dual personalities

Month: October, 2013

October 8, 2013

You are here

by chuckofish

whitman-main

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

O Me! O Life! by Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass (1892)

5 Comments
October 7, 2013

Weekend update

by chuckofish

On Saturday my friends and I embarked on an autumn adventure. We ventured down to the Historic Shaw Art Fair. The Art Fair itself is not historic, but the neighborhood is. The idea for the last 20 years has been to showcase the beautiful neighborhood by providing a “high-caliber cultural event”. We are always up for one of those.

Because Carla was driving, we found the bomb spot and parked right outside the Missouri Botanical Garden. Awesome.

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It was overcast, but pleasant. There were reputedly 135 artists from across the country.

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Plus “entertainment”.

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It was fun, but I always feel bad about not buying something from all the well-meaning and earnest artists. I usually prefer my artwork to be vintage. C’est la vie. Afterwards we went to Jilly’s for lunch. I did not have a cupcake, but the non-dessert food was yummy.

photo

When I got home I went over to my favorite Pumpkin Patch at the Methodist Church and picked out a couple of pumpkins.

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I love pumpkins, don’t you?

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Here is how my front porch “vignette” looks:

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We planted some grass a few weeks ago and had part of a bale of hay left.

I know you’re impressed.

I was the second lector at church yesterday and I was pleasantly surprised to read one of my favorite scripture passages from the second letter of Paul to Timothy. It includes my personal mantra:

For God did not give you a spirit of timidity, but one of power and love and self-control. (RSV)

Of course, it was the NRSV so it read a little differently: for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.

The KJV says: For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

In this instance I like the RSV best. It is so much more personal, speaking to “you”, which seems like what Paul would have been doing in his letter to Timothy.

How was your weekend?

3 Comments
October 5, 2013

Home from the hills

by chuckofish

Yesterday I drove to Vermont to pick up #3 son for his October break. It was a perfect driving day: overcast and cool. Since the DH has the “good car” down in New Haven, I drove the old station wagon. And by old I mean a car with only a cassette player for music. We’ve tried ipod adapters but it doesn’t work too well. I ended up with the only cassettes I could find, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban read by Stephen Fry. Yes, the car is that old: we used it on long trips with the kiddies. Anyway, it really made my trip go quickly. And the scenery was gorgeous:

Imagine this view in the sun!

Imagine this view in the sun!

Who wouldn’t like to go to college among the mountains?

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The Tim and I stopped at my favorite antique store

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where he bought me a present!! This beautiful Chinese silk embroidery from the 1920s. It’s incredibly delicate and perfectly stitched. Thank you, Tim!

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I leave you with a passage from Rilke because beautiful as Fall is, there’s also something kind of melancholy about it.

“Look: the trees exist; the houses
we dwell in stand there stalwartly.
Only we pass by it all, like a rush of air.
And everything conspires to keep quiet
about us, half out of shame perhaps, half out of
some secret hope.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies

Don’t let it pass you by in a rush — notice everything! Have a great weekend.

4 Comments
October 4, 2013

Tout va bien

by chuckofish

It is October!

A new calendar page. Those pumpkins are sparkly!

A new calendar page. Those pumpkins are sparkly!

I love October, although this year so far it has been an extension of summer. It was 90 degrees for the Playoff opener yesterday! But the weather will change; it always does.

There is a lot to be done in October.

It is time to buy pumpkins.

And get my black tights out.

It is time to take longer walks and to leave the windows open at night.

And, oh, Vincent Price–flyover hometowner–is the Star of the Month on TCM.

vincent-price

Last night I DVR’d The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), a Warner Brothers classic starring Bette Davis and Errol FLynn, directed by the fabulous Michael Curtiz and based on a play by Maxwell Anderson. It also stars Olivia de Haviland, Donald Crisp, Alan Hale, and Price as Sir Walter Raleigh. So check out Thursday nights on TCM for lots of VIncent Price.

And hopefully we’ll see a lot more of this guy.

matheny

Go, Cards!

7 Comments
October 3, 2013

This is a moment

by chuckofish

thomas wolfe

“A destiny that leads the English to the Dutch is strange enough; but one that leads from Epsom into Pennsylvania, and thence into the hills that shut in Altamont over the proud coral cry of the cock, and the soft stone smile of an angel, is touched by that dark miracle of chance which makes new magic in a dusty world.

Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas.

The seed of our destruction will blossom in the desert, the alexin of our cure grows by a mountain rock, and our lives are haunted by a Georgia slattern, because a London cutpurse went unhung. Each moment is the fruit of forty thousand years. The minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death, and every moment is a window on all time.

This is a moment.”

–Thomas Wolfe (October 3, 1900 – September 15, 1938)
Look Homeward, Angel (1929)

I read this book a long, long time ago and this quote was in one of my earliest quote books. It reminds me a lot of William Faulkner and also Thornton Wilder. Both would have agreed with him.

4 Comments
October 2, 2013

Good grief, Charlie Brown

by chuckofish

The comic strip Peanuts was introduced on October 2, 1950 and ran for nearly 50 years. The final original strip ran on February 14, 2000.

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According to Wikipedia, Peanuts is the most popular and influential strip in the history of the comic strip, with 17,897 strips published in all. At its peak, Peanuts ran in over 2,600 newspapers, with a readership of 355 million in 75 countries, and was translated into 21 languages. It helped to cement the four-panel gag strip as the standard in the United States, and together with its merchandise earned Schulz more than $1 billion. Reprints of the strip are still syndicated and run in almost every U.S. newspaper.

Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson wrote:

“Peanuts pretty much defines the modern comic strip, so even now it’s hard to see it with fresh eyes. The clean, minimalist drawings, the sarcastic humor, the unflinching emotional honesty, the inner thoughts of a household pet, the serious treatment of children, the wild fantasies, the merchandising on an enormous scale — in countless ways, Schulz blazed the wide trail that most every cartoonist since has tried to follow.”

As a child, I was a great fan of Peanuts. My 5th grade friends always compared me to Lucy, but I definitely related to the misfit Charlie Brown who didn’t get invited to parties and never got Valentines, and to the spiritual, but uncertain, Linus who sucked his thumb and had a blanket. So had I. I kept a scrapbook of clippings and had many books and several stuffed Peanuts character dolls. My brother once made me a balsa wood dog house for a Snoopy figure. It was painted to look like his WWI doghouse-fighter plane.

snoopy

It was probably the nicest present he ever gave me.

Although a “comic” strip, I always had the sense that it was inherently sad. Life is sad and the knowledge of that is what ultimately binds us together. Clearly Charles Monroe Schulz (November 26, 1922 – February 12, 2000), even with a nickname like Sparky, understood that too.

peanuts1

7 Comments
October 1, 2013

And in breaking news….

by chuckofish

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I finally finished my cat needlepoint! Daughter #1 reminds me that I started it when she was in high school, i.e. over 10 years ago. Nevertheless, I am proud of myself for completing the project. Better late than never, right?

Also, in case you weren’t paying attention, the hometown team clinched the Central Division. We have the best record in baseball!

USA Today photo

USA Today photo

And, yes, HE’S our manager, so it’s a win/win.

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Today is also the 52nd anniversary of Roger Maris of the New York Yankees hitting his 61st home run of the season, breaking the record Babe Ruth set in 1927. How time does fly!

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Roger Maris ended his career in St. Louis, playing his final two seasons with the Cardinals, helping to win the 1967 and 1968 pennants. He was outstanding in the 1967 World Series, hitting .385 with one home run and seven RBIs. It was the best performance of his seven career World Series.

Maris (5)

Go, Cards!

4 Comments