dual personalities

Month: October, 2013

October 19, 2013

In the spirit of Halloween

by chuckofish

picture from http://regolish.blogspot.com/2012/02/shadows-to-unseen-magician.html

photo retrieved from google image

I bring you “Antigonish”, an odd little poem written in 1899 by Hughes Mearns when he was a student at Harvard.

Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he’d go away…

When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn’t see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door… (slam!)

Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away

According to wikipedia, he was inspired by a haunted house in Nova Scotia, but the only Nova Scotian haunted house story I could discover took place in the early 1920s when a Scottish farmer, Alexander MacDonald, his wife, and 15 year old daughter were terrorized by a fire-setting poltergeist (obviously the teenaged girl). Apparently, they went so far as to get a ghost hunter from Temple University to investigate. No conclusive evidence materialized.

But the poem, “Antigonish”, had an afterlife of its own. In 1939 a couple of songwriters discovered it and it became a huge hit. Here’s Mildred Bailey singing a cool, jazzy version:

I’m off to the church bazaar now — have a great weekend and don’t be surprised if you (don’t) meet a little man upon the stair!

2 Comments
October 18, 2013

Back in the STL

by chuckofish

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Daughter #1 flew into town from NYC yesterday with a full agenda of flyover activities in hand.

We’ve already checked off the zoo. And Steak ‘N Shake.

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I am looking forward to a whirlwind weekend! Have a good one.

And Go Cards!

5 Comments
October 17, 2013

Play the man

by chuckofish

Yesterday was the day we Episcopalians remember Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley who were burned at the stake by Queen “Bloody” Mary in England in 1555. (Archbishop Thomas Cranmer is also remembered on October 16, but he was actually executed later.)

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When Catholic Mary became Queen of England one of her first acts was to arrest Bishop Ridley, Bishop Latimer, and Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. She insisted that the best way to deal with heresy was to burn as many heretics as possible. In the course of a five-year reign, she lost all the English holdings on the continent of Europe, she lost the affection of her people, and she lost any chance of a peaceful religious settlement in England. Of the nearly three hundred persons burned by her orders, the most famous are the Oxford Martyrs, commemorated yesterday.

The scholar Nicholas Ridley had been a chaplain to King Henry VIII and was Bishop of London under his son Edward. He was a preacher beloved of his congregation. Hugh Latimer also became an influential preacher during King Edward’s reign. He was an earnest student of the Bible, and as Bishop of Worcester he encouraged the Scriptures be known in English by the people. His sermons emphasized that men should serve the Lord with a true heart and inward affection, not just with outward show.

When Ridley was asked if he believed the pope was heir to the authority of Peter as the foundation of the Church, he replied that the church was not built on any man but on the truth Peter confessed — that Christ was the Son of God. Ridley said he could not honor the pope in Rome since the papacy was seeking its own glory, not the glory of God. Neither Ridley nor Latimer could accept the Roman Catholic mass as a sacrifice of Christ. Latimer told the commissioners, “Christ made one oblation and sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, and that a perfect sacrifice; neither needeth there to be, nor can there be, any other propitiatory sacrifice.”

For their heresy they were burned at the stake on October 16, 1555. As the flames rose around them, Latimer encouraged Ridley, “Be of good comfort, Mr. Ridley, and play the man! We shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace, in England, as I trust never shall be put out.”

Martyrs' monument in Oxford.

Martyrs’ monument in Oxford.

Keep us, O Lord, constant in faith and zealous in witness, that, like thy servants Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, we may live in thy fear, die in thy favor, and rest in thy peace; for the sake of Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

I’m sorry I did not remember the Oxford Martyrs yesterday. Today is a good day to do so as well. Lest we forget.

“They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me. But then they will have my dead body, but not my obedience.”

― Mahatma Gandhi

(Historical info from Christianity.com)

3 Comments
October 16, 2013

Keeping it all in perspective

by chuckofish

Baseball is not the only sport played in the fall. There is field hockey.

The nip in the air always brings me back to the hockey field. The crack of the neatly hit ball and all that. The girls in their green shorts. Shinguards.

Also the misery of never making the team. I played for years, but only intramural. My mother (who played varsity field hockey in high school) always told me that in a few years it wouldn’t matter. She was right, but at the time, oh my. Tragic.

I enjoyed my dual personality’s success on the hockey field vicariously. She played for four years. Superstar.

My two girls both played J.V.

The cool girls have their sleeves rolled. Some things never change.

The cool girls have their sleeves rolled. Some things never change.

But back to me. Wah Wah. I just had no skills. Zip. Better players than I did not make the cut. At the time I just wanted to be on the team. One of the girls in a green and gold pinney. I longed to be in the team picture.

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The truth is, I am not a team player.

No, I could always relate to old Jane Eyre:

“…The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”

I am an observer. And that’s okay. It’s all about self-awareness, right?

In the words of the great Lou Holtz: “Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.” So I never made the field hockey team.

I got over it.

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But when I feel that nip in the fall air…

7 Comments
October 15, 2013

Two of my favorites

by chuckofish

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Here’s a picture to make you smile on Tuesday: Steve McQueen drunkenly embracing an amused John Wayne.

“I love you, man.”

4 Comments
October 14, 2013

Gathering leaves

by chuckofish

leavevs2

It is that time of year when the leaves begin to fall and we begin to think about cleaning them up.

Gone are the days when we had lots of free help.

leaves

Sigh.

The boy did come over on Sunday and he helped me achieve an ant apocalypse by destroying a giant ant hill that had been built over the course of some years in a low wall surrounding a tree in the front yard. He came over for brunch, but somehow he always ends up doing some much-needed man-work around the house/yard, for which I am most appreciative.

Here’s a poem to start off the week. Have a good one!

Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.
I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.
But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.
I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?
Next to nothing for weight,
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.
Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who’s to say where
The harvest shall stop?”

― Robert Frost

5 Comments
October 12, 2013

The past is NOT a foreign country

by chuckofish

This week I had my students watch the film Everything is Illuminated, which is a wonderful, sometimes hilarious, but also sad story about family and memory, in which we learn that

…everything is illuminated in the light of the past. It is always along the side of us, on the inside, looking out.

Well, I couldn’t agree more — the past is certainly always along side me, both literally and figuratively. While I’m not as obsessive/compulsive as the film’s main character (played by Elijah Wood),
everything is illuminated
who clearly needed to see a shrink, I do surround myself with nice things that remind me of my family and, well, the past. Take, for example, my dresser and mirror which are from my grandparents’ house (please excuse the poor photo — I could not get the lighting right!):
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I remember using the dresser set when we visited our grandparents and when it became mine when I was ten, that connection made it very special. The chair on the left is from the family farm in New Hampshire and the framed print leaning up against the dresser until I get around to hanging it was one of my mother’s favorites. On the dresser I have a collection of boxes and also my mother’s photo.

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The larger wooden box was my grandfather Cameron’s; the round wooden one is Ukrainian, a gift from my husband; the silver topped one was my grandmother Chamberlin’s; the pretty porcelain heart, a gift from my Aunt Susanne, and the beautiful little enamel one, a gift from my dear dual personality, as was the picture frame. The dresser cloth is an antique (I think also from the farm?) and the hand mirror was my grandmother Cameron’s — it’s one of those bakelite ones from the 1920s. Every time I use these things I think of those from whom they came and it makes me happy.

I don’t live in a museum and I’m not being morbid — nor am I a materialist. It’s not about monetary value or the supposed caché of owning antiques. I just like the way everything has a story and the stories keep us connected to our histories. And without that connection, we’d feel lost all the time like Elijah Wood at the beginning of Everything is Illuminated. Really, if you haven’t seen the film, do! It even has wonderful music:

Have a great weekend and remember, “everything is the way it is because everything was the way it was.”
(from Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer)

11 Comments
October 11, 2013

Pick me out a winner, Bobby

by chuckofish

All the excitement of post-season baseball has made me think of baseball movies. I can’t say it’s a favorite genre of mine. The popular ones like Bull Durham and Field of Dreams just don’t do a lot for me.

But I do love The Natural (1984), an adaptation of Bernard Malamud’s 1952 baseball novel of the same name, directed by Barry Levinson and starring Robert Redford.

the Natural

The Natural was nominated for four Academy Awards: Actress in a Supporting Role (Glenn Close), Cinematography (Caleb Deschanel), Art Direction (Mel Bourne, Angelo P. Graham, Bruce Weintraub), and Music* (Randy Newman). Kim Basinger was also nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. Of course, it won nothing. And why wasn’t Barry Levinson, the director, nominated? Or Robert Redford? Please. That was the year Amadeus won a lot of awards. Best Picture. Best Director. Remember F. Murray Abraham? Neither do I. He won the Best Actor Oscar.

Well, I like Robert Redford in this movie. He played baseball in college and so maybe that is why he is very believable as a player.

Redford-natural-1984

He underplays to perfection the part of the guy whose life didn’t turn out as he expected. And he is supported by the kind of cast John Ford would have been proud of: Robert Duvall, Wilford Brimley, Richard Farnsworth, Darren McGavin. (And the ladies are pretty good too: Glenn Close and Kim Basinger!)

Speaking of Richard Farnsworth–I just love him.

Farnsworth on the left with Wilford Brimley in the dugout.

Farnsworth with Wilford Brimley in the dugout.

Farnsworth (1920–2000), you know, began his career as a stuntman, playing a bit part in Gunga Din and a soldier in Gone With the Wind. Through the years he played countless dusty cowboys in films ranging from Red River to Blazing Saddles.

The cowboy in the background--Farnsworth was the real deal..

The cowboy in the background–Farnsworth was the real deal.

He continued as such for thirty years, before being “discovered” in his fifties. He was nominated for a Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in Comes a Horseman (1978) and for Best Actor for his final film The Straight Story (1999). It goes without saying that he didn’t win either.

I guess I got a bit off the track there. Don’t act like you’re surprised.

So my Friday movie pick is The Natural. It is a fable of success. Some critics hated the storybook ending, but to me it is like all great baseball games–it ends happily and with a victory. Goodness trounces Evil.

Gus Sands: If it isn’t enough, tell us what you had in mind.
Roy Hobbs: To hit away.

Truth, Justice and the American Way, thank you very much.

Of course, I won’t be watching The Natural tonight. I’ll be watching actual baseball. (Cards vs. Dodgers)

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Swing away, Dave.

* By the way, Randy Newman’s musical score is one of the best of all time.

3 Comments
October 10, 2013

Waste not

by chuckofish

“…I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house. So I have spent almost all the daylight hours in the open air.”

~Nathaniel Hawthorne, 10th October 1842

The view from my back door in the morning

The view from my backdoor yesterday morning

I am with Hawthorne all the way. Unfortunately I do not have the option of staying outside all day. I will, however, take a walk around the block if work allows. Yesterday I had a meeting on my flyover campus and so I got to walk around. It was nice. I mean look at that sky!

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And when I get home today I will attack some more vines–strenuous yard work which bears visible results is good for the soul, right? But sometimes I feel like Shane and that stump.

ShaneStump

And, yes…

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We won the NLDS! Just look at the wing span on old Adam Wainwright! Onward and upward, Cardinals! Bring on the Dodgers!

4 Comments
October 9, 2013

Happy Leif Erikson* Day!

by chuckofish

There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them: the same became mighty men, who were of old, men of renown. (Genesis 6:4)

LeifErikson1968stamp

Leif Erikson was a Norse explorer who is regarded as the first European to land in North America (excluding Greenland), nearly 500 years before Christopher Columbus.

In 1929 the Wisconsin Legislature passed a bill to make October 9 “Leif Erikson Day” in the state. That date was not chosen to commemorate any event in the life of the explorer, but rather, it marked the first organized immigration from Norway to the United States. The ship carrying these first immigrants arrived in New York Harbor on October 9, 1825. In 1964 the United States Congress authorized and requested the president to proclaim October 9 of each year as “Leif Erikson Day”.

My best friend in graduate school was a young woman whose father was a Lutheran minister and college professor at Augustana College. She was half Swedish and half Danish and a descendent of those 19th century immigrants who settled in the Midwest. She looked a lot like Loni Anderson. Many of my fellow (female) historians hated her because she was so gorgeous. (She was smart too.) I never held her looks against her.

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She was a bridesmaid in my wedding and her parents drove down from Rock Island, Illinois to attend the festivities. They gave me a very Swedish-looking trivet which I have used ever since in all my kitchens. It reminds me of my friend and her Scandinavian parents every day.

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Trevlig dag!

* Sometimes spelled Ericson; sometimes spelled Erickson. Zut alors! Someone please make up your mind!

4 Comments