October | 2017 | dual personalities

I failed to make note yesterday that it was the OM’s and my 37th wedding anniversary. The OM was out of town at a conference, so no note was taken by us as well. However, thirty-seven years is nothing to sneeze at, and I’m sure we will raise a toast this weekend when all three children are in town.

Funnily enough, today is the wedding anniversary of those lovable Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella.

They were good looking too.

You recall that they were married with a clear prenuptial agreement on sharing power, and under the joint motto “tanto monta, monta tanto.”

Ferdinand and Isabella proved to be a powerful team. They incorporated a number of independent Spanish dominions into their kingdom and in 1478 introduced the Spanish Inquisition, “a powerful and brutal force of homogenization in Spanish society.” (That’s one way to put it.) In 1492, the reconquest of Granada from the Moors was completed, and the crown ordered all Spanish Jews to convert to Christianity or face expulsion from Spain. Four years later, Spanish Muslims were handed a similar order. When the Reformation began to penetrate into Spain, the relatively few Spanish Protestants were eliminated by the Inquisition. Foreigners suspected of promoting Protestant faiths within Spain met similarly “violent ends.” After 300 years (!) the Spanish Inquisition was reluctantly suppressed in 1808, restored in 1814, suppressed in 1820, restored in 1823, and finally suppressed permanently in 1834. (Encyclopedia Britannica)

In 1492, Christopher Columbus, sponsored by Isabella and Ferdinand, discovered the New World for Europe and claimed the rich, unspoiled territory for Spain. Ferdinand and Isabella’s subsequent decision to encourage vigorous colonial activity in the Americas led to a period of great prosperity and imperial supremacy for Spain. The Inquisition, of course, was introduced in the colonies. The tribunals in Mexico and Peru were particularly “harsh.”

You may think times are tough now, but, just think, you might have been born in 15th century Spain.

Makes me want to watch Captain From Castille (1947):

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Or not. Well, I digress again. Daughter #2 arrives in town today! The idea of waiting ’til Christmas to see the wee babes was too heinous, so she planned this quick visit to tide her over.

Daddy stopped at Walgreens without the stroller–He’s not scared.

“Don’t know how I got in here…don’t know how I’m going to get out…but I’m darned comfortable right now.”

Who can blame her? (I can’t wait to see her!)

*“They amount to the same” or “Equal opposites in balance”

6 Comments

October 18, 2017

Merely bearing witness

by chuckofish

Did you read that the poet Richard Wilbur died? You will recall that he was the Poet Laureate of the U.S. for awhile. He taught at Smith College when I was there.

He was much honored in his lifetime, but, of course, the NY Times obit tends to focus on the negative, stating snidely, “By the early 1960s, however, critical opinion generally conformed to Mr. Jarrell’s oft-quoted assessment that Mr. Wilbur ‘never goes too far, but he never goes far enough.'”

Well, I rather liked him.

To claim, at a dead party, to have spotted a grackle,

When in fact you haven’t of late, can do no harm.

Your reputation for saying things of interest

Will not be marred, if you hasten to other topics,

Nor will the delicate web of human trust

Be ruptured by that airy fabrication.

Later, however, talking with toxic zest

Of golf, or taxes, or the rest of it

Where the beaked ladle plies the chuckling ice,

You may enjoy a chill of severance, hearing

Above your head the shrug of unreal wings.

Not that the world is tiresome in itself:

We know what boredom is: it is a dull

Impatience or a fierce velleity,

A champing wish, stalled by our lassitude,

To make or do. In the strict sense, of course,

We invent nothing, merely bearing witness

To what each morning brings again to light:

Gold crosses, cornices, astonishment…

(Read the whole poem, “Lying,” here. BTW, “velleity” is a wish or inclination not strong enough to lead to action. I had to look it up.)

Wilbur’s papers are housed at his alma mater Amherst College.

I like this photo of Wilbur by Tsar Fedorsky (AC 1982)

Here’s an article about the archive.

While we are musing on Berkshires themes, don’t forget that today is the anniversary of the first publication of Moby-Dick in 1851, in Britain. Its publication in America followed on November 14, 1851.

“Speak, thou vast and venerable head,” muttered Ahab, “which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world’s foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor’s side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw’st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw’st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed — while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!”

And this struck me as very sad.

Yes, Country Curtains, a Berkshires favorite that started off selling a simple unbleached muslin curtain by mail order, will shut down by the end of the year in the face of unrelenting online competition.

I remember when they were a little mom-and-pop operation in Stockbridge and we would see their ads in the old Yankee magazine. I remember looking at their catalogs with my mother. And I bought some of those plain muslin curtains–the ones with the pompoms–for our first apartment after the OM and I were married. I bought some curtains there just last year–they have elephants on them. Sigh.

But this was funny:

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Onward and upward. Hang in there and join me in a toast tonight to Richard Wilbur, Herman Melville and Country Curtains.

4 Comments

October 17, 2017

Yours, yours. I was painted for you.

by chuckofish

Today is the birthday of Frederick Childe Hassam (October 17, 1859 – August 27, 1935), one of our favorite American Impressionist painters, so it is a no-brainer what our post will be about.

Self-portrait

In case you were wondering, his name “Hassam” comes from a seventeenth-century English ancestor whose name, Horsham, had been corrupted over time to Hassam. At least, that’s what Wikipedia says.

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“End of the Trolley Line, Oak Park, Illinois”–a flyover subject!

Childe Hassam painting on Appledore

“Great paintings—people flock to see them, they draw crowds, they’re reproduced endlessly on coffee mugs and mouse pads and anything-you-like. And, I count myself in the following, you can have a lifetime of perfectly sincere museum-going where you traipse around enjoying everything and then go out and have some lunch. But if a painting really works down in your heart and changes the way you see, and think, and feel, you don’t think, ‘oh, I love this picture because it’s universal.’ ‘I love this painting because it speaks to all mankind.’ That’s not the reason anyone loves a piece of art. It’s a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes you. An individual heart-shock. Your dream, Welty’s dream, Vermeer’s dream. You see one painting, I see another, the art book puts it at another remove still, the lady buying the greeting card at the museum gift shop sees something else entire, and that’s not even to mention the people separated from us by time—four hundred years before us, four hundred years after we’re gone—it’ll never strike anybody the same way and the great majority of people it’ll never strike in any deep way at all but—a really great painting is fluid enough to work its way into the mind and heart through all kinds of different angles, in ways that are unique and very particular. Yours, yours. I was painted for you. And—oh, I don’t know, stop me if I’m rambling… but Welty himself used to talk about fateful objects. Every dealer and antiquaire recognizes them. The pieces that occur and recur. Maybe for someone else, not a dealer, it wouldn’t be an object. It’d be a city, a color, a time of day. The nail where your fate is liable to catch and snag.”

―Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

4 Comments

October 16, 2017

“Oh Lord, you are my God; I will exalt you…”*

by chuckofish

It was a stormy, gray Sunday and I contemplated staying in bed and reading Ivan Doig, but I was a good girl and got up and went to church. I was rewarded with great scripture readings and one of my favorite hymns. I mean, how great is Philippians 4:1-9:

Therefore, my brethren, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm thus in the Lord, my beloved.

²I entreat Eu-o′dia and I entreat Syn′tyche to agree in the Lord. ³And I ask you also, true yokefellow, help these women, for they have labored side by side with me in the gospel together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life.

⁴Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. ⁵Let all men know your forbearance. The Lord is at hand. ⁶Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. ⁷And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

⁸Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. ⁹What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, do; and the God of peace will be with you.

There you have it.

Our final hymn was #624, Jerusalem the Golden, which always makes me cry. I was kind of a mess, mascara running all over, etc. Oh well. I am just a sentimental/crazy old lady who cries at hymns.

Most of my weekend was spent catching up on house maintenance and the like, which I do not mind. Life becomes a romance when you can learn to enjoy your everyday tasks and routines. Didn’t Oswald Chambers say something about that? (I think he was talking about our relationship with Christ, but it works here too.) Enjoy your home, I say, and part of that is taking care of it.

The OM and I babysat on Friday night while the boy and daughter #3 went out on the town…haha…they were home before 9 o’clock! The wee babes were great–a hand full–but great. I had forgotten what it is like to try to change a diaper on a boy-child who, when put on his back, immediately flips over. What a wrestling match ensues! Zut alors! I managed to get the little bud into his jammies, but I’m afraid they might have been backwards…C’est la vie. They were tuckered out but too wound up to go to bed, and when their parents arrived home, it was in the nick of time as Lottiebelle was having a meltdown and the OM’s patience was wearing thin. We headed home and I had a large glass of wine. They all came over for the last barbecue of the season on Sunday night.

In between I went to a work-related fundraiser–a “Hootenanny”–where a bunch of aging hippies and old communists plus President George H.W. Bush’s former Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service sang 1960s folk songs accompanied by a ukelele band. I’m telling you, truth is stranger than fiction. It was more fun than you would think and the story of my life.

Now it is Monday already and it’s back to the salt mine. Enjoy the day!

*Isaiah 25:1

5 Comments

October 14, 2017

Saturday Sequels

by chuckofish

Another week, another cranky movie review. Last Sunday, a friend and I went to see Blade Runner 2049. I didn’t have high expectations, but even so it was not a successful outing. We accidentally went to a 3-D viewing. Aside from having to wear stupid 3-D glasses instead of my usual ones, I had to endure noisy theater workers who seemed to be having a party right outside our door — a party complete with a small child screaming and running amok. At one point I actually went outside and asked them respectfully to tone it down. They did not. Bad conditions certainly colored my view of the movie, but I believe I can make a few reasonably objective comments.

Blade Runner 2049 DID capture something of the original movie’s feel, and will no doubt win Academy Awards, but Denis Villeneuve was so intent on outdoing Ridley Scott in the atmosphere stakes that he sacrificed everything else. Villeneuve paid too much homage to Scott, sometimes even borrowing lines from the first movie. This seemed a cheap bid to get Blade Runner (1982) fans on board.

The two hour and forty-four minute run-time coupled with the prevalence of extended shots and long, lugubrious silences made the new film drag.

Style cannot stand in for substance. In fact, aside from its distorted Christian overtones (miracle birth and sacrifice), it had nothing new to say at all. The “what makes a human, human?” question got asked and answered the same way as in the original.

I missed interesting characters like the 1982 movie’s J.F. Sebastian, the doll-maker,

or the replicant, Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer).

Unlike Batty, the villain in Blade Runner 2049 had no redeeming qualities at all, and no motive other than obedience for anything she did. I couldn’t help but feel that the story had gone backwards, rather than forward.

Don’t bother to see it unless you’re (1) such a super fan of Blade Runner that you can’t stand the thought of missing it, or (2) need to hide in the dark for almost three hours.

Have a wonderful weekend! I’m off to serve lunch at my church’s Fall Bazaar.

1 Comment

October 13, 2017

Fly sideways FRIYAY

by chuckofish

Just as I unpacked my turtlenecks and black tights, they are predicting broken records for heat this weekend! Good grief! No matter what people say about global warming, it has always been thus in flyover country.

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Que sera sera.

This weekend I plan to finish Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes which I started last weekend. It is a straight up detective novel which someone left in the giveaway basket at work. I am enjoying it. Next on the docket is This House of Sky by Ivan Doig, which came highly recommended by someone whose opinion I value.

I have a work event on Sunday afternoon that I have to attend, and after that, the boy and daughter # 3 will come over. Can’t wait to see the wee babes, especially Lottie who decided to stand up this week!

She has hitherto been reluctant to put her weight on her feet, but seems to have decided it is okay now. You go, Girl!

Her brother has been very encouraging.

BTW, on a historical/literary note, 138 years ago today Walt Whitman came to St. Louis to visit his brother, Thomas Jefferson Whitman, who was the city water commissioner. How about that? He liked the great river town, but wasn’t fond of the smog. In honor of his visit, and because it seems appropriate, here is a little bit of Crossing Brooklyn Ferry:

4

These and all else were to me the same as they are to you,

I loved well those cities, loved well the stately and rapid river,

The men and women I saw were all near to me,

Others the same—others who look back on me because I look’d forward to them,

(The time will come, though I stop here to-day and to-night.)

5

What is it then between us?

What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?

Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not,

I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine,

I too walk’d the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the waters around it,

I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me,

In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me,

In my walks home late at night or as I lay in my bed they came upon me,

I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution,

I too had receiv’d identity by my body,

That I was I knew was of my body, and what I should be I knew I should be of my body.

…

9

Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!

Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg’d waves!

Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor me, or the men and women generations after me!

Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!

Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta! stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn!

Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers!

Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!

Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house or street or public assembly!

Sound out, voices of young men! loudly and musically call me by my nighest name!

Live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or actress!

Play the old role, the role that is great or small according as one makes it!

Consider, you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown ways be looking upon you;

Be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet haste with the hasting current;

Fly on, sea-birds! fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in the air;

Receive the summer sky, you water, and faithfully hold it till all downcast eyes have time to take it from you!

Diverge, fine spokes of light, from the shape of my head, or any one’s head, in the sunlit water!

Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down, white-sail’d schooners, sloops, lighters!

Flaunt away, flags of all nations! be duly lower’d at sunset!

Burn high your fires, foundry chimneys! cast black shadows at nightfall! cast red and yellow light over the tops of the houses!

Have a great weekend! Try to get out and look at a river and “people watch”. What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us? Not much, I think.

6 Comments

October 12, 2017

Life is real! Life is earnest!

by chuckofish

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

   Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

   And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

   And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

   Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

   Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each to-morrow

   Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

   And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

   Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,

   In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

   Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!

   Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act,— act in the living Present!

   Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us

   We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

   Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

   Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

   Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

   With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

   Learn to labor and to wait.

–Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, A Psalm of Life

The fall season always brings me back to New England–not literally, but in my imagination–and a poem by Longfellow seems appropriate. It is good to read these old poems, so out of fashion these days, but full of good stuff!

I would like to join the throngs of leaf-peepers, but I will have to be satisfied with flyover landscapes this year. Here are a few paintings of New England landscapes to whet the whistle, so to speak.

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Eric Sloane

Winslow Homer

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Robert Wesson

Alden Bryan, 1955

Luigi Lucioni, Village of Stowe, 1931

And here’s a little Thoreau to wind things up:

Minott is, perhaps, the most poetical farmer–who most realizes to me the poetry of the farmer’s life–that I know. He does nothing with haste and drudgery, but as if he loved it. He makes the most of his labor, and takes infinite satisfaction in every part of it. He is not looking forward to the sale of his crops or any pecuniary profit, but he is paid by the constant satisfaction which his labor yields him.

—A Writer’s Journal

And read this from the Big Surprise file…

6 Comments

October 11, 2017

News from the file marked “Duh”*

by chuckofish

The sign at Lone Elk Park reads: “CAUTION DO NOT APPROACH OR FEED ANIMALS.”

Elk mating season, folks!

But, you know, people think they are the exception to all rules.

Hey, lady, your tag is showing…not to mention your underwear!

Some idiot says, “Let’s take a selfie with the elk!” Bad things ensue and then it is the top story in flyover country.

This really Screen Shot 2017-08-17 at 3.08.50 PM.png me, what can I say?

People have really lost their respect for nature and wild things. They think everything is like a television show and nothing bad can happen to them. They think national parks are just more rustic versions of Disney World. That is why people are always drowning in rivers and falling off cliffs. I guess they were never Scouts. Or have any common sense.

Well, forgive me for a little mid-week vent.

BTW, I was interested to read this obit in the NYT about Nora Johnson, author and Smith graduate. I have read two of her books: The World of Henry Orient, which is the basis for one of my all-time favorite movies, and Coast to Coast. Nora was a good writer, but I have to say, The World of Henry Orient (1964) is the rare example of the movie being better than the book. Maybe it’s time to watch it again, while toasting Nora Johnson, of course.

Have a good Wednesday!

*Zander in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

8 Comments

October 10, 2017

Grant us strength and courage to love and serve you with gladness and singleness of heart*

by chuckofish

I was so busy this weekend that I never even had a phone conversation with my DP. I got a lot of exercise (walking), but I ate a lot of food. C’est la vie.

I went to the Best of Missouri Market and the Shaw Art Fair.

I like attending such fairs, but they also always make me feel a little guilty because I cannot buy something from all the artists in all the wonderful booths. Well, c’est la vie.

Daughter #1 and I went to three estate sales in the rain and got a few things–bargains–and a Christmas present for someone! We also went to HomeGoods and found a few more bargains.

We also finally sat down and went through the wedding pictures and narrowed down our “favorites,” getting pretty hysterical in the process, mostly at our own expense. The bride–daughter #2–looked beautiful,

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Screen Shot 2017-10-09 at 2.34.09 PM.png but the mother-of-the-bride and maid-of-honor, not so much.

Screen Shot 2017-10-09 at 2.59.18 PM.png It was a big bouquet…Little Lottie displayed her ‘tude as well…

Screen Shot 2017-10-09 at 5.17.01 PM.png Anyway, it was lovely to remember the beautiful day and the beautiful bride. And I do have a picture for our Christmas card now.

We also spent time with the wee babes on two occasions.

Screen Shot 2017-10-09 at 1.14.41 PM.png We got laughing pretty hard again at the sight of the little guy trying to move forward on my sisal rug on his hands and tippy toes, because crawling on the scratchy surface felt weird. It is hard to stop him in his tracks, but that sisal finally made him turn around.