dual personalities

Month: June, 2012

June 30, 2012

He’s a Yankee Doodle Dandy

by chuckofish

and an excellent brother to boot! When I visited him in Maine, he took me exploring in a canoe

Every mountain man carries a side arm

and when I graduated from college he took me to climb my first mountain, Mt. Monadnock in New Hampshire. Back then, he climbed a mountain a day.

Above the tree line and the bugs

I, by contrast, was out of shape, improperly attired (no hiking boots) and generally horrified by the swarms of black flies. He was endlessly patient, though, and just kept encouraging me to “take one step at a time and go slowly, but keep moving”. I made it and have to admit that I was very proud of myself. Here I am about half way up, trying to look game.

Are we there yet?

He also taught his sisters how to shoot. Hey, dual personality, do you remember the time we went plinking and the dog came out of nowhere and relieved himself on your down vest, which you had taken off? I have never laughed harder. I couldn’t find a picture with my darling sister in it, but here I am ready to take action against unsuspecting rotten vegetables:

And, finally, what is cooler than a brother who plays the fiddle at the top of a waterfall in the middle of the woods?

a waterfall somewhere in Maine

So cheers to the best brother — and happy (early) birthday!

8 Comments
June 29, 2012

Hot as satan’s hoof

by chuckofish

Last week I replaced the pillows on my wicker sofa in the Florida Room. Unfortunately, it has been way too hot (108-degrees yesterday!) to enjoy this room except in the early hours of the day. Zut alors!

We are in the middle of a drought as well. Maybe tonight would be a good night to watch “The Rainmaker”–that’s the movie (1956) with Katharine Hepburn and Burt Lancaster, not the John Grisham one released in 1997 with Matt Damon. Or maybe not. It’s not a great movie.

I must say I’m feeling a little like Lizzie Curry these days.

What would be a good choice of movie to watch tonight? That is, of course, if the electricity holds out!

(Props to the boy for using his blog name in my post.)

12 Comments
June 28, 2012

Lest we forget

by chuckofish

Earlier this week the boy was a volunteer escort on an “Honor Flight” to Washington D.C. You can read all about it on his blog here.

This is an awesome program. Honor Flight Network is a non-profit organization created solely to honor America’s veterans for all their sacrifices. They transport veterans to Washington, D.C. to visit and reflect at their memorials. Top priority is given to the senior veterans – World War II survivors, along with those other veterans who may be terminally ill. Check out their website here.

Pretty cool, don’t you think?

3 Comments
June 27, 2012

It’s good to be curious

by chuckofish

I hope you enjoy this “remixed” Mr. Rogers as much as I did!

Fred McFeely Rogers (March 20, 1928 – February 27, 2003) was an American educator, Presbyterian minister, songwriter, author, and television host. He was most famous for creating and hosting Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (1968–2001).

In 2002 he gave the commencement address at Dartmouth College (which he had attended many years before). It was a good speech. Here’s a snippet:

I’d like to give you all an invisible gift. A gift of a silent minute to think about those who have helped you become who you are today. Some of them may be here right now. Some may be far away. Some, like my astronomy professor, may even be in Heaven. But wherever they are, if they’ve loved you and encouraged you and wanted what was best in life for you, they’re right inside yourself. And I feel that you deserve quiet time on this special occasion to devote some thought to them. So let’s just take a minute in honor of those who have cared about us all along the way. One silent minute.

Whomever you’ve been thinking about, imagine how grateful they must be that during your silent times you remember how important they are to you. It’s not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It’s the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our lives from which we make our choices is very good stuff.

Good stuff, indeed!

P.S. I found this YouTube treasure on the wonderful SouleMama blog. Check it out here.

2 Comments
June 26, 2012

To dance beneath the diamond sky

by chuckofish

Our mother died twenty-four years ago today. She was 62 years old. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of her and that I don’t miss her.

She was, indeed, a pilgrim and a stranger in this world, but I like to think of her in heaven, dancing “beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free, Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands…” My mother was no fan of Bob Dylan. She feared the change he heralded, but she did like “Mr. Tambourine Man” a lot and that line in particular. I always thought it described her alter-ego perfectly.

Here is a poem that I found in one of her notebooks. It seems appropriate today.

Life

I made a posie, while the day ran by:
Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie
My life within this band.
But time did becken to the flowers, and they
By noon most cunningly did steal away
And wither’d in my hand.

My hand was next to them, and then my heart:
I took, without more thinking, in good part
Times gentle admonition:
Who did so sweetly deaths sad taste convey
Making my minde to smell my fatall day;
Yet sugring the suspicion.

Farewell deare flowers, sweetly your time ye spent,
Fit, while ye liv’d, for smell or ornament,
And after death for cures.
I follow straight without complaints or grief,
Since if my sent be good, I care not, if
It be as short as yours.

–George Herbert

6 Comments
June 25, 2012

They died with their boots on

by chuckofish

I missed Errol Flynn’s birthday last week on June 20, so I thought I would give him a shout out today on the anniversary of the battle of the Little Big Horn, also known as Custer’s Last Stand.

They Died With Their Boots On, a highly fictionalized version of George Armstrong Custer’s life, is nonetheless one of the best of Flynn’s 8 pairings with the inimitable Olivia de Haviland. It is also the last of the movies they made together. Made in 1941 and directed by Raoul Walsh, it features a veritable who’s who of Warner Brothers character actors, including a young Anthony Quinn as Crazy Horse, Sydney Greenstreet, Hattie McDaniel, Regis Toomey, Charley Grapewin, and on and on. But it is Olivia and Errol that make the movie.

I wanted to show the scene where the two part for the last time before George leaves for what we in the audience know will be his death in battle at the the Little Big Horn. (The scene is unfortunately unavailable.) It is a genuinely touching scene by two great actors. Errol is always at his best with Olivia; he seems to be trying and not just calling it in, so to speak.

It is also a particularly poignant scene because we know this couple will never star in another movie together and that Errol’s career will quickly dissolve as his personal life begins the inevitable downward spiral to an early death. As children watching, we knew this because our mother was a big Errol Flynn fan and she told us. Indeed, Errol Flynn’s life was in itself a cautionary tale–beauty, brains and talent are not enough. Olivia de Haviland knew this and she wisely distanced herself from the doomed Flynn.

In a side note, our great-grandfather, the original ANC, fought at the Battle of the Rosebud on June 17, 1876. A youth fresh from Vermont, he was the trumpeteer.

6 Comments
June 23, 2012

Why I love Joseph Conrad

by chuckofish

“It is when we try to grapple with another man’s intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun. It is as if loneliness were a hard and absolute condition of existence; the envelope of flesh and blood on which our eyes are fixed melts before the outstretched hand, and there remains only the capricious, unconsolable and elusive spirit that no eye can follow, no hand can grasp.” Lord Jim

And he had such nice eyes, too.

3 Comments
June 22, 2012

Somewhere over the rainbow

by chuckofish

On this day in 1969 Frances Ethel Gumm, better known as Judy Garland, was found dead in the bathroom of a rented house in Chelsea, England of an “incautious over-dosage of barbiturates”. She was only 47, but she had been working for over 40 years.

On June 26 Garland’s remains were taken to New York City, where an estimated 20,000 people lined up for hours at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel in Manhattan to pay their respects. James Mason gave a eulogy the next day at her funeral, an Episcopal service.

Recently I happened to watch The Wizard of Oz on TCM for the umpteenth time. It really is one of the best movies ever made. Definitely on my Top Ten list. It should have won Best Picture in that year of years 1939, but, of course, it lost to the over-blown and over-esteemed Gone With the Wind. This movie has everything, including a flyover state tornado! Everyone in it is perfect from the smartest, bravest dog ever in movies (Toto) to the Munchkins to Billie Burke as Glinda and Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West to the Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman and Cowardly Lion. The sets, the music. And 17-year-old Judy Garland as the brown-eyed Dorothy Gale: Wonderful.

Much has been written about the sad life of Judy Garland and her misbegotten career in Hollywood. She only made about 30 movies, but she will be remembered forever for a handful of really good movies and one great one: The Wizard of Oz. Everyone should own it and watch it once a year. Remember in the old days when they would broadcast it on Thanksgiving night? We looked forward to it every year, and always watched it. For a long time Danny Kaye introduced it and warned people not to adjust their televisions when the screen suddenly turns to color when Dorothy wakes up in Oz. Genius. Of course, we never had a color TV growing up, so our mother had to explain to us what happens in the movie. I never saw it on the big screen–it must have been magical.

Anyway, watching The Wizard of Oz would be a good way to honor the great Judy Garland today. May light perpetual shine upon you, Judy.

6 Comments
June 21, 2012

That’s My King

by chuckofish

Shadrach Meshach Lockridge (1913—2000) was the pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, a prominent African-American congregation located in San Diego, California, from 1953 to 1993. He was known for his preaching across the United States and around the world.

I never hear anything like this in my church. I wish I did.

Do you know Him?

6 Comments
June 20, 2012

Memory lane

by chuckofish

The boy is getting hitched in about 6 weeks. He is marrying a young lady he has known since the three-year-old class at pre-school (see above).

The boy is the cutie in the second row on the far left with the cool socks and the OshKosh overalls. His bride-to-be is the girl in the sailor dress in the front row, third from the left. They are getting married in the same church his father and I were married in and also the parents of the bride. Practically unheard of in this day in age!

Here they are in the four-year-old class picture–engaged by now, but not sitting together. The boy is still wearing those cool socks and overalls and has added a jeans jacket to his trend-setting ensemble. Lauren appears to be already carrying a handbag.

They haven’t changed much really, have they?

7 Comments