dual personalities

Month: May, 2017

May 19, 2017

“The first time we met, we hated each other.”*

by chuckofish

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“What happens to me when I’m provoked is that I get tongue-tied and my mind goes blank. Then I spend all night tossing and turning trying to figure out what I should have said.”

The story of my life. And Nora Ephron’s, it would appear. Today is Nora’s birthday (1941–2012). Nora had a lot to say about Life and she was very amusing and I usually agree with her.

“Here are some questions I am constantly noodling over: Do you splurge or do you hoard? Do you live every day as if it’s your last, or do you save your money on the chance you’ll live twenty more years? Is life too short, or is it going to be too long? Do you work as hard as you can, or do you slow down to smell the roses? And where do carbohydrates fit into all this? Are we really all going to spend our last years avoiding bread, especially now that bread in America is so unbelievably delicious? And what about chocolate?”

And my favorite–

“Sometimes I think that not having to worry about your hair anymore is the secret upside of death.”

So in honor of Nora, let’s watch one of her movies: When Harry Met Sally (1989), My Blue Heaven (1990), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), You’ve Got Mail (1998)…

“Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life – well, valuable, but small – and sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven’t been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn’t it be the other way around? I don’t really want an answer. I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. So good night, dear void.”

I have to admit I have a real soft spot for this one:

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After all, laughter is good medicine. Maybe the best medicine.

“I loathed being sixty-four, and I will hate being sixty-five. I don’t let on about such things in person; in person, I am cheerful and Pollyanna-ish. But the honest truth is that it’s sad to be over sixty. The long shadows are everywhere—friends dying and battling illness. A miasma of melancholy hangs there, forcing you to deal with the fact that your life, however happy and successful, has been full of disappointments and mistakes, little ones and big ones. There are dreams that are never quite going to come true, ambitions that will never quite be realized. There are, in short, regrets. Edith Piaf was famous for singing a song called “Non, je ne regrette rien.” It’s a good song. I know what she meant. I can get into it; I can make a case that I regret nothing. After all, most of my mistakes turned out to be things I survived, or turned into funny stories, or, on occasion, even made money from.”

Have a good weekend! Wanna see a monkey?

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*Harry Burns in When Harry met Sally

6 Comments
May 18, 2017

My mother remembers the day as a girl

by chuckofish

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Our last connection with the mythic.
My mother remembers the day as a girl
she jumped across a little spruce
that now overtops the sandstone house
where still she lives; her face delights
at the thought of her years translated
into wood so tall, into so mighty
a peer of the birds and the wind.

Too, the old farmer still stout of step
treads through the orchard he has outlasted
but for some hollow-trunked much-lopped
apples and Bartlett pears. The dogwood
planted to mark my birth flowers each April,
a soundless explosion. We tell its story
time after time: the drizzling day,
the fragile sapling that had to be staked.

At the back of our acre here, my wife and I,
freshly moved in, freshly together,
transplanted two hemlocks that guarded our door
gloomily, green gnomes a meter high.
One died, gray as sagebrush next spring.
The other lives on and some day will dominate
this view no longer mine, its great
lazy feathery hemlock limbs down-drooping,
its tent-shaped caverns resinous and deep.
Then may I return, an old man, a trespasser,
and remember and marvel to see
our small deed, that hurried day,
so amplified, like a story through layers of air
told over and over, spreading.

–John Updike, born on this day in 1932

2 Comments
May 17, 2017

Après moi le déluge

by chuckofish

Today is the 74th anniversary of Operation Chastise, an attack on German dams during WWII, carried out by Royal Air Force No. 617 Squadron using a specially developed “bouncing bomb” invented by Barnes Wallis. The raid was subsequently publicized as the “Dam Busters” and was made into a movie called The Dam Busters (1955).

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It was quite an undertaking. In total, 53 of the 133 aircrew who participated in the attack were killed, a casualty rate of almost 40 percent. In addition, later estimates put the death toll in the Möhne Valley at about 1,600, including people who drowned in the flood wave downstream from the dam.

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The Mohne Dam breached

There are, of course, questions now about whether it in fact changed the course of the war by slowing down industrial production in the Rohr Valley. (Two hydroelectric power stations were destroyed and several more were damaged. Factories and mines were also either damaged or destroyed.)

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But I still recommend the 1955 movie as a very good one–full of tension and heroics.

And those RAF pilots were really something, weren’t they?

So join me in a toast to “the dam busters”!

P.S. You will recall that there is a scene in the original Star Wars (1977) which is clearly inspired by the dam busters!

4 Comments
May 16, 2017

“Late one night when the wind was still Daddy brought the baby to the window sill”*

by chuckofish

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Well, I’m feeling a little down now that everyone has gone home and my house is empty again. We had a busy weekend full of babies and family gatherings and godparents and sitting on the patio and Mother’s Day.

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But, in addition to the baptisms and Mother’s Day brunch, the girls had their own meetings to attend and they accomplished quite a bit. So it was a fun weekend and a successful few days.

Lovely, lovely, lovely. A new week–onward and upward.

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A new sign at church

*Mary Chapin Carpenter, Halley Came to Jackson

3 Comments
May 15, 2017

A bushel and a peck

by chuckofish

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Just a sample of all the goodness that was my weekend. The daughters (and Nate) head home tonight, so I’ll have time for a longer post tomorrow…In the meantime, enjoy your Monday!

2 Comments
May 12, 2017

Marked as Christ’s own for ever

by chuckofish

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It’s been a busy, busy week what with lots of stress at work, our first foray into babysitting the wee babes (just the OM and moi), and daughter #1’s arrival on Wednesday night. Daughter #2 and Nate arrive tonight.

All are arriving for the baptism of the wee babes on Saturday where we will each renew our own baptismal covenant:

Question: Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God? Answer: I renounce them.

Question: Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God? Answer: I renounce them.

Question: Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God? Answer: I renounce them.

Question: Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior? Answer: I do.

Question: Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love? Answer: I do.

Question: Do you promise to follow and obey him as your Lord? Answer: I do.

(Incidentally, it is Mother’s Day on Sunday–bonus!)

2 Comments
May 10, 2017

Fun facts to know and tell

by chuckofish

Did you know that both Max Steiner and Dimitri Tiomkin were born today?

Steiner (May 10, 1888 – December 28, 1971) was an Austrian-born American music composer for theatre and films. He was a child prodigy who conducted his first operetta when he was twelve and became a full-time professional, either composing, arranging, or conducting, when he was fifteen.  Steiner was referred to as “the father of film music” and played a major part in creating the tradition of writing music for films. He composed over 300 film scores and was nominated for 24 Academy Awards, winning three: The Informer (1935), Now, Voyager (1942) and Since You Went Away (1944). Besides his Oscar-winning scores, you might remember King Kong (1933), Casablanca (1942), The Searchers (1956), a lot of those classic Errol Flynn movies, and Gone With the Wind (1939).

Tiomkin (May 10, 1894 – November 11, 1979) was a Russian-born American film composer and conductor. Musically trained in Russia, he was best known for his western scores, including Duel in the Sun (1946), Red River (1948), High Noon (1952), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), Rio Bravo (1959), and The Alamo (1960). He received twenty-two Academy Award nominations and won four Oscars, three for Best Original Score for High Noon, The High and the Mighty, and The Old Man and the Sea, and one for Best Original Song for “The Ballad of High Noon” from High Noon.

Well, I thinks that’s interesting–two of the all-time most famous movie composers sharing a birthday!

And, oh, what’s that you say? The Cardinals are in first place?! No kidding, you nay-sayers!

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Don’t let the turkeys (and the haters) get you down, Big Mike!

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#THAT’SAWINNER! Go, Cards!

2 Comments
May 9, 2017

Death of a sidekick

by chuckofish

The New York Times headline reads, “Don Gordon, Steve McQueen’s Sidekick Onscreen and in Life, Dies at 90.” Kind of rude, I think. And not really true, guys.

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Don enlisted in the Navy after the attack on Pearl Harbor when he was only 15, having convinced his mother to sign a statement saying he was 18. He went on to receive 11 battle stars. After the war, he went to drama school. He was never a star, but he was a working actor for many, many years–and long after Steve died in 1980.

It just seems to me that he deserves a little more respect than the brush-off designation of sidekick. And it’s not as if he were in a ton of films with Steve–he was in three. He wasn’t Gabby Hayes.

Well, “respect” is not something that is in great supply these days.

So anyway, I suggest we toast Don Gordon tonight and watch Bullitt (1968). Sounds like a plan to me.

3 Comments
May 8, 2017

“All who confess his name, come then with hearts aflame”*

by chuckofish

Well, this weekend was beautiful–70+ degrees and sunny. Gorgeous. We needed it.

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I had a very busy weekend–estate sale-ing, attending “an event,” working in the yard, dining with friends (ordering a cocktail!), going to church, and so on.

Two of the estate sales I went to were at homes of people I had known and loved. This is always sad and a bit awkward. Both were at homes where the husband had died suddenly and the wife had been whisked off to an assisted living home immediately afterward. Both wives are suffering from dementia and I wonder if they had any idea what was happening to their homes. Maybe that is just as well.

I did rescue two embroidered/needlepoint bricks.

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This weekend I also read a fair amount of the two books I am currently reading.

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I found Whip Hand on a basement bookshelf and brought it upstairs to read. Written by Dick Francis, the British steeplechase jockey and prolific crime fiction writer, it is the second in the Sid Halley series about a former jockey, who has been crippled in a racing accident and now works as a private investigator. The novel received the Gold Dagger Award for Best Novel of 1979, as well as the Edgar Award for Best Novel of 1980. I am really not a big fan of the crime fiction genre, but I am enjoying this book as much as I did back in 1979 when I read it for the first time. It is Dick Francis at the top of his game.

I had to interrupt Dick Francis when Elizabeth Strout’s new book, Anything is Possible, arrived in the mail. You may recall that I loved My Name is Lucy Barton, which was published last year, and this book, which is sort of a sequel–in that Lucy Barton is a character in this new book. She has written a memoir (My Name is Lucy Barton) and we read about the people in the small town she has written about and how they react to the book.  It is wonderful and I am racing through it. Strout is such a good writer, it is kind of unnerving.

The boy and his wee family came over for Sunday dinner, forcing me to close my book for awhile.

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And I saw a flicker close-up on the patio.

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(not my photo!)

Weekend complete! Have a good week!

*Hymn 478, F. Bland Tucker

4 Comments
May 6, 2017

“You are the music while the music lasts”*

by chuckofish

The weeks certainly do fly by, don’t they? At this time last Saturday the DH and I were on our way to scenic Vermont to attend son #3’s senior recital.

It was a beautiful day and the performance went perfectly — at least if you don’t count that idiot who took pictures (aka yours truly). This is the BEST photo I took.

Tim is the blur at the piano and his friend, Roland, is the blur with the violin.  Despite my photo-fail, I had a wonderful time. The music — all original Tim Melville compositions — was great and ranged from conventional piano, guitar, violin pieces to much more experimental works, including a very cool digital composition and an avant-garde a capella sound piece performed by six singers. I confess that when Tim told us that things would get abstract, I pictured the first part of the great piano scene from Green Card (watch it all), but I’m happy to say it wasn’t anything like that. I know I’m his mother and I don’t know much about music, but I was very impressed! He sure makes his parents proud.

After all that excitement, we packed up the car with some items from Tim’s apartment and went off to a main street deli for some much needed sustenance. Tim’s girlfriend, and her parents and sister, who kindly drove up for the recital, joined us, but I took no pictures because I was having too much fun. However, this is what main street looks like.

We’ll be back in Vermont next weekend for Tim’s graduation — this time accompanied by good photographers who can record the event without shaking! And guess who the graduation speaker is going to be? Yep, Vermont’s most famous son, Bernie Sanders. I can hardly wait…

I will miss those car trips to Vermont, the antique stores, and the beautiful scenery.

But at least we’ll get to see more of Tim and his cat — at least for a few weeks.  Stay tuned for part II, or “Weekend at Bernie’s”.

*T.S. Eliot, “Dry Salvages”

3 Comments