June | 2016 | dual personalities

June 6, 2016

“People are crazy and times are strange”*

by chuckofish

True to my word, I did very little this weekend. I went to hear Nathaniel Philbrook. He gave a rousing talk about Benedict Arnold and the Saratoga campaign.

He signed his book for me and I am looking forward to reading it. In the meantime I re-read his Why Read Moby-Dick? which I highly recommend.

I watched The Italian Job (2003) which I had bought for $2 at an estate sale because of the Mini Coopers. I really enjoyed it.

It made me want to go out and drive fast, but I restrained myself.

I tore apart my office looking for a particular book and then had to clean it up. (I never found the book.)

I rescued another needlepoint pillow.

I spread a lot of mulch and exhausted myself. Sometimes it is a good feeling to exhaust oneself doing physical labor. Watching a baseball game on the couch afterwards is that much sweeter when it is earned.

I also watched Wonder Boys (2000) directed by Curtis Hanson, who is one of my favorite directors. Bob Dylan won the Oscar for Best Song and “Things Have Changed” is indeed a classic. It is a good movie and I like Michael Douglas as a college professor having a really bad day.

Now it is Monday again–onward and upward!

*Bob Dylan

5 Comments

June 4, 2016

It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to*

by chuckofish

It has been a very enjoyable week: good weather; relaxing Tai Chi classes (yes, grasshopper, Tai Chi), and plenty of quiet time to indulge my addiction to genealogical research.

Today I want to consider names, because there’s no avoiding the fact that those early Puritan settlers of New England went in for some doozies. First let me clarify relationships so you don’t get confused:

Briefly, in 1671 Smith Woodward married Deliverance Hoppin, daughter of Stephen Hoppin and Hannah Makepeace (b. 1626). Smith’s and Deliverance’s son, Smith Woodward, married Thankful Pope in 1691, and their daughter, Sarah Woodward, married John Tukey in 1718. Their son, John Tukey, married Abigail Sweetsir in 1749. John and Abigail were the great-great grandparents of Henrietta Tukey, who married Abiel H. Stanley in c. 1858 to become the parents of our great-grandmother, Isabel Stanley Sargent (b. 1860).

Now there’s nothing particularly unusual about the names of Smith Woodward and his beloved, Thankful Pope, although we can raise an eyebrow at the fact that in 1691 they were fined for “fornication before marriage”. They must have been quite a couple, however, for they produced 13 children, among whom we find another Thankful, followed by Deliverance, Silence, and Submit in that order. Hmm… the last two names seem like Mother’s wishful thinking, but thirteen children is a lot for one woman to handle, even with help.

Smith Woodward’s father, also Smith Woodward, married Deliverance Hoppin (b. 1648). After Smith (Sr.) died, she married Richard Butt and became Deliverance Hoppin Butt (!?).

Deliverance's tombstone in the Dorchester (Boston) North Burying Ground

Deliverance Butt’s tombstone in the Dorchester (Boston) North Burying Ground

And let’s not forget her sibling, Opportunity Hoppin.

Returning to the Woodward family, Smith Junior’s pleasingly named daughter, Sarah Woodward, married John Tukey, and their son, John, married Abigail Sweetsir (b. 1728), who had a brother named Wigglesworth Sweetsir (b. 1735). John and Abigail produced 12, conservatively named children, the only standout among them being Houchin Tukey (b.1754).

Finally, Deliverance Hoppin’s mother, Hannah Makepeace (b. 1626), had a half-sister named Waitawhile Makepeace. In their father, Thomas Makepeace’s will, Waitawhile also appears as Wateawhile, Waytawhile, and Waitstill. It seems that the lawyers subscribed to the idea that consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

Lest you think that the only people to bestow inventive names lived on this side of the pond, my DH has lately discovered some real wonders in England, among whom our favorite has to be the unfortunate lady (and no relation), Fanny Suckspeach, who was arrested for theft in 1827, but eventually exonerated.

Looking for something new and different to name a baby? Dig into your family history!

* W.C. Fields

3 Comments

June 3, 2016

“What’s playin’ at The Roxy? I’ll tell you what’s playin’ at the Roxy”*

by chuckofish

Four-day work weeks are the best, n’est-ce pas? It is Friday already. Glory hallelujah!

I have few plans per usual. However, I am going to hear the author Nathaniel Philbrick speak about his latest book, Valiant Ambition, a “surprising account of the middle years of the American Revolution, and the tragic relationship between George Washington and Benedict Arnold.” You will recall that he is the author of In the Heart of the Sea and several other books about American History. I especially like his book Why Read Moby-Dick?

In this short book he says,

He tells us to call him Ishmael, but who is the narrator of Moby-Dick? For one thing, he has known depression, “a damp, drizzly November of the soul.” But he is also a person of genuine enthusiasms. Like Holden Caulfield in The Catcher int he Rye, he is wonderfully engaging, a vulnerable wiseass who invites us to join him on a quest to murder the blues by shipping out on a whaleship.

I love this, because it is exactly what I thought when I read Moby-Dick. I mean, don’t you just love it when you read something that is exactly what you thought already? Great minds and all that.

Beyond this intellectual outing to the Ethical Society, I am going to pursue my usual weekend activities of puttering and straightening up my house.

I may do some further planning for my trip to Kansas City next weekend. Yes, I convinced the OM to take a day off from work and drive out to the western edge of our great state and do some looking around in the Westport area.

Independence and the Opening of the West by Thomas Hart Benton

Good times await. Everything’s up to date in Kansas City, or so they say.

Enjoy your weekend!

*Guys and Dolls

4 Comments

June 2, 2016

Tonight I long for rest

by chuckofish

Here’s a great poem, “The Day is Done,” from the forgotten Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Read the whole thing.

The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o’er me
That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time,

For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life’s endless toil and endeavor;
And tonight I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have a power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And comes like the benediction
That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.

–Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882

The painting is “Fire Fancies” by Arthur Hacker, 1865

2 Comments

June 1, 2016

“Darling, we’ve all got to pack up some time or other. It isn’t when we pack up that matters; it’s what we do while we’re here.”*

by chuckofish

Today is the 73rd anniversary of the sad day in 1943 when the plane in which Leslie Howard was riding was shot down by Nazis. He died along with the other sixteen people on the flight from Lisbon to Bristol when the camouflaged airliner came under attack by a schwarm of eight V/KG40 Ju 88C6 maritime fighters.

The son of a Hungarian Jew and an English mother, Leslie Howard was a shell-shocked British veteran of WWI when he took up acting after the war. In America he came to embody the perfect Englishman on stage and on screen. He was a good polo player as well.

A great patriot, he worked feverishly as a British propagandist and, some say, spy during WWII.

So you see, he died as heroically in real life as he did in many of his films and on stage. Here he is as Hamlet (onstage in New York, 1936). I bet he was pretty great.