January | 2015 | dual personalities

January 20, 2015

Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening

by chuckofish

Did you enjoy your long MLK weekend?

We celebrated (belatedly) the birthday of daughter #3

and I celebrated (belatedly) the birthday of an old friend with my pals.

The OM and I watched American Sniper

with Bradley Cooper and–this is the last thing I thought I would be saying–he was awesome. He really deserves the Oscar. This movie is really, really good. Clint Eastwood–and I am not a big fan of his directing–knocked one out of the ballpark. I also have to say kudos to Clint, who is eighty-four, for even being able to attempt this at his age. (I know a lot of guys in their eighties and it is hard to imagine any of them making a movie in the desert.)

Put this movie on your “to do” list!

According to Forbes, American Sniper blew past all reasonable predictions and crushed the January record books with a scorching $90.2 million Friday-to-Sunday and an estimated $105 million Friday-to-Monday debut frame. Well, no kidding. This is a movie with an actual (non-comic-book) HERO in it, with a plot, characters, action, tension–the whole nine yards. Of course, people are going to go see it. Duh. Wake up, Hollywood.

In between bouts of reading Middlemarch, I read a Louis L’Amour oater, Ride the Dark Trail, about one of the innumerable Sacketts. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I am also enjoying Middlemarch, which is full of passages like this:

“My mother is like old George the Third,” said the vicar, “she objects to metaphysics.”

“I object to what is wrong, Camden. I say, keep hold of a few plain truths, and make everything square with them. When I was young, Mr. Lydgate, there was never any question about right and wrong. We knew our catechism, and that was enough; we learned our creed and our duty. Every respectable Church person had the same opinions. But now, if you speak out of the Prayer-book itself, you are liable to be contradicted.”

It is a sure sign that I am really getting old, that I identify with the minor, comic characters, I suppose.

Oh, lordy, life is good, right?

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January 19, 2015

Happy birthday, Mary, Dolly (and Buffy)

by chuckofish

Readers of this blog may recall that today is the birthday of our dear mother, who was born in 1926, of Dolly Parton, who was born in 1946, and of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who is a fictional character, but whose birthday on January 19th is well-documented.

Therefore it is the occasion of much revelry in this family.

Join us in toasting Mary, Dolly (and Buffy), won’t you? And lest you forget who wrote this song, here’s an appropriate song by Dolly to start your day.

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January 17, 2015

Honey, it’s cold outside

by chuckofish

“Winter hung in there, like an invalid refusing to die. Day after grey day the ice stayed hard; the world remained unfriendly and cold.”*

I’ll say. It was so cold earlier this week (-14 with wind chills down to -30) that after walking to work, son #2’s normally red beard had transformed into a hoary white.

slightly cross-eyed from taking a selfie

slightly cross-eyed from the selfie

Even the poor boy’s cheeks were ice-covered, but at least he was wearing a hat.

January, the bleak midwinter, is a hard season: house fires are common, driving is perilous, and people have heart-attacks shoveling snow. Maybe I’m just a cowardly old lady, but I find severe cold unsettling and kind of scary. If something unexpected happens — you fall and break your ankle or your car crashes — you may freeze to death before help arrives,

just like the mountain man with the broken legs in Jeremiah Johnson.

Still, if we spend all our time inside, we are apt to fall prey to cabin fever. Too much alone time can bring out the crazy in anyone (especially Johnny Depp).

If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. How do we get through the dark days of winter?

Keep busy. Aside from the obvious reading and movie-watching, try something new. Be creative: knit; sew; paint; draw, or cook. Get organized: clean out your closets; plan summer projects; catch up with paperwork, or arrange your bookcases, family photos, and mementos. Use your brain: learn some exotic language like Gaelic or Mandarin; write letters to your favorite people; research your genealogy, or study some new topic that interests you. Attend to your body: exercise (as if); give yourself ‘beauty treatments’; learn to meditate or pray. Actually, there’s no end of wonderful things to occupy your time until spring arrives.

I realize that none of those suggestions is in any way novel, but sometimes it’s good to be reminded of the possibilities. Whatever you do, do something.

*Neil Gaiman, Odd and the Frost Giants

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January 16, 2015

Friday movie pick: “I once was lost, but now am found”

by chuckofish

Considering that this is the long MLK weekend and we will be celebrating the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr. on Monday, I think an appropriate film to watch tonight is Amazing Grace (2006)–a really good movie about the wonderful British saint William Wilberforce, who headed the parliamentary campaign against the British slave trade for twenty-six years until the passage of the Slave Trade Act of 1807. (I have blogged about him previously here.)

Directed by Michael Apted, it stars a bevy of British hotties, including Ioan Gruffudd as Wilberforce, Benedict Cumberbatch as William Pitt and scene-stealing Rufus Sewell as Thomas Clarkson. Former hottie Albert Finney is John Newton, who, you will recall, though once the captain of a slave ship, experienced a spiritual conversion, became an evangelical Anglican priest, and wrote the much-loved hymn “Amazing Grace.”

I watched it again the other night and was quite impressed with the screenplay, the beautiful production values and the acting. It is a rare movie where the Christians are the good guys!

P.S. It is interesting to note that everyone–from Alan Jackson to Celtic Thunder and everyone in between–has recorded the hymn “Amazing Grace.” I like it played on the bagpipes myself.

We had a piper at my mother’s funeral and he played “Amazing Grace.”

Have a good weekend!

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January 15, 2015

“I’ve seen the promised land.”

by chuckofish

Almighty God, by the hand of Moses your servant led your people out of slavery, and made them free at last; Grant that your Church, following the example of your prophet Martin Luther King, may resist oppression in the name of your love, and may secure for all your children the blessed liberty of the Gospel of Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Martin Luther King, Jr. is remembered as a martyr on the calendar of the Episcopal Church with an annual feast day on the anniversary of his death, April 4, but his birthday is commemorated liturgically today.

King’s oldest daughter Yolanda was a classmate of mine at Smith College. She was a theater major, however, so I don’t think our paths crossed. “In life,” she said, “I had to be prim and proper and poised — the King daughter. But acting, I could be zany, silly, sometimes the foolish person that I am. I could let the rough edges show.” (NYTimes obit, 2007) I get that.

I am reminded today that my son’s poem “Stop the Violence” was awarded 1st place in the MLK poetry contest at his elementary school (or was it the school district?) back (circa) 1994 when he was in the second grade…I wish I had a copy of it to share with you, but it is lost in a dusty pile of memorabilia. I think he was given a medal.

I remember telling my children that Dr. King was a Baptist minister who believed that we are all God’s children. It is a good thing for all of us to keep in mind.

Martin Luther King, Jr. statue over the west entrance of Westminster Abbey, installed in 1998.

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January 14, 2015

Stay positive

by chuckofish

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.

–Henry David Thoreau, Walden

*Woodcut by Ethel Kirkpatrick, c. 1905

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January 13, 2015

“I hear the train a coming”*

by chuckofish

On this day in 1968 Johnny Cash, backed by June Carter, Carl Perkins and the Tennessee Three, gave two performances at the Folsom State Prison

which were recorded and subsequently released as a live album–At Folsom Prison.

The album was a hit, reaching number one on the country charts and the top 15 of the national album chart. The lead single from the album, a live version of “Folsom Prison Blues,” was a top 40 hit, Cash’s first since 1964’s “Understand Your Man.” Indeed, the success of At Folsom Prison revitalized Cash’s career. According to Cash, “that’s where things really got started for me again.”

Hats off to the Man in Black! You were one of a kind. Awesome.

It is also the birthday of A.B. Guthrie, Jr. (1901–1991), the author of six historical novels that gave an unromanticized picture of the settling of the American West from 1830 to World War II. The most famous, “The Big Sky,” launched his career in 1947, and “The Way West,” published in 1949, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1950. He also wrote the screenplay for Shane (1953), my favorite movie of all time.

I recommend A.B. Guthrie, who is a really good writer and whose character, Dick Summers, is (in my opinion) one of the great ones of literature.

He tried to put himself in Brownie’s place, tried to put there the him that used to be, not the him of now, worn and hard and doubtful by the knocks of living. You couldn’t tell a boy how few were the things that mattered and how little was their mattering. You couldn’t say that the rest washed off in the wash of years so that, looking back, a man wanted to laugh except he couldn’t quite laugh yet. The dreams dreamed and the hopes hoped and the hurts felt and the jolts suffered, they all got covered by the years. They buried themselves in memory. Dug out of it, they seemed queer, as a dug-up bone with the flesh rotted off of it might seem queer to the dog that had buried it.

–-The Way West

So a toast to Johnny Cash and to A.B. Guthrie–two favorites of mine.

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January 12, 2015

“I live my life a quarter mile at a time.”*

by chuckofish

So here we are well into January and I haven’t written anything about the new year or January or anything like that. Tant pis. I haven’t been feeling it.

This weekend, however, I spent all day Saturday and a good part of Sunday putting away Christmas decorations and generally getting the house in order. I feel much better about Life and 2015 and all that.

It is good to welcome back a few old friends who were put away for the holidays.

Hello, Nigel and Errol, you handsome devils. (My mother named these guys many moons ago.)

I hesitate to make any great claims for change in the new year. Change happens despite us, so I prefer to stay on course and hope for the best. The OM and I have pledged to clean up the storage area in the basement and Throw Away a lot of accumulated stuff. This seems like a worthy goal for the rest of the winter months.

Meanwhile I am back reading Middlemarch, which is really good!

People haven’t changed so much since 1871. I recognize quite a few in this study of provincial life.

The OM and I have also enjoyed watching the Fast and the Furious movies he received for Christmas.

I mean who can resist these two cuties?

Vin Diesel and Paul Walker

So onward, I say, in 2015.

Almighty and eternal God, so draw our hearts to thee, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our wills, that we may be wholly thine, utterly dedicated unto thee; and then use us, we pray thee, as thou wilt, and always to thy glory and the welfare of thy people; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Amen.

–BCP

*Dom in The Fast and The Furious (2001)

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January 10, 2015

Bearded wonders

by chuckofish

And they are

Don’t ask me how they all came to grow beards, although I think it has something to do with being too lazy to shave. Chris is channeling Yukon Cornelius, while James seems to be going for a Serpico look. Tim, on the other hand, seems to have achieved a trim Tom Hardy.

Speaking of Tom Hardy, last night we watched Locke, which is a very good movie and I highly recommend. In case you are unfamiliar with this 2013 film, the whole things takes place in a car as the eponymous character, Ivan Locke (Hardy), drives from Birmingham to London one night. What could have seemed contrived, gimicky and claustrophobic comes across as a nuanced and genuinely riveting character study about a good man trying to do the right thing. Hardy’s performance is wonderful and restrained. The music and cinematography are also excellent. My only criticism is that the female characters seemed a tad weak and stereotypical.

The movie is not available on Netflix watchitnow, but it is free on Amazon prime, which is where we saw it. I give it two thumbs up and highly recommend it. And, hey, Tom Hardy’s beard is nice, don’t you think?

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January 9, 2015

“You interrupted a very important discussion on serious matters regarding big things”*

by chuckofish

Well, gee, I know what I’ll be doing this weekend! I am going to stay home and enjoy not having much to do except put my house in order. That and watching a few good movies.

Yesterday was Elvis Presley’s birthday (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) so I DVR’d quite a few Elvis movies on TCM.

Guess I’ll be watching some of those–along with my therapeutic binge-watching of John Wayne movies.

I started last night by watching Angel and the Badman (1947).

I enjoyed it a lot! It was about Quakers and outlaws. John Wayne (as the badman–not really) rides hard and throws things around and bursts through doors and is altogether manly. He is won over by the Quaker (Gail Russell)–no surprises here. I recommend it.

Add to this a cup (or two) of cheer and you have the start of a weekend! Have a good one.

*Angel and the Badman

7 Comments

Month: January, 2015

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