I don’t have any comments to offer here on the jurisprudence of Justice Scalia, but I do crack a smile at his florid prose, as pointed out again recently by endless commentators (and wags who have fun with him). Such writing comes from having no editor to answer to, and a taste for it. I’ve run across most of his terms before — everyone ought to know “argle-bargle” and “applesauce” (in the way he meant it) for instance — but “jiggery-pokery” was a new one on me.

Or rather, an old-sounding new one. It’s a term of abuse that sounds like it might have come up in a London coffee shop argument about the Bangorian Controversy. I was glad to learn it.

Earlier this month, Lilly went to Ecuador and Panama on a Spanish Club trip. It was a big wheel, little wheel trip — one major destination (Ecuador for a week), one lesser one (Panama for three days).

That’s further than I ever got to go on any school trips, though taking a bus to Stevens Point, Wis., from San Antonio for the Mu Alpha Theta National Convention was its own kind of epic, and Amarillo seemed almost as far (Latin Club trip). It was the luck of the draw for her; some years the club goes to Spain, others Costa Rica. All those sound good to me, but Ecuador especially. South America. I’ve never even been close.

Most of her pictures weren’t selfies. She’s outgrowing a need for excessive self-images, I think. Here’s a view overlooking Quito.

The next pics illustrate her taking after her father, unconsciously I bet, in taking pictures of statues and public art. This particular figure is Francisco de Orellana, explorer of the Amazon. As Wiki puts it, “in one of the most improbably successful voyages in known history, Orellana managed to sail the length of the Amazon, arriving at the river’s mouth on 24 August 1542.”
Some roadside art.
Plaza de la Independencia.

She was also impressed by the fact that she could see a volcano from Quito, which I believe is Pichincha. Alexander von Humboldt was the first European to climb it. I hear tell it’s still active.
Of course there were many more places. She visited the tourist Equator — how could you not? — Plaza Santa Domingo, a couple of art museums, open markets, grocery stores, churches, a school (technically they took a few Spanish lessons), the neighborhood in which she stayed with an Ecuadorean family, even the outside of the Ecuadorean presidential palace. All in all, it sounded like a fine trip. I’d need no persuasion to go myself.