dual personalities

Month: March, 2016

March 3, 2016

“A chiz is a swiz or swindle as any fule kno.”*

by chuckofish

Today is the birthday of Ronald William Fordham Searle, CBE, RDI (March 3, 1920 – December 30, 2011) who was a British artist and illustrator, best remembered as the creator of St. Trinian’s School

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and for his collaboration with Geoffrey Willans on the Molesworth series.

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We were very fond of Ronald Searle growing up and my family always read aloud the Christmas chapter from How to Be Topp on Christmas Eve.

Searle grew up in Cambridge. At the age of 19 he gave up his art studies and joined the Royal Engineers at the start of WWII.  Searle was stationed in Singapore. After a month of fighting in Malaya, Singapore fell to the Japanese,  and he was taken prisoner. He spent the rest of the war as a prisoner, first in Changi Prison and then in the Kwai jungle, working on the Siam-Burma Death Railway. He contracted both beri-beri and malaria. He was liberated in late 1945 with the final defeat of the Japanese.

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I have a copy of his book Ronald Searle To the Kwai and Back, War Drawings 1939–1945, an amazing pictorial record of his war years, three of them in Japanese prisoner of war camps.

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In it he recorded the “grafitti of a condemned man, intending to leave a rough witness of his passing through, but who found himself–to the surprise and delight–among the reprieved.”

Immediately after the war, he served as a courtroom artist at the Nuremberg trials.

Eichmann on trial

Eichmann in court

Like many funny men, he had a very serious past.

So a birthday toast to Ronald Searle!

And another toast to George Kennedy who died last Sunday. Like Searle, he was  91 when he died and had a long, interesting life. A prolific actor of film and television, he won a best supporting Oscar for Cool Hand Luke (1967) and made several movies with John Wayne, including Cahill U.S. Marshall (1973), The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) and In Harm’s Way (1965). He also had memorable parts in Charade (1963), Bandolero! (1968) and The Dirty Dozen (1967).

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Quite a career. Any of these movies are worth watching. As for me, it might be time to watch The Sons of Katie Elder again.

*Molesworth, “Down with Skool!” (1953)

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March 2, 2016

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us*

by chuckofish

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Daughter #1 is training again for another half marathon (her third!) which she will run next week in Washington D.C. Daughter #2 and I will be there to cheer her on. I could never actually run in a half marathon myself…indeed, I am doing my best not to complete a Snoopy-type triathlon.

But we are all running a race, aren’t we? Some say it’s a rat race. But I am not a rat, are you?

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I guess everything hinges on what you believe the prize to be, right?

(Discuss among yourselves.)

Here’s a little mid-week pep talk from George S. Patton, U.S. Army General and 1912 Olympian

Now if you are going to win any battle you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up. It is always tired morning, noon, and night. But the body is never tired if the mind is not tired. When you were younger the mind could make you dance all night, and the body was never tired…You’ve always got to make the mind take over and keep going.

We can always use a good mid-week pep talk.

Keep straining forward.

And from the Did-You-Know Department: The Last Race (2016) is in post-production. It stars Joseph Fiennes as Eric Liddell, who, you will recall, was the hero of Chariots of Fire (1981). This film was shot largely in China where Liddell is a hero. It deals with Liddell’s work as a missionary in China after his victorious turn at the 1924 Paris Olympics. Apparently the Chinese consider Liddell to be “China’s first gold medalist.” Good news indeed!

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*Hebrews 12:1

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March 1, 2016

Lead me to the rock that is higher than I*

by chuckofish

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A new month, a new calendar page. The year is zooming by.

And March is going to be very busy, but I am not going to be overwhelmed by it.

We have fallen so much into the habit of being always busy that we know not how or when to break it off with firmness. Our business tags after us into the midst of our pleasures, and we are ill at ease beyond the reach of the telegraph and the daily newspaper.

–Henry Van Dyke, 1899

What would old Henry think of our iPhones and our personal computers? Zut alors!

I am trying to turn off the electronics an hour or two before I turn in at night. It seems like a good idea.

*Psalm 61:2

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