus gets lumped with Ludlum, Clancy and the like. This book was rather good; it is more a series of short stories strung together, but it works very well. His style is actually well-suited to the shorter form. George Smiley gets a fair amount of time in the book too. Smiley is a truly great literary character.