Bedtime stories. Changes in longitude, changes in how its viewed. Autumn comes crashing down. Dance party called off.

All my kids love to be read to. What else is there? We don't have TV and they are rarely allowed to watch videos. Zoriana asks me all the time.

You old timers may remember Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin asked Dad to read Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie every night. Four years ago Eddie was asking me to read Calvin every night. Fortunately we have the four volume complete set, so the story did not repeat too often. We did, however, go through those four volumes about four times.

Zoriana has a whole bunch of favorites, the composition of which also changes only by small degrees. Oksana bought almost all of these books. From Aesop's fables we have The Lion and the Mouse, How the Leopard Got His Spots and (maybe not Aesop) The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Zoriana will shove a handful of four books in my face whenever she gets the opportunity and demand that I read them. My discussions about civil, polite ways of asking haven't yielded results. Though I often say no, she probably gets six books a day one way or the other.

I want to use this as a learning experience. I increasingly ask her to tell me in Ukrainian what she has just heard in English. A lot of words, such as sheep, wolf, boat and so on she knows in both languages. Others are new to her – some worth learning, some forgettable. George, the boy who cried Wolf, had his sheep jump over a stile so he could count them. No need to know that. On the other hand, George the Giant wore a gown. That's a useful word to know, so I translated it into the Ukrainian word for dress. If there is a better word for gown somebody will let me know.

We always read at bedtime. Since Zoriana sleeps with me, we read in bed. Eddie usually shows up as well. As often as not Marianna is also there. There is often more roughhouse than reading, which is fine with me. Although somebody (Zoriana again!) usually winds up crying, the tears are over quickly and they get right back to it. My kids really do like each other, and however rough it may look, the older ones do take care not to hurt Marianna.

Oksana has gotten into the mix as well. She asks me to read a chapter or so from the Bible at bedtime. The first couple of nights were Exodus – the 10 Commandments – and in the last couple it has been the Book of Matthew, from the birth of Jesus up through the Sermon on the Mount. I'm happy to say that Eddie asked some pretty good questions. Do the Beatitudes sound like socialism? Yes, a little bit. What does it mean to commit adultery in your heart? It means you are Jimmy Carter – no red-blooded man worries about it. Evolution commands that we look at pretty girls, and we do.

Since this week is a public school holiday, babysitter Anna's daughter Sophia is spending the nights with us. Naturally she was in bed as well last night, making a total of six. After Oksana went downstairs to feed Marianna, she and Eddie stayed while I read Zoriana's obligatory three books. Then Sophia laid down to go to sleep!

This would be weird in contemporary America. I told Zoriana to sleep in the middle and awaited developments. Oksana brought Marianna upstairs to sleep in the bassinet. She hates to hear the baby cry in the middle of the night. It didn't bother her that Sophia was in bed with us, so I concluded that there was no problem and let it be.

Sophia is the very definition of a preteen girl. Her body has not yet entered puberty, but her brain is arriving quickly. She walks like a woman. She giggles, moves, and has the other womanly attributes designed to attract men when the time is right. She is also quite proper. For several years now she has observed a strict code of modesty, closing the bathroom and dressing room doors. She certainly knows enough to both exhibit and expect proper behavior around an adult man, which gives me confidence.

Marianna slept through the night for the first time. She has figured out that there's nothing in it for her if she wakes Dad up in the middle of the night. Might as well get her beauty sleep. Before Oksana came to feed her at six in the morning she had not uttered a peep. Throughout the night I had no idea Sophia was still there – no sound or movement from her side of the bed. Restless Zoriana, poking and kicking me every half hour, was the only girl of whom I was aware.

As I have written before, I think that this kind of arrangement would have been rather commonplace anywhere in the world a couple of centuries ago. I think it's healthy that girls learn to be comfortable around men and at the same time develop well-defined expectations as to how they and the guys should behave. They should naturally be growing into a frame of mind in which they spend a lot of time, and share a bed with a man. However, not just a random man from Tinder, as in contemporary America, but her One and Only Man.

This morning I called off our second dance party, scheduled for next Saturday. Mayor Klitchko has said that Kyiv is on the threshold of entering code red, which will require vaccines or Covid tests just to enter public transportation. Moreover, I have three minor symptoms that appear in the Covid list – dizziness, light diarrhea, and leg cramps. I'm not worried for myself, but I don't want to expose anybody else if I happen to be sick.

Some good might come of it. Babysitter Anna is getting a certificate confirming that she has antibodies, which she says will be as useful as a vaccination certificate. I certainly hope it is, and that alone would be sufficient reason to get tested after this thing blows over.

We seem to be approaching the peak of our third wave. Every possible medium is broadcasting doom and gloom.

This is the first wave since they began inoculations. In many other places in the world the reported cases of Covid have skyrocketed after the shots began. It would be very interesting to know what percentage of the sick people here got jabbed, and how many times. Relatively few countries – among them Israel and Denmark – seem willing to keep accurate statistics on this.

Very few Ukrainians can have read as much about this Covid nonsense as I have, but they have good instincts.  They don't want the shot. Given the level of resistance, I cannot imagine that the powers that be will be able to impose an effective vaccination screening regime on public transportation. The bus drivers with whom I ride openly flout the mask mandates. They don't wear them, and they don't say a word if I don't. They are not about to look at the vaccination papers for everybody boarding their vehicles, especially given that only about 1/6 of the population is vaccinated at all.  The franchisees who ran our local jitney bus service went out of business last year, no doubt driven to bankruptcy by the lockdowns. I can't imagine that the new owners of the franchise will put up with another such shutdown.

Nothing I see suggests a catastrophe. Nobody coughing, many riders on the bus not masked. The evidence of my eyes would say that it is vastly overblown. However, babysitter Anna says the crematory is doing above average business.

When I was in college the left had all of the good comedy. Jewish comedians like Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl excoriated the establishment. Tom Lehrer's satirical songs won over audiences everywhere. Now that shoe is on the other foot. The establishment does not know what to do with Dave Chapelle. Smart, funny, black – and a wrong thinker!  Whatsherface mocks every kind of establishment stupidity, the largest target being Anthony Fauci and Covid. Paul Joseph Watson's sarcastic scorn is unrelenting – and relentlessly on target.  Bill Maher is still funny, but has switched sides.  Keith Olbermann gets totally pwned by PJW  Maybe there is hope yet.

The days get shorter fastest at this time a year. We will dress in darkness until daylight savings ends on Sunday. It's only two months until the winter solstice, with fewer than eight hours of daylight, following which we have the two coldest months of the year. We are somewhat exposed having only electric heat. It could be worse. We could depend on Russian gas, solar or wind energy. I expect it will be worse for a lot of other people than us.

Primitive man used to build fires indoors and put up with the smoke. That's plan B. Chop up the big logs lying around the backyard and burn them in Weber grills we have brought indoors. To that end I plan to buy quite a few bags of charcoal. It doesn't create as much smoke. What I should do, and might do, is to buy an outdoors gas grill that we could hook u[ via a long flexible hose to the natural gas lines just outside the house.

Most of you, primarily the liberal contingent, are resolutely uninterested in my observations about the decline of our civilization and in particular of the fate of the European peoples who dominated the planet at the end of the 19th century. I have posted my most recent thoughts in the blog prior to this one here on Substack. I did not send an announcement because (a) I haven't seen vast expressions of interest and (b) I don't want to appear on anybody's list of enemies of the people. There is a question why I write at all. If pressed for a good reason, it would be to hear from kindred souls. Experience tells me, however, that it's  not terribly likely to happen. I should learn to shut up. I hope I do.

That's the word from Lake WeBeGone, where the men are strong, the women are good looking, and the children seem quite content to grow up to be appropriately strong and good looking in their turn.