dual personalities

Month: April, 2015

April 30, 2015

Into your hands

by chuckofish

martinluther

Here’s a morning prayer to get you going for the day:

I thank You, my heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, Your dear Son, that You have kept me this night from all harm and danger; and I pray that You would keep me this day also from sin and every evil, that all my doings and life may please You. For into Your hands I commend myself, my body and soul, and all things. Let Your holy angel be with me, that the evil foe may have no power over me. Amen.

–Martin Luther

How do you like that Playmobil Martin Luther? The OM gave him to me for my birthday!

Have a good Thursday.

5 Comments
April 29, 2015

Festina lente

by chuckofish

Fred Ndercher, 1922, "Spring Landscape" in the St. Louis Mercantile Library collection

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –

When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;

Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush

The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush

With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?

A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning

In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,

Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,

Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,

Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

“Spring” by Gerard Manley Hopkins

A friend at work brought this poem to my attention by stopping by my office and quoting, “What is all this juice and all this joy?” He was alluding to the beautiful spring day of course. We have certainly enjoyed an exceptionally beautiful spring with long strings of crisp, clear days in the high 60s. Carpe diem, I say–but I am glued to a desk. Sigh.

Anyway, it is also the birthday today of Sir Thomas Beecham (29 April 1879 – 8 March 1961) who, you will recall, was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras.

170px-Thomas_Beecham_1919_cartoon

From the early 20th century until his death, Beecham was a major influence on the musical life of Britain and, according to the BBC, was Britain’s first international conductor. If you are like me and my dual personality, you were brought up on Sir Thomas Beecham’s recordings. True, some may have considered him low-brow for saying things like, “I would give the whole of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos for Massenet’s Manon, and would think I had vastly profited by the exchange.” But I can’t say I disagree with him.

I remember in particular an LP titled “Beecham Bon-Bons” which included popular favorites by Faure, Delius, Sibelius, Ralph Vaughan Williams and the like.

beecham

I wiled away many an hour with Beecham’s music in the background. So a toast to Sir Thomas Beecham! And I think I’ll look him up on eBay and see what I can find.

Beecham's grave in

Beecham’s grave in Surrey

By the way, the painting at the top of the page is by St. Louis artist Frank Nudercher (July 19, 1880 – October 7, 1959)–“Spring Landscape” in the St. Louis Mercantile Library collection. Nudercher is sometimes referred to as the “dean of St. Louis artists.” You can read about him here.

4 Comments
April 28, 2015

Note to self

by chuckofish

Bryce Canyon, Utah

Bryce Canyon, Utah

There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every person. And it can never be filled by any created thing. It can only be filled by God, made known through Jesus Christ.

–Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pensées

2 Comments
April 27, 2015

“I know my own and my own know me.”*

by chuckofish

Sunday was Good Shepherd Sunday and so all the hymns and the lessons and the psalm (23) were about Christ, the Good Shepherd.

Window in the Home Moravian Church, Winston-Salem, NC

Window in the Home Moravian Church, Winston-Salem, NC

We even sang one of my favorite hymns from my childhood–“The King of Love My Shepherd Is” with the correct St. Columba tune–which was quite a treat for me.

Sunday was also a beautiful spring day and so I tried to get some work done in the yard–spreading mulch etc.–and I did accomplish a little before my knees started to warn me to take a break. I have learned that it is the better part of valor to quit while ahead, especially when there is more to do later in the day. Yes, I had an actual social event to go to later in the evening and also a “visitation” to attend at a local funeral home on the way.

Life with a capital “L”.

Speaking of Life, the birds who insisted on building a nest on top of the cage we built around the kitchen exhaust fan to keep them from building a nest inside the fan, have hatched their eggs and are now feeding the hatchlings.

Feeding

Hello, nature.

Unstoppable.

Earlier in the weekend the boy dropped by to borrow the OM’s tuxedo so he could go to the CHS Prom with his HS teacher wife–as chaperones. He says he never got to take her to the Prom when they were teenagers, so they enjoy going every year now that they are old married folks.

11066165_10101713754718944_3713273082125968471_n

Pretty darn cute.

Have a good Monday!

*John 10:14

6 Comments
April 25, 2015

“Everyone’s got their breaking point

by chuckofish

With me it’s spiders and with you it’s me.” —  In my case, it was a bad B movie called  “The Screaming Skull” that I saw on TV once as a kid. It affected me much the way “Day of the Triffids” traumatized my middle son. So last night I faced my fear and watched the movie with him and he has agreed, in turn, to revisit his bête noire sometime soon (a future post!).

screaming-skull-movie

The plot is kind of a “Rebecca” rip-off in that it’s about a young woman newly married to a widower, who lives in a big house. It even involves a portrait and a devoted staff person mourning the lately departed, although in this case it’s a simpleton gardener and not the formidable Mrs. Danvers. There’s a twist, though. This movie has a vengeful skull that movies around.

How did that get there? Where are the cornflakes?

How did that get there? Where are the cornflakes?

A traumatic past has made our young bride unstable and vulnerable, and after a few skull sightings, she thinks she’s going mad (again). The sympathetic vicar and his wife start to wonder what’s going on and when the simpleton gardener brings them a present,

But where are the sandwiches?

But where are the sandwiches?

 

they decide that they had better go rescue our heroine from — you guessed it — not the vengeful ghost, but the psycho husband, who just wanted her money.

He's no Hamlet

not exactly Hamlet

Okay, by now you’re wondering why this cliched movie freaked me out so much. Well, not only did it have a skull that screamed and popped up unexpectedly in a cupboard, at the front door, on the stairs, in the picnic basket and even in the pond, but it was very creepily shot in black and white. The chiaroscuro lighting that cast giant shadows throughout the large, empty house was extremely effective. In the right cinematographic hands, black and white can make anything scary.

screaming skull2

The super-eerie garden pond didn’t hurt either. It’s amazing what you can do with almost no budget. Shot on location in an empty English manor with a cast of about five people, including the fake skull, the film managed its scares without recourse to graphic violence. Back in 1958 they could do that. While last night’s viewing was more “mystery science theater” (you can imagine our comments) than wide-eyed horror, it did make me appreciate why the movie affected my younger self so much.  In case you’re curious, it’s available for free on Amazon prime.

If you’d rather watch modern horror (not my cup of tea, that’s for sure), I understand that “It Follows” and “The Babadook” are incredibly terrifying in a psychological, rather than blood-splashing way. What movies scared you witless when you were a child?

4 Comments
April 24, 2015

Kickin’ up dust

by chuckofish

51wokIArwjL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_

“I have come to believe that by and large the human family all has the same secrets, which are both very telling and very important to tell. They are telling in the sense that they tell what is perhaps the central paradox of our condition—that what we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else. It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are—even if we tell it only to ourselves—because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing. It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier that way to see where we have been in our lives and where we are going. It also makes it easier for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own, and exchanges like that have a lot to do with what being a family is all about and what being human is all about.”

–Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets

Have a good weekend. Try to find some time to be quiet and think. Turn off the computer. Take a break from social media.

Read some Buechner. Read this.

Watch A Thousand Clowns (1965): Remind yourself why you were “born a human being and not a chair.”

I plan to read some more old letters which I have unearthed in my ongoing basement reorganization/clean-up. Here’s a tidbit from a letter my mother wrote in 1979 when I was in graduate school and my dual personality was at Smith:

It’s around 5 o’clock and I wish you were here to share some sherry and nibblies with me and have a good chat. It’s times like this when I miss you the  most. I haven’t had any sherry since you left–it’s the sort of thing I have to have with someone in order to enjoy it.

Some things never change! (Although I have no problem drinking by myself!) Ah, a toast to mothers everywhere who miss their daughters!

4 Comments
April 23, 2015

“Books to the ceiling, Books to the sky, My pile of books is a mile high.”*

by chuckofish

Did you know that today is World Book Day? Me neither.

According to Wikipedia, the connection between 23 April and books was first made in 1923 by booksellers in Catalonia as a way to honor the author Miguel de Cervantes, who died on this date.

IND119216

To celebrate this day in Spain, Cervantes’s Don Quixote is read during a two-day “readathon” and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize is presented by the Spanish King to honor the lifetime achievement of an outstanding writer in the Spanish language.

I would suggest watching the movie Man of La Mancha (1972) starring Peter O’Toole as the dauntless knight, but I just saw it recently and it is not as great as I remembered it from back in the day.

peter-otoole

In fact, it was pretty bad. So we’ll have to think of something else.

Probably the best way to celebrate Book Day is to read a book! Last weekend I finished Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart which daughter #1 was reading when she was home.  She left her copy in my house…I had read it, of course, years ago when I was an adolescent and then again later at some point. But I read it again, and–boy oh boy–is it good!

26d932e88ff1caf593679335541444341587343

You remember, it is the story of a young English governess, Linda Martin, who travels to the Château Valmy in France in the 1950s to take care of nine-year-old Philippe de Valmy. There she finds herself tangled in a plot to murder her charge and tries to save him, which eventually results in the revelation of a dark secret. This is not some bodice-ripper, but a well-written and intelligent suspense novel, peppered with literary references. Indeed, Stewart introduced

a different kind of heroine for a newly emerging womanhood. It was her “anti-namby-pamby” reaction, as she called it, to the “silly heroine” of the conventional contemporary thriller who “is told not to open the door to anybody and immediately opens it to the first person who comes along”. Instead, Stewart’s stories were narrated by poised, smart, highly educated young women who drove fast cars and knew how to fight their corner. Also tender-hearted and with a strong moral sense, they spoke, one felt, with the voice of their creator. Her writing must have provided a natural form of expression for a person not given to self-revelation. (You can read more here.)

Nine Coaches Waiting (1958) was actually Stewart’s fourth novel, following Madam, Will You Talk? (1954), Wildfire at Midnight (1956) and Thunder on the Right (1957). She was on the best-seller list many times, but only one of her novels (The Moon-Spinners – 1962) was made into a movie. I wonder why?

Anyway, I recommend Mary Stewart to you–to read or re-read as the case may be. I lent my copy to the boy.

And have a lovely World Book Day!

febc1-tumblr_mqkn6gnffu1ry2hq3o1_500

*Arnold Lobel

3 Comments
April 22, 2015

Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie

by chuckofish

Last Friday I went along on a field trip with students at my flyover institute to historic Bellefontaine Cemetery. Founded in 1849 as a rural cemetery, Bellefontaine is home to a number of architecturally significant monuments and mausoleums. It is also an arboretum. Literally all of the prominent Protestant families in this town have a plot there. Additionally, a lot of famous local families like the Anheusers and the Buschs, who started off as Protestants, but are now Catholic, are buried there too.

We were driven there in this cute pseudo-trolley bus.

DSCN1351

We had a great docent (in cap on right) leading the tour who knew everything about all the famous residents and, by the way, has visited the grave of every U.S. President. He quizzed us as we went along to keep us on our toes. Chester Arthur was buried where? In Albany! 

DSCN1336

DSCN1337

DSCN1340

David R. Francis and family

The Wainwright mausoleum designed by Louis Sullivan.

The Wainwright mausoleum designed by Louis Sullivan.

A familiar name--our Rand obelisk is in New Hampshire

A familiar name–our Rand obelisk is in New Hampshire however.

DSCN1342

You can kind of see the River behind the Lemp mausoleum situated on a bluff.

DSCN1345

The Busch mini-Gothic-cathedral mausoleum

DSCN1346

William Clark of Lewis and Clark fame is buried here.

DSCN1348

How appropriate that his grave is decorated with buffs.

Well, I like cemeteries. Especially “rural” cemeteries like Bellefontaine. Visiting it was a fascinating way to spend a lovely spring afternoon and a great way to learn more about the history of my hometown. I was reminded of Prof. Wutheridge in The Bishop’s Wife (1947) who said, “For some time now, every time I pass the cemetery, I feel as though I’m apartment hunting.” Well, you couldn’t do much better than spending eternity in one of these mausoleums overlooking the mighty Mississippi River!

6 Comments
April 21, 2015

“I don’t feel very different, she said”*

by chuckofish

2015-04-20 22.20.06

I had a nice birthday. At my age, I do not need (or expect) much. A nice sign:

20150420_093654

a cake:

DSCN1355

…dinner cooked by someone else, a few thoughtful gifts, and I am more than happy.

I had a new movie to watch and a new book to read–what more could I want? World peace?

I had a pleasant and quiet weekend too, although I did get a little bummed out when I went to an estate sale and discovered it was indeed the home of a friend who died last year. Her husband must be down-sizing, and I get that, but, really, couldn’t her married sons have stored her stuff? Did they have to sell it all? Her monogrammed towels? Her sewing projects? Her teacups and golf trophies? All those Christmas decorations? It was depressing and it put me in a bad mood.

I went to church, because I was reading the second lesson (“Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous….”). I had signed up to give the altar flowers that day, so I was pleased to see this in the bulletin:

bulletin

I like to see my parents (and friend Irene) remembered a couple of times a year. The flowers were pretty too.

Sunday was a rainy day, so I changed my after-church plans and headed back home to my basement clean-up. I found another box of stuff from days gone by–college notebooks and letters from the year I was a house counselor at a boarding school in Virginia. These were letters I wrote to my fiancé back in flyover country, and I must say, they were pretty hilarious. I had forgotten so much about that year. Which makes me think (again) how much will be forgotten because no one writes letters any more. Sigh. Anyway, I enjoyed my afternoon remembering those bygone days of my youth.

So one more birthday has come and gone. I’ve come a long way, baby, right?

babykatie2

My big brother is decked out with a gun belt, knife, kerchief, and a cool canteen.

P.S. Did you spy with your little eye the Playmobil Martin Luther in the top photo? Awesome. Someone reads this blog closely!

*”Back When We Were Beautiful” by Emmylou Harris

4 Comments
April 20, 2015

Happy Birthday, Dual Personality!!

by chuckofish

If I could be with you today, I would bring you breakfast in bed

breakfast in bed

and armloads of grocery store flowers.

Grocery-Store-300x200

And we would spend the day visiting antique stores or just hanging out and talking. We could drink tea and binge watch Buffy

buffy gif

or one of our favorite movies. Right now I could go for this

I would make you dinner, but it would probably be something simple like cheese, pate, fruit and French bread.  And let’s not forget the good wine. Afterwards, we could sing along loudly and off-key to

or do our famous lip-sync routine to this

At which point we’d have to stop to open presents and eat cake

shirley temple

Then we would probably collapse in a heap. I wish I could be there to celebrate, but I bet you’ll have a great day anyway.  You are the best sister ever and I wish you a super Happy Birthday!

5 Comments