Close to Home; Jenny's Tiger Mother Transformation; What Tony Learns and Doesn't; Impeachment; Lexit?; How I Bear It or Don't

• My wife Jenny informs me that a case of the virus has been found in the Hui Shan District of Wuxi. That's the district in which Casa Kaulins is located.

• So, Jenny is doubly insistent that none of us leave of the apartment. It wouldn't be so bad except that she is tiger-mother tutoring my son Tony for about five hours a day. More than often, Jenny can be pleasant; but when it comes to Tony's schooling, she is very unpleasant to behold. She will have a permanent ugly scowl and actually hisses when she is annoyed with Tony. (They say that Chinese mothers are very hard on their sons.)

• Tony can recite word-for-word lines from the basic training scenes from the film Full Metal Jacket. He is also able to perform elaborate gestures from Three Stooges shorts. And yet Jenny complains that nothing she tries to teach Tony seems to stick. From what I have seen of Tony, I would say that Jenny and other tiger mothers waste their energy forcing their children to learn things. If they could think of a way to make their children want to learn things, it would be much better for all involved. Tony will teach himself (the best way to be taught I think) if properly motivated and not under undue pressure. It is really hard to learn math if you stuck next to a viper.

• Impeachment. I don't recall if I have blogged my thoughts about The Impeachment. It all seems very silly is all I really have to say. Now the name John Bolton came up about the Impeachment, and John Derbyshire said that while he mostly disagreed with John Bolton and saw him as a chickenhawk, he did agree with Bolton's assertion that the UN building in New York should best to be turned into a parking garage. I would agree with having that done and make a further suggestion of my own: move the UN headquarters to Beijing. What would all the useless UN functionaries and delegates think of that? I giggle to myself thinking of it.

• Now that Brexit has happened, how about Latvia leaving the EU? Riga, it's capital, could be like the Singapore of the Baltic. Or so I dream, but Latvia is a small country with a history of between stuck between a rock and a hard place. During World War 2, Latvians had to choose between the Nazis and Soviets. It was eventually annexed by the Soviets. In 1989, it achieved independence and joined the EU as a way of escaping the Russian / Soviet orbit. It seemed a logical thing to do at the time. But now, it seems that the Lativan ethnicity is being destroyed in a way, by being in the EU, that the Soviets could only dream of. I read of Latvians working in other parts ot the EU and ceasing to be Latvian; and of foreigners from all over are moving into Latvia and buying it up. But if Latvia leaves the EU, it would be by itself against the Russians....

• It is hard for me to be near Jenny and Tony during the tiger-mothering tutoring sessions. For one thing, it is nerve-wracking to hear. Jenny can berate Tony in a loud and sustained way that makes contemplation, reading, watching something or listening to something darn near impossible. I find I have to try to occupy myself in a way that occupies me physically. One time, this crisis, I spent the afternoon, cleaning our bedroom. This involved me moving furniture and the bed to get at the dust that had accumulated in the hidden-from-plain-view spots of the room. Now, I am doing this blog entry. (I say blogging is physical because I am creating this entry.) For another thing, Jenny can get violent with Tony. There have been more than a few times when she has hit Tony with books and rods because of her frustration with Tony not being able to learn something. I try to tell her, then, to calm herself, but I have realized I can't expect her to do what I do in situations where I have lost my temper and been violent, which is be instantly remorseful. I can only expect that my admontions to sink in over time. And for a final thing, my trying to get involved in these sessions by offering my assistance is met with disdain and contempt. Jenny expects me to be on completely on board with her approach to educating Tony. When I protest that her ways are completely alien to me, she tells that I am in China.