He was young again and his place was the open road and the seashore and the uncharted world. He was Lochiel, with a price on his head and no home but the heather…He was Montrose in his lonely loyalty. He was Roland in the red twilight of Roncesvalles. (John Buchan, Castle Gay)
He is my James. Happy (belated) Birthday!! And may you enjoy many Buchan-inspired adventures!
*E. M. Forster, A Passage to India
Today I am on the road to College Park, by way of Baltimore, to meet up with my lovely daughters. We are road-tripping together to Virginia to attend a wedding this weekend, so I will be off the radar for a few days. I hope my dual personality will fill in the blanks while I am incognito.
Have a great weekend and keep the faith!
*Gaily bedight, a gallant knight” is the first line of the poem “Eldorado” by Edgar Allan Poe. It always makes me want to “ride, boldly ride”.
Saturday, by the way, is Walt Whitman’s birthday–May 31, the last of the amazing birthday month of May!
I will be out of town, so I thought I would give you a little W.W. today so you can think ahead and plan your celebration.
I know I have the best of time and space, and was never measured and never will be measured.
I tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all!)
My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods,
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,
I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange,
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
My left hand hooking you round the waist,
My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road.Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.It is not far, it is within reach,
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know,
Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land.
–Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, 46
Oh, man, isn’t he the best?
Oh, I do love a three-day weekend, don’t you?
That extra day just makes a huge difference. Saturday and Sunday were filled with the usual activities: Estate sale-ing where I found this vintage needlepoint pillow
“He’s just a dandy-lion”
and this little garden armadillo with a broken ear and tail.
I went grocery shopping and the boy came over to borrow tools. I went to church, did yard work and laundry. Then the boy and daughter #3 came over for a Memorial Day bar-b-que on Sunday night.
We sat outside and drank beer. Then ate inside–James Beard’s steak and onion sandwiches that were one of my mother’s specialties.
We had a fun evening (and cake). If you are wondering, we had our Memorial Day bar-b-que a day early, because they were going to the Cardinals game on Monday. It was the 5oth anniversary re-match World Series game with the Yankees (can you believe it’s been 50 years?!) and everyone got a World Series replica ring.
On Monday I read leisurely and then proceeded to clean out the bookshelves in the den. Quelle dusty job. I moved some books around and made many, many trips to the basement and to the second floor. I found some books that daughter #2 might like to add to her shelves and I found some others that can be moved to the give-away box. In the cabinets below the bookshelves I rearranged and straightened the photo albums. I threw some stuff away like all our VHS tapes of recorded from TV Miami Vice episodes. I found a few long-lost gems, but a lot more things that are in the why-have-I-kept-this-all-these-years category. I was in a clear-it-out mood. Zut alors! The corner looks nice and refreshed.
While I was doing this I half-watched some rather schmaltzy war movies on TCM, including The White Cliffs of Dover (1944) made during WWII with Irene Dunne. They pulled out all the propaganda stops with this one! It was enjoyable though, because Irene Dunne is always good and it had the MGM line-up of supporting stars including Frank Morgan (the Wizard of Oz) who personified the all-American American. When the American troops arrived to save the day in both WWI and WWII while the band played Sousa, even I got a little misty-eyed.
But it being John Wayne’s birthday, I had to cleanse my palate with something better.
I chose True Grit (1969).
Excellent choice.
*Ned Pepper in True Grit (1969)
Today is Memorial Day and also John Wayne’s birthday!
You can watch war movies all day on TCM. Twelve O’Clock High (1949)–one of my favorites is on tonight, followed by another great one, The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).
Or you can choose to watch John Wayne movies.
Either way, have a good day and take some time to remember the men and women who died while serving in the U.S. armed forces.
Here is a great rendition of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, written by Julia Ward Howe in 1861 to the tune of “John Brown’s Body”:
Have you ever read all the lyrics to this wonderful hymn? Well, here they are:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.
I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
“As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal”;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is Wisdom to the mighty, He is Succour to the brave,
So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave,
Our God is marching on.
(Chorus)
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah.
Our God is marching on.
And here is a special prayer from the BCP for today:
ALMIGHTY God, our heavenly Father, in whose hands are the living and the dead; We give thee thanks for all those thy servants who have laid down their lives in the service of our country. Grant to them thy mercy and the light of thy presence, that the good work which thou hast begun in them may be perfected; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord. Amen.
of Spring and socializing we have experienced this week, starting with boy #2’s graduation from his north country university
proud papa bestows the diploma as the president claps appreciatively
And afterwards
brothers and a favorite prof
roomies
enter 3rd robber
Woohoo! The day was perfectly beautiful and even our yard looked nice.
Note the visible line in the right foreground where our neighbor’s perfect grass starts
Yes, we have forget-me-nots growing randomly in our yard and the grass weeds need cutting, but the cherry tree looks pretty and everything is so, so green!
After the graduate moved home, his big brother flew back to the big city to work, and the little brother finally did his laundry, we started to settle into our summer routine but not before I went to see Godzilla with my recently retired friend and fellow flyover state native, Lou Ann. The movie was intense, but it lacked the charm and humor of the classic films. It was a lot more like this
a natural disaster — so menacing
than this
The real Godzilla — a guy in a monster suit
Overall, however, I enjoyed it. As one of my boys said, it had most of the flaws of the classic movies: a weak script; poor character development (in the humans); and predictability. On the plus side, the monster fights were great — Godzilla killed one enemy with his thermonuclear death breath — and they played up the “Godzilla saves the planet from bad creatures” angle, although because Godzilla is himself a dumb monster, he just doesn’t have any spatial awareness and so mindlessly crushes cities and people. C’est la vie.
On Wednesday we attended the faculty/staff picnic at SLU, where we imbibed free booze, ate bad food, enjoyed the company of colleagues (parents of one of our son’s best friends and some of the only people on campus we could mention attending church to), and ogled the myriad tiny, adorable children running about. Alas, I took no pictures, but I did acquire multiple mosquito bites to remember the event.
When I was not being a social butterfly I (re)read John Buchan’s Huntingtower, first published in 1922.
What a delight! I was only slightly chagrined to discover that the main character, the retired Glasgow grocer, Dickson McCunn, and I are the same age. He’s supposed to be almost too old for adventure! Sigh. Anyway, if you haven’t read this book, you should. In addition to Dickson, it has some of my other favorite characters ever, including the Gorbals Die-Hards, Dougal, Wee Jaikie, and Thomas Yownie (“ye’ll no’ fickle Thomas Yownie”). I was also struck by the fact that some things never change. Take, for instance, what Dickson says in answer to the callow, oh-so-certain and liberal youth, Heritage, who has just been lecturing him on the merits of the proletariat:
See here, then. Your’e daft about the working-class and have no use for any other. But what in the name of goodness do you know about working-men? …I come out of them myself, and have lived next door to them all my days. Take them one way and another, they’re a decent sort, good and bad like the rest of us. But there’s a wheen daft folk that would set them up as models — close to truth and reality, says you. It’s sheer ignorance, for you’re about as well acquainted with the working-man as with King Solomon. You say I make up fine stories about tinklers and sailor-men because I know nothing about them. That’s maybe true. But you’re at the same job yourself. You idealize the working-man, you and your kind because you’re ignorant. You say that he’s seeking for truth, when he’s only looking for a drink and a rise in wages. You tell me he’s near reality, but I tell you that his notion of reality is often just a short working day and looking on at a footba’ match on Saturday…And when you run down what you call the middle-classes that do three quarters of the world’s work and keep the machine going and the working-man in a job, then I tell you you’re talking havers. Havers!
Too bad our politicians don’t share Dickson’s appreciation of the bourgeoisie. Ah, well, it did me good to read the book and I am looking forward to revisiting the sequel, Castle Gay, which begins with the best descriptions of a rugby game ever — as Wee Jaikie makes an epic run on the wing.
Have a great weekend, whether you’re watching monster fights, reading, or enjoying the beautiful weather!
This Friday has been a long time coming–what a long week! But we have a three-day weekend coming up, so it’s all good.
FYI May has been a big month for birthdays already and this weekend we have two more favorites: Bob Dylan (May 24) on Saturday
and Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25) on Sunday!
Those are two great reasons to celebrate this weekend! One good way to do so would be to re-read Self Reliance, which I have been meaning to do–how about you?
“Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance
Another way would be to watch No Direction Home (2005)–a film chronicle of Bob Dylan’s evolution between 1961 and 1966 from folk singer to rock star. Directed by Martin Scorsese, it uses archival footage and recent interviews to tell the story of the illusive Bob, who refuses “to be simplified, classified, categorized, or finalized”. And why should he be? He is, like Emerson and those other guys mentioned above, a “pure and wise spirit,” both great and misunderstood.
Dylan and Emerson are certainly on the same page. Here’s Bob:
‘Trust yourself
Trust yourself to do the things that only you know best
Trust yourself
Trust yourself to do what’s right and not be second-guessed
Don’t trust me to show you beauty
When beauty may only turn to rust
If you need somebody you can trust, trust yourself’
How Emersonian can you get?
So enjoy your weekend and trust yourself. Eat cake.
Here is a picture of all the cousins (minus Tim who was not born yet) in Michigan circa 1993. You can click on it to enlarge.
My question for you: Is the cool dude in the blue shorts wearing his sister’s shoes?
Well, I don’t know about those shoes. They look huge. The boy always was one for making a witty fashion statement.
And another thing: look at how much the boy looks like his uncle at the same age:
My older brother liked to wear a string tie with a cool bola he had which was a silver holster with a six-shooter, I think. He was always a spiffy dresser too.
“Age has no reality except in the physical world. The essence of a human being is resistant to the passage of time. Our inner lives are eternal, which is to say that our spirits remain as youthful and vigorous as when we were in full bloom. Think of love as a state of grace, not the means to anything, but the alpha and omega. An end in itself.”
Gabriel Garcia Marquez– Love in the Time of Cholera
I’m with you, Gabe.
Today is the birthday of James Maitland Stewart (May 20, 1908 – July 2, 1997) — an American film and stage actor, known for his distinctive drawl and down-to-earth persona. He was a Boy Scout, a Presbyterian and a Princeton graduate. He wore tweed jackets.
He was also a bomber pilot in WWII, flying 20 official missions over Europe. Stewart was one of the few Americans to rise from private to colonel in four years.
He continued to play a role in the U.S. Air Force Reserve after the war, reaching the rank of Brigadier General. After 27 years of service, Stewart retired from the Air Force on May 31, 1968. He was promoted to major general on the retired list by President Ronald Reagan.
He was always one of my favorite movie actors, starring in several of my all-time favorites: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), How the West Was Won (1962), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Rear Window (1954). But he also was in some lesser known films that are also favorites: Harvey (1950), Dear Brigitte (1965), The Rare Breed (1966). I always liked him as “Buttons” the clown in The Greatest Show on Earth (1952).
Jimmy with Charlton Heston and a very cute dog.
They don’t seem to make ’em like Jimmy Stewart any more, at least out in Hollywood. No one comes to mind anyway. So I will toast JMS tonight and perhaps dust off Harvey. What do you think?
*Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey
dual personalities 