When I was just starting to learn Spanish and taking courses in Hispanic culture, I was living in a state of complete intellectual amazement about the wonderful new things I was discovering. There was such enthusiasm and such joy in every moment of my life.

Then the feeling kind of wore out but I really missed it. And finally I found a way to experience it again with my newfound interest in the Basque language and culture. I feel like I’m 22 again. It’s amazing.

Fluidity has its benefits.

An absolutely brilliant review by Andrew Sullivan in the New York magazine. I’m definitely not going to read Pinker’s book. I leafed through it at the bookstore and realized that u would have loved it 10 years ago. Since then, however, I have grown and now find this kind of thing adolescent.

But the review is fantastic.

US Steel will be re-opening the plant right next to us, in Granite City, bringing back 500 steel workers into employment.

This is not about the tariffs at all, by the way. This was all decided before the tariff announcement. The credit goes to the Illinois legislature that is going to make all state agencies and state-sponsored organizations use products made not only domestically but in Illinois specifically. This is an enormous project our state legislature (Democrat, by the way) has been working on for the past 2 years.

Two of my neighbors are proud United Steel members, by the way. I’m happy for them and for us.

N received a package that had “Planner Pads” stamped on it in big red letters. And I was all, “He knows how I feel about planners, and he got some for himself. And not a tiny little one for me. It’s do cruel!”

And then it turned out the package was a March 8 gift for me. It’s very touching. I feel very understood.

Somebody is sharing advice on how to stay healthy during the winter season on FB:

Change your clothes and babies clothes after work/day care.
Hand wash every time you enter your home.
Sanitize door knobs/remotes/light switches daily.
Change hand towels and pillow cases daily.

Wash your hands every time after you put anything into the washer.

I’d only add and then find a good specialist who treats anxiety and OCD.

We wash our hands, obviously. But the rest – I’m sorry, when does one have a life with this regimen?

So now Trump is not menacing North Korea with nuclear weapons and is trying to do the diplomatic thing and have talks but it’s still bad because Kim Jong Un is short or something. Daddy issues rule.

Another disappointing campus story. It started well. A college president finally refused to accept a consumerist model of higher education where student is a customer who is always right and everybody else is a servant.

But then the story went on social media, and as always consumerism won.

What a great idea to place these little envelopes in hotel rooms. Hotel maids in this country tend to be extremely honest. They never take tips if you just leave the money for them on the night table. We have to write notes saying “Tips! Propina! Thank you for your hard work! Le agradecemos su trabajo tan duro!” and draw arrows toward the money. It would be great if a hotel provided the envelopes that remove confusion. There’s no need to be coy about the fact that these workers are ridiculously underpaid.

When I read books to Klara, she now finishes the lines because she remembers most of her books. When she doesn’t remember or doesn’t understand the concept in a line, she comes up with her own ending that always rhymes (even when the original doesn’t) and is often better than the original.

For instance, today we were reading a story about an outing that Llama Llama went on with his mama. The original goes,

Yucky music, great big feet

Ladies smelling way too sweet.

Klara is too young to understand the line about sweet-smelling ladies, so she came up with

Yucky music, great big feet,

Llama Llama in the street.

Since I’m on it, a famous (and best-selling) writer from the Basque Country shared on social media a beautiful poem he dedicated to his daughter. Several people in the comments responded with “Nice poem but I disagree with the following verse” and proceeded to offer ideological disagreements. With the poem. I’m hoping that Klara will grow up to be able to enjoy art without experiencing the need to check it against a list of PC requirements.

I’m an academic, so I don’t know many conservatives. I’m not sure I know any at all. But I find it impossible to imagine that they can be any more constantly terrified, apocalyptically minded, anxiety-ridden and likely to envisage complete horror befalling them than Liberals. Because it’s just not humanly possible.