Okay, now, it’s only the first week of August and this is what I saw in the grocery store yesterday.
Hello. Halloween is nearly three months away. I’m just saying.
I am so not ready for this, folks.
Trying to live in the present as usual.
Farmer with a Pitchfork by Winslow Homer
“You mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this:
‘Rejoice evermore.
Pray without ceasing.
In everything give thanks.’
I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.”
–Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter
Happy Birthday, Wendell Berry (born August 5, 1934)–American novelist, poet, environmental activist, and farmer!
“The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.”
–Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting
How was your weekend? Mine went super fast, starting with my Friday night when, after an exhausting day, I sat down to watch Cat Ballou and promptly fell asleep. No great loss, but there went my Friday night!
Saturday I went to a baby shower-(!)-given by the friend of the first soon-to-be-a-grandma of my friends.
Time marches on–relentlessly.
I watched a good documentary about the Ghost Army in WWII suggested by my dual personality.
The documentary tells about a 1944 secret U.S. Army unit that was set up in order to misdirect the Nazis. The weapons used included inflatable tanks and specially made sound effects records. Their mission was to use deceit to fool the enemy into thinking there were troops where there were none. It worked to an amazing degree. Fascinating!
I worked on my DIY project in an upstairs bathroom–removing wallpaper and glue. The worst. My career as a hand model is officially over.
I continued to read about Ned Kelly and started a memoir of a pioneer Presbyterian minister who established the first protestant church on the western slope (in Lake City, CO).
Ned Kelly, as portrayed by the wonderful Peter Carey is an engaging enough character, but the rest of the Australian population, in particular the Irish element, are rather dreadful. I will persevere because Carey writes so well. Unfortunately we all know it will end badly for our anti-hero and there is nothing Kelly can do about it. Oh well.
The Rev. George Darley was truly an amazing man. He ministers to his flock, leads temperance meetings, raises money, conducts funerals for all sorts of characters, and treks back and forth over the San Juan mountains in all kinds of terrible weather. And he has a sense of humor:
“Before going far my swearing acquaintance seemed disposed to enliven the hard ride of almost sixty miles by having some fun at ‘the Parson’s’ expense. He finally called out: ‘Parson, this is not the road to heaven.’ Being already loaded, I answered: ‘No, but there are plenty of such men as you on like trails going to hell, and I am doing what I can to save them.’ That ended his attempts to have fun at the ‘Parson’s’ expense.”
Have a great week!
This week I’ve spent a lot of time looking at wallpaper for my very tiny front hall/foyer. I’ve found so many cool things, including this lovely William Morris paper from W.A.S. Benson.
For some reason, this got me thinking about one of my favorite illustrators, Ivan Bilibin, a Russian who worked during the first half of the 20th century (this is how my mind works). Born in St. Petersburg, Bilibin is famous for his illustrations of Russian fairy tales. I don’t know what this one is about, but it looks pretty creepy.
I love his patterns and textiles,
his lighting,
colors, and soft lines.
this was a stage set he designed
And let’s not forget that pervasive Russian melancholy
and (kind of ominous) romance.
His border designs are also cool, don’t you think?
As a young man, Bilibin studied art in St. Petersburg before traveling into the wastes of northern Russia, where the folk tales, wooden architecture, and people captured his imagination. Here he is as a debonaire young man in 1901.
Poor Mr. Bilibin’s life did not end well, however. Although he left Russia for Paris during the Revolution, homesickness drove him back — just in time for WWII. He died during the siege of Leningrad and was buried in a mass grave (you can read all about it on Wikipedia).
Here’s to the memory of Ivan Bilibin, whose simple genius transformed peasant stories into beautiful paintings.
Winslow Homer’s “The Nooning”
It is August. The year is more than half over! The goals I have set for my summer are looming.
All that said, I still try to take each day as it comes and enjoy the moment. I suggest you do the same.
Here are a few things to think about this weekend:
“Part of the inner world of everyone is this sense of emptiness, unease, incompleteness, and I believe that this in itself is a word from God, that this is the sound that God’s voice makes in a world that has explained him away. In such a world, I suspect that maybe God speaks to us most clearly through his silence, his absence, so that we know him best through our missing him.”
(Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons)
“If there is anywhere on earth a lover of God who is always kept safe, I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me. But this was shown: that in falling and rising again we are always kept in that same precious love.”
(Julian of Norwich)
“I have found that I even have to pray for the willingness to give up the stuff I hate most about myself. I have to ask for help, and sometimes beg. That’s the human condition. I just love my own guck so much. Help. Then I try to be a good person, a better person than I was yesterday, or an hour ago. In general, the Ten Commandments are not a bad place to start, nor is the Golden Rule. We try not to lie so much or kill anyone that day. We do the footwork, which comes down mostly to paying attention and trying not to be such a jerk. We try not to feel and act so entitled. We let others go first.
How can something so simple be so profound, letting others go first, in traffic or in line at Starbucks, and even if no one cares or notices? Because for the most part, people won’t care—they’re late, they haven’t heard back from their new boyfriend, or they’re fixated on the stock market. And they won’t notice that you let them go ahead of you.
They take it as their due.
But you’ll know. And it can change your whole day, which could be a way to change your whole life. There really is only today, although luckily that is also the eternal now. And maybe one person in the car in the lane next to you or in line at the bank or at your kid’s baseball game will notice your casual generosity and will be touched, lifted, encouraged—in other words, slightly changed for the better— and later will let someone else go first. And this will be quantum.”
(Anne Lamott, Help, Thanks, Wow)
Clay Boone: I think we’ll go to St. Louis.
Cat: St. Louis?
Clay Boone: Yeah, St. Louis! City on the Missouri, railhead of the Santa Fe, jump off for the Oregon Trail – producers of beef, beer, shoes and, ah, good times.
(Cat Ballou, 1965)
Cat Ballou will be shown on TCM tonight as part of their all-Jane Fonda-all day program. I remember going to see it at the movies back in 1965 and I thought it was pretty great. Of course, I was nine. It is not a great movie, but I am kind of in the mood for such silliness. Lee Marvin, of course, won an Oscar for his portrayal of Kid Shelleen/Tim Strawn. I’m sure Richard Burton, Laurence Olivier, Rod Steiger, and Oskar Werner–who were also nominated that year–weren’t laughing. If you look at the nominees/winners, you’ll see it was a really weak year.
Anyway, it’s been a busy week and I am ready for my weekend! Have a good one.
*Aristotle
dual personalities 