This week I’m returning a proofed article for the Journal of Canadian Hispanists, preparing a proposal for the Association of Ukrainian Hispanists, writing a talk for next week’s conference of British and Irish Hispanists, and hoping to be accepted for an event organized by German Hispanists.

And N has begun to learn Spanish in preparation for our trip to Spain in the summer.

I like you, Polish people, but what fresh hell is this:

Today my students were translating into Spanish the following micro story:

My wife told me to stop pretending I’m a a flamingo. I put my foot down.

Obviously, you need to get rid of both the flamingo and the foot because there’s no direct equivalent in Spanish. Students came up with brilliant translations that included soldiers, giraffes, and spiders. My course is really working because they wouldn’t have been able to do this at the beginning of the semester.

My friend from Africa discovered anti-racism. Started reading Ibram Kendi, watching videos and listening to podcasts. She tried to share her finds with me but I said it makes me feel like a prostitute who found a boyfriend. It’s exactly like at work but nobody’s paying me to do it.

Eventually, my friend decided to hang out with African Americans. But that didn’t go well. They said, “we like you even less than white people. They bought us as slaves but you sold us to them in the first place.”

“You are a college professor,” the friend told me. “Help me come up with what I should have told them.”

I said that while all that selling and buying was happening in Africa, my own ancestors were being bought and sold, too, so we were definitely uninvolved.

The friend said it’s OK to share this story online if I don’t use any names. Maybe somebody knows what to respond in this situation.

I am gathering a collection of twenty-first-century books that reflect conservative sensibilities, and the novel Mercy Among the Children by the great Canadian writer David Adams Richards is my most recent addition. This is a very, very talented book, my friends. It grabs you by the throat and never lets go. I’ll probably not be able to read anything else for days after finishing it because it still holds me.

Mercy Among the Children is set in rural New Brunswick in 1980s, and it not only speaks to the things that really matter but offers the best insight of any other work of fiction I have read into the genesis of wokism.

Sydney, an indigent working-class man with a sky-high IQ, dedicates his life to enacting a perverted form of Christianity which consists of him debasing himself in the most extreme ways. There is no humiliation or beating Sydney doesn’t eagerly seek. When he gets unfairly accused of pedophilia, he does everything to make the accusation ring true because it would hurt the feelings of the accusers if he openly declared them wrong.

“It is what I know, yet I have no right to force others to feel it,” Sydney explains in a perfect encapsulation of the idea that everybody has their own truth and these “privatized truths” all have identical value.

Sydney’s love of self-abasement wouldn’t be that bad if he were single. But he’s a married father of three, and his wife and children bear the worst of the abuse that Sydney invites. His wife is raped, his son beaten and humiliated, his daughter defiled but Sydney is beautifically happy in the knowledge that he hurt nobody’s feelings by accusing them of these crimes.

There is, of course, much more to the novel than the insight into wokeness. It shows how feminism can turn malignant and anti-family, how the Canadian tax system is an abomination that ruins people (you know what I mean if it ever had its clutches into you), how Canadian academics use aboriginals as a career-making topic, how environmentalism can be a ruse for money interests and help a corrupt government, and how hard it is to scratch your way to a truly Christian understanding of life.

And the writing, people. Such beautiful writing. It’s a book that I didn’t want to end because the pleasure of reading was intense. The novel is about Catholics. For some reason, the best Canadian literature I’ve read is either about Catholics or about Jews.

It’s a profound novel but it’s very dark. If you aren’t in the best place for heavy stuff, don’t read it now. It’s also the most Christian North American novel I’ve ever read. David Adams Richards is like a conservative, very Christian Richard Russo. For people who say there’s no conservative art any more, go read this dude. If this isn’t art, I don’t know what is.

To the person who sent an anonymous message about 2007: I’m so sorry. This sounds terrible.

I won’t post the comment to preserve the reader’s anonymity but I’m very very sorry this happened.

Our less sophisticated brethren are taking the dishonest reporting about Trump’s bloodbath comments seriously because they still think that if it’s on TV, it has to be true.

The somewhat more cognitively capable know that they are being lied to but find convoluted ways of justifying the con:

No, Trump didn’t promise to drown people who won’t vote for him in blood. Yes, he was simply describing the state of the US automotive industry. But still, the lies are justified because he’s dangerous.

Why is he dangerous?

Because he makes scary comments.

Which ones?

Well, the one about the bloodbath.

But he didn’t really make it.

Yes, but still.

Totally makes sense.

I’m not very interested in what Trump says because his words and actions rarely intersect. But I’m very interested in the workings of propaganda.

2007 seems to have been a great year for couples. N and I are one of the several couples I know who will be celebrating their 17th anniversary this year.

N told me today that his life only truly began when he met me, and I feel the same. About my life, too, and not only his.

And what great things happened to you in 2007?

The municipal authorities are fixing the road at both entrances to our campus. Gigantic traffic jams are created as a result. People miss exams, presentations, and meetings. What’s even worse, they get home 40 minutes later than usual after class or work.

This has been going on since last week. Traffic delays get worse when we have visitors on campus, like we did on Friday when 600 prospective students and family members arrived. And then tried to leave through the same jammed road.

I haven’t been in one of these traffic jams, though. Not even once.

You know why?

There’s a road that goes parallel to the one being fixed. It’s wide open and completely traffic-free. I take it instead of the usual one and avoid the congestion. That parallel road is visible from the jammed one.

You can see it.

With eyes.

It’s right there.

Still, people keep congregating in the traffic-jammed road. There’s an easy, obvious alternative (and it’s actually one of several) but they aren’t taking the alternative paths because it’s not what they usually do.

There’s nothing a human brain dislikes more than newness. People would suffer great discomfort before looking for a new solution. The usual is pleasing. The different is painful. That’s how human brain works.