W
e went to the N---- family's house today. They have eight children, whose names I am still in the process of memorizing. They are, generally, very blonde and very precocious, and it's wonderful being around them. Rachel taught Elena how to make sourdough bread from scratch, and I sharpened their knives and taught the kids how to play Go. Last time we were there, I played a couple games of chess with the boys -- they are a very games-oriented family, which I appreciate greatly. They seemed to like the rudimentary games of Go that I ran them through, and I left a board with them to mess around with. I'm fully anticipating getting a load of questions about the game next time we see them.
We had lunch together, saying prayers over the soup in Latin, and Eric reported gloomily how disastrous things were in the world. I replied that I'd recently started to acquire a bit of hope about the ways things were going. Obviously, there are a lot of terrible things, and dreadful trends going on. But I'm actually pretty bullish on some parts of the future, and of my generation, and their progeny. I should talk more about this later.
Then we met their cows, including the friendliest little brown calf named Eve, born on Christmas Eve. The dogs followed us around barking. It was hard to feel too depressed about the future.