dual personalities

Month: May, 2017

May 31, 2017

What are you reading?

by chuckofish

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Someone at work has been cleaning out his bookshelves recently and I have been the recipient of several good mystery novels. First I read an Easy Rawlins mystery by Walter Moseley which was well written and held my interest.

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Then I started the first Longmire mystery with low expectations and was rewarded with a real prize.

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I am enjoying this book so much! It is well-written and character-driven and the characters are all fascinating individuals. It is slightly humorous, and by that I mean, it does not take itself too seriously, as I think the television version tends to. Plus, bonus: Walt is a lawman with a literary bent. He is always making literary references, but not in a pretentious, stuffy way. Rather, he is always kind of kidding when he does so.

“I took a sip of my coffee, sat the folder on the counter, and began reading the newspaper. “In the cold, gray dawn of September the twenty-eighth . . .” Dickens. “. . . The slippery bank where the life of Cody Pritchard came to an ignominious end . . .” Faulkner. “Questioning society with the simple query, why?” Steinbeck. “Dead.” Hemingway.”

“You know, Balzac once described bureaucracy as a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.”

“What’d your buddy Balzac have to say about inadmissible evidence?”

“Not a lot. I think he considered the subject beneath him.”

“I wandered past Vic’s office and looked in at the explosion of legal pads. The display was daunting, and I would be cursed at if I messed up any of what I’m sure was a carefully detailed arrangement. We were little but we were mighty. I thought of Don Quixote, being far too powerful to war with mere mortals and pleading for giants.”

That is just how his mind works.

I am happy to note that as of May 2017, Craig Johnson has written 12 novels, 2 novellas and a collection of short stories featuring Sheriff Walt Longmire of Absaroka County, Wyoming.

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My kind of guy.

One of these days I am going to quit my job and move to Wyoming and get a job as the admin to an overworked sheriff. You think I’m kidding?

(The painting at the top is by Mary Cassatt.)

6 Comments
May 30, 2017

Weekend update

by chuckofish

I love three day weekends, don’t you? Sundays are great when you don’t have to go to work the next day.

As I promised myself, I watched Stagecoach (1939) and Hatari (1962) and also Furious Six  (2013) with Vin Diesel et al and enjoyed all three. I also watched The Lady in the Van (2015) based on the memoir by Alan Bennett. Maggie Smith plays an eccentric homeless woman whom Bennett befriended in the 1970s, allowing her temporarily to park her van in the driveway of his Camden home. She stays there for 15 years. MV5BOTY0MjM3NTQyOF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMzcwNjUxNzE@._V1_SY1000_CR0,0,674,1000_AL_

It didn’t really grab me. I guess I didn’t find her character at all appealing. Nope.

I also went to the spring auction at our local Link Auction house.

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It was fun. I rescued a 19th century mirror that no one wanted

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and a 19th century table which I will probably give to one of my girls.

I had fun with my paddle.

I also got a lot of work done in my basement, going through (more) bins and throwing some stuff away and consolidating other stuff.

Plus the weather was mostly nice and I got to do a lot of this:

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And, of course, the wee babes came over for a Memorial Day bar-b-que. Good times.IMG_2630 (1).jpg

And now it’s a four-day week! Huzzah.

3 Comments
May 29, 2017

We thank you kindly

by chuckofish

Happy Memorial Day. Here’s one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1948)–the funeral of Brigadier General Brougham Clay, lately of the Confederate Army and now known as trooper John Smith.

Join me in a toast to all the Americans who have died for our country, and yes, even the Confederates who died, however misguidedly. Remember what Herman Melville wrote about Stonewall Jackson:

Dead is the Man whose Cause is dead,
Vainly he died and set his seal –
Stonewall!
Earnest in error, as we feel;
True to the thing he deemed was due,
True as John Brown or steel.

And here’s a great prayer from A Prayer Book for Soldiers and Sailors (1941):

Grant, O Lord, that I may not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under his banner against sin, the world, and the devil, and to continue Christ‘s faithful soldier and servant unto my life‘s end. Amen.

(Published for the Army and Navy Commission of  the Protestant Episcopal Church)

2 Comments
May 27, 2017

The eye of the needle

by chuckofish

It has been a busy week. On Wednesday the DH and I went to Vermont (again!) to pack our son’s belongings into a UHaul and move him back home. I wish I could say it all went off without a hitch (no pun intended), but no, it was more like a bad sitcom. The ‘needs service’ light went off in my car, sending me into a “should I keep driving?” panic; the boy had not finished packing when we arrived (not even close); the apartment hadn’t been cleaned within historical memory, and it rained. To top it off, Tim and I got a half an hour out of Johnson only to discover that he had left his backpack (with two laptops and sundry other valuables) back in the apartment. We went back for it, thereby adding an hour to our already four-hour drive back. Other than that, the return trip went fine, and the DH, who drove the UHaul, didn’t even notice that we were late arriving back. After unpacking everything and returning the van, we finally got our pizza dinner at 9:00 pm. Not bad for a day’s work. Despite our many “adventures”, I never lost my joie de vivre. In fact, I had fun.

I spent the rest of the week helping Tim unpack in the vain hope that I might see the floor in my back hall and family room again. When not puttering, I read and did some work, but best of all I started my summer project. I’m taking up the needle and attempting to complete a crewel pillow.

Having done no embroidery in ages, I find even the simplest stitch a challenge. Thank heaven for Youtube, where I have discovered helpful instructional videos that demonstrate how to do every conceivable embroidery stitch. Now if I can only learn how to thread the needle in under fifteen minutes, I’ll be set.

It’s really coming along, don’t you think?

Okay, so I’ve barely started, but I am having fun, and needlework is extremely relaxing once you get the thread through the needle. So, go on, do something creative this summer. What will your summer project be?

4 Comments
May 26, 2017

At the bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow

by chuckofish

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Today is John Wayne’s birthday. It has been a long, stressful week at work and I plan to hunker down and watch some classic JW movies this weekend. This is a favorite way to chillax.

I think I will start with Stagecoach (1939), the movie that made Wayne an “overnight” star. I like to think of my mother going to see it for the first time at the age of 13. She was a fan for the rest of her life. People always think of John Wayne as a man’s actor, an action star, and he was to be sure. But people tend to forget how handsome and sexy he was and how women loved him for his whole long career.

Think of Joan Didion, who wrote in  John Wayne, a Love Song:

We went three and four afternoons a week, sat on folding chairs in the darkened hut which served as a theatre, and it was there, that summer of 1943 while the hot wind blew outside, that I first saw John Wayne. Saw the walk, heard the voice. Heard him tell the girl in a picture called War of the Wildcats that he would build her a house, ‘at the bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow’. As it happened I did not grow up to be the kind of woman who is the heroine in a Western, and although the men I have known have had many virtues and have taken me to live in many places I have come to love, they have never been John Wayne, and they have never taken me to that bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow. Deep in that part of my heart where the artificial rain forever falls, that is still the line I wait to hear.

John_Wayne_Claire_Trevor_Stagecoach.jpgAnyway, a toast to the Duke on his 110th birthday.

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BTW, where is my copy of The Searchers?

7 Comments
May 25, 2017

“So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”*

by chuckofish

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Yesterday was Bob Dylan’s 76th birthday. I hope you celebrated appropriately.

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Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’

© 1963, 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991, 1992 by Special Rider Music

Yesterday was also Aldersgate Day which is a commemorative day celebrated by Methodists. It recalls the day in 1738 when Anglican priest John Wesley attended a group meeting in Aldersgate, London, where he received an experience of assurance of his salvation.

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This was the pivotal event in Wesley’s life that ultimately led to the development of the Methodist movement in Britain and America. According to his journal, Wesley found that his enthusiastic gospel message had been rejected by his Anglican brothers. Heavy-hearted, he reluctantly attended a group meeting that evening in a Moravian chapel. It was there, while someone was reading from Martin Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans, that he felt that his heart was “strangely warmed”.

I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

The following hymn was written by Shirley Murray to commemorate the event on the 250th anniversary in 1988.

How small a spark has lit a living fire!
       how small a flame has warmed a bitter world!
how great a heart was moved to hope, to dare
       and bring the faith out in the open air!

No boundary sign will stand against this faith,
       no wall restrain this preaching of the Word:
the Good News travels on, it rides the road
       and draws to unity the realm of God.

The single note becomes a song of praise,
       the single voice grows to a swelling choir
and born in song, new stories now are sung
       of freedom, chains unbound and loosened tongue.

Thank God for all who listened and believed,
       who still are by the Spirit set on fire --
our hearts be warmed again, for Christ will wait
       on beach, in upper room, or Aldersgate.

The Good News travels on…

*Matthew 20:16

5 Comments
May 24, 2017

“It was once in the saddle, I used to go dashing.”*

by chuckofish

I recently bought a little book entitled St. Louis Day By Day by Frances Hurd Stadler at an estate sale.

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It is a treasure trove of interesting information about our fair flyover city. For instance, I did not know that the famous American artist Charles Marion Russell was born on Olive Street in St. Louis on March 19, 1865. Furthermore, he was the great-grandson of Silas Bent, Missouri territorial judge, and of James Russell, a Missouri legislator and judge of the St. Louis County Court. Who knew?

Silas Bent, you will recall, was the father of Charles, the famous fur trader who was appointed as the first territorial governor of New Mexico. His other sons, William, George and Robert, were also in business with Charles and built Bent’s Fort and other outposts of trade in the southwest. One of his daughters, Juliannah, became the first wife of Lilburn Boggs, who later became governor of Missouri. Their son Thomas O. Boggs, an Indian trader and cattle dealer (who married 14-year-old Rumalda Luna Bent, the stepdaughter of Charles Bent, who was an heiress to land grants in Colorado) built an adobe house on the 2,040 acres grant and established Boggsville, Colorado where our ancestor John Wesley Prowers built a two-story 14-room house at that functioned as a house, a school, a stagecoach station and after 1870 as the Bent County seat.

Anyway, back to Charles Russell. He grew up in St. Louis County, and in 1876 a wax figure he sculpted won the blue ribbon at the St. Louis County Fair. In 1880 he moved to Montana, where he wrangled horses and herded cattle and began sketching western life.

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Lewis and Clark Meeting the Flathead Indians hangs in the Montana State House

Charles_Marion_Russell_-_The_Tenderfoot_(1900).jpgjerked-down-1907.jpgwhose-meat-1914.jpg1ec023e99d581bc90c1cc0f02bad50b6.jpgRussell produced about 4,000 works of art, including oil and watercolor paintings, drawings and sculptures in wax, clay, plaster and other materials, some of which were also cast in bronze.

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How did I not know he was from St. Louis?

P.S. The C.M. Russell Museum (including the artist’s log cabin studio and gallery) is located in Great Falls, Montana. Add that to the list.

*Streets of Laredo

3 Comments
May 23, 2017

Lift up your voice and say Amen

by chuckofish

Third Day inspiration for Tuesday. Turn up the volume and say Amen.

2 Comments
May 22, 2017

Well done, good and faithful servant

by chuckofish

We had a big storm on Friday morning, around 5 a.m. with lots of limbs down and electricity out all over the city. Luckily we were spared this time. The boy had a tree fall on his garage though.

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On Saturday I went to another funeral, this one for another longtime work friend. There was no electricity at Ladue Chapel (see aforementioned storm), but because it is such a bright and airy sanctuary, the service went on. The Presbyterian service (“A Service of Witness to the Resurrection”) is rather bare-boned, but the minister gave a nice eulogy. He obviously knew Wayne well and was very fond of him–that makes a big difference. He recounted a story concerning when Wayne had retired from IBM and his boss had said that he was the best man he ever knew. Indeed, Wayne was one of those straight-shooters who was very successful in business, had a lovely and devoted wife to whom he had been married for over 60 years, was an elder and a deacon in his church, had children and grandchildren who loved him, and still managed to be genuinely humble. There was no job that was beneath him at our institute where he had been very active since its founding. Answer phones in the office? Sure. Help with registration? You got it. He agreed with my philosophy that if you don’t care who gets the credit, you can accomplish a lot.

Into paradise may the angels lead you, Wayne. At your coming may the martyrs receive you, and bring you into the holy city Jerusalem.

We’ll miss you Wayne. Boy, will we ever.

I went to church again on Sunday morning and afterwards I went on an adventure with my BFFs Becky and Carla.

I had seen a story on one of our local morning news programs about a historic home–Oakland House–about which I had never even heard. Indeed, it never ceases to amaze me how a person can live some place for almost 60 years and still not know about all the interesting nearby historic sites. Anyway, I looked it up online and found out they give tours one Sunday a month. Ta da! It was time to take Carla out for her birthday lunch so we went to Pasta House in a part of town I never go, in a neighborhood close to our final destination in terra incognita–Affton, MO. Then we headed over to Oakland House for a tour.

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It was fabulous! Built in 1853 by Louis Benoist, the property originally consisted of about 470 acres that included a lake. Eventually sold to Robert Brookings (of my flyover university fame) in 1892…

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…and then to a cemetery on the adjoining property, it fell into terrible disrepair and was surrounded by small houses built in the post-WWII era. Finally it was going to be torn down in 1973 until…

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‘Before’ photos

…some people (the historical society?) in Affton got together and bought the property, improving it slowly over the years themselves–“the brick and mortar gang”–and acquiring appropriate period furniture etc. They have done a superb job.

Our tour guides were clearly local Affton residents who love their local landmark but have very little formal training in history or indeed any context in which to tell their story. The little lady in period dress mentioned the Smithstonian Institution, General Custard, and delighted us with a series of unintentional malapropisms that were quite endearing.

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This dude grew up in the neighborhood and remembered ice skating on the pond and various activities. By the way, he plays Santa Claus in the annual Santa’s House event–an event I see in my future.

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Beautiful period wallpaper

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(Loved this fabric)

Anyway, somebody behind the scenes knows what they are doing with this house and I was quite impressed. And I do not mean to denigrate the  tour guides. I liked them a lot better than the know-very-little junior leaguers in Kansas City we ran across last year.

I am grateful to have two friends who are willing to be adventurous with me and who enjoy this kind of outing.

The wee babes came over for dinner with the boy on Sunday night. (Their mother went to the theater with her mother.)

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And now it’s Monday and we’re off to the salt mines. Enjoy your week!

7 Comments
May 20, 2017

My weekend at Bernie’s

by chuckofish

It’s hard to believe that a whole week has gone by since I saw my youngest son graduate from college, but lo, that’s how time flies. We had an epic weekend. The DH and I, sons #1 and #2, and the latter’s girlfriend stayed at this wonderful old farm, now a bed and breakfast. The extremely nice owner’s family had lived there for generations and then in the 1970s had to sell it. She managed to buy it back. Now that’s someone I can relate to!

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Although the main house is a bed and breakfast, we stayed in a separate apartment in one of the renovated barns.

We had gorgeous views and plenty of space for serious celebrating!

As for graduation itself, well what can I say? Vermont’s favorite socialist gave a campaign speech the graduation address,

and his audience listened attentively.

Although truth be told, we just wanted to see our lad cross the stage! Alas, my photos of that event are blurry and no one else has sent me theirs, so we’ll just have to skip to the aftermath. Suffice it to say, we are super proud of our Tim, who graduated cum laude with a BA in Music Composition and an AA in theater tech.

I took a lot of pictures, but as usual few of them turned out, and let’s face it, it’s nigh on impossible to get five people to look normal at the same time.

After graduation, we spent the afternoon antiquing and visiting one of Tim’s favorite local hangouts.

And, yes, it did make me nervous!

Later, the graduate barbecued burgers and hot dogs for dinner, and then we played a few hilarious rounds of Categories. A fun time was had by all! It all came to an end much too quickly; everyone split up and went their separate ways, and the DH and I drove home to our quiet North Country town.

And that was my weekend at Bernie’s!

 

 

 

 

 

4 Comments