Well, today I am on my way to visit daughter #2 for a few days. So I won’t be back in blog action until next Wednesday.
Here’s a pic of the wee laddie to tide you over!
He caught the cat!
Have a good weekend! Make good choices!
*Willie Nelson
Hubert de Givenchy, the French couturier, died last Saturday. He will always be associated with his muse Audrey Hepburn and for designing chic, but ladylike, fashions.
Coincidentally, when daughter #1 was home for a night last week, we watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s (for the umpteenth time) and once again marveled at how great AH looks in this movie. That orange coat!
They were a great team.
Funnily enough, the NYT obit actually mentioned that Hubert was “a devout Protestant,” who “regarded his talents as a gift from God.” In 2007 “he told Women’s Wear Daily: ‘Balenciaga was my religion. Since I’m a believer, for me, there’s Balenciaga, and the good Lord.’”
Indeed, there was more to Hubert de Givenchy, and Audrey Hepburn too, than fashion. And we should remember that.
Also this was interesting. It reminded me of going to the fabric department in several department stores to look at the pattern books with my mother. We would look at the patterns slowly page by page and finally choose one. Then we’d pick out the fabric and a zipper if the pattern called for one. She made a lot of clothes for me. She saved money by making my clothes, but it was also a creative outlet for a very creative woman without many outlets. I think she enjoyed making clothes for me. I enjoyed wearing them and was proud of them. If there were girls at my school who made snide remarks regarding my “homemade” fashions, I thought at the time that they could go to hell, and I still do. They weren’t just judging me, after all, they were judging my mother.
She always said that all the most expensive haute couture clothes were handmade. And she was right.
Into paradise may the angels lead thee. At your coming may the martyrs receive thee, and bring thee into the holy city Jerusalem.
*Matthew 5: 16
“We’ve really gone into grandma and grandpa mode…It’s very relaxed. We love being in Connecticut, with each other, having the family around all the time and enjoying this time of our life.”
–Patti Hansen, Keith Richards’ wife of 34 years, quoted in the WSJ.
This just struck me as hilarious. Patti, I totally relate.
O gracious and holy Father, give us wisdom to perceive thee, diligence to seek thee, patience to wait for thee, eyes to behold thee, a heart to meditate upon thee, and a life to proclaim thee; through the power of the Spirit of Jesus Christ our Lord.
–St. Benedict
(Photo from the Daily Mirror)
It was a busy weekend filled with chores–going to Target and other shopping, doing laundry, cleaning up the kitchen, vacuuming–the usual weekend to do list. I don’t mind. I got some of my bunnies out since it is that time of year.
And I did a little spring cleaning in the Florida room, but I may have jumped the gun on that.
I went to church on Sunday and I was the first lector. My passage was from Numbers, the classic scene where the Israelites are grumbling–“Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?”–and the Lord punishes them by sending poisonous snakes. They repent and He takes the snakes away. This leads nicely into the gospel lesson, “Jesus said, ‘Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world…”.
It was raining when I left the church and soon it was snowing, really coming down like soap flakes in a movie. It was pretty to watch.
iPhone cameras can never capture snow falling! It was coming down in giant chunks!
I also started to pack for my trip this coming Friday to visit sweet daughter #2 back east. We have a little road trip planned to Virginia where we will stop in for a few days to see my oldest/dearest friend who lives in Norfolk. Can’t wait to get out of Dodge!
Meanwhile the boy’s BFF (and the wee laddie’s godfather) was ordained to the diaconate at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in NYC.
We are all very proud of him.
Ah, sunrise, sunset…swiftly flow the years!
Speaking of which, the wee babes are now 15-months old! They came over for dinner on Sunday night. They had fun playing with vintage toys.
After they went home I watched The Robe (1953)–the first of my Lenten movies!
Were you…out there?
I enjoyed it immensely.
*BCP, General Confession, A Penitential Order, Rite I
Another busy week full of meetings and driving about, but at least we have something to show for it. Son #1 is now the proud owner of his very own car, a Hyundai Santa Fe.
Oops, it looks like I uploaded the wrong picture. He was just two years old in that one, and the car was a Ford Escort. We were camping at a park in nearby Waddington NY a couple of months before his little brother’s birth. Here is James now — a little older, able to put his feet on the floor, and see over the dashboard of his own car.
Time flies, and all of a sudden it’s 2018. I only wish that I remembered everything about those passing days. Well, if we can’t remember all the details, we can at least enjoy every moment — the boring and uncomfortable bits right along with the triumphs and simple pleasures.
This weekend my son is taking me for a ride in his new (old) car. We’ll listen to some vintage car music, perhaps The Best of Fleetwood Mac (?) or some Tragically Hip, and we’ll explore the North Country. And we’ll make memories.
Have a lovely weekend!
*Psalm 90:12
I am so glad it is Friday and that the weekend is just around the corner. I plan to take it easy.
I’m going to clean up my kitchen after having some work done in there this week. And I’m going to start thinking about my trip east next weekend to see daughter #2. Maybe I’ll even pack!
I’m looking forward to seeing the wee babes.
It is rumored that the sun may be out this weekend, at least partially, so I’m hoping to get outside and survey the south forty.
And, by the way, Sunday is Johnny Appleseed Day.
“Oooooh, the Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord, for giving me the things I need, the sun and the rain and the appleseed. The Lord is good to me.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPs_zvWwNQU
Wise words to ponder as are today’s Daily Bible Verse.
Have a good weekend!
Halfway into Lent. Busy and stressed at work, but getting along.
Tomorrow is Friday!
For the Lord is good and his love endures forever;
his faithfulness continues through all generations.
–Psalm 100:5
On this day in 1841 William Rockhill Nelson was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana. “He came,” we are told, “of builders of cities and states. His American ancestry reached back almost three centuries.” If you are interested in the man who owned and edited the Kansas City Star and was a co-founder of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, you can read all about him here.
He was quite a fellow.
As a boy William was “exceedingly mischievous and difficult to manage.”
He used to say that he “must have been a natural insurgent.” One of the first insurrections came when he was ten years old. A political speaker was making an open-air address at night. The boy and one or two of his friends, armed with eggs, plastered the speaker from behind trees. The next day placards were posted offering a reward for the arrest and conviction of the offenders.
“I could see myself behind the bars,” he said in telling about it, “and I was overwhelmed at the thought of the disgrace I would bring on the family. So I determined to run away. I got on board the train. But my father had heard of my plan from my brother and he came and took me off. He asked me and I told him the full truth about what I had done, and I shall never forget the note of satisfaction in his voice when he said: ‘Well, thank God, you are not a liar.'”
William sounds like a character out of a Booth Tarkington novel, don’t you think?
After many such incidents, William was sent off as a teenager to the college, now the University, of Notre Dame, a school at that time famous for its strictness of discipline. Years later a friend inquired how it happened that his father, a vestryman in an Episcopal Church, sent him to a Catholic School. “It was a sort of Botany Bay for bad boys,” he explained. He was more than a match for the severe priests, however, and the they kicked him out and asked him not to return.
I like to think of Notre Dame as a Botany Bay for Bad Boys.
Anyway, Nelson became a lawyer. And a leading citizen of Kansas City.
If they ever make a movie about William Rockhill Nelson, I know who should play him.
*Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “My Lost Youth”
“I got up on my feet and went over to the bowl in the corner and threw cold water on my face. After a little while I felt a little better, but very little. I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance. I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.”
–Farewell, My Lovely
Quelle fun weekend! The weather was beautiful. Daughter #1 came into town on Saturday and we went to a couple of estate sales, had margaritas with our lunch, shopped locally, took a long walk around town, and tried to get the wee babes interested in a dance party when they came over that night.
The wee babes were having none of it though, preferring to cruise around on their own–the wee laddie toddling on two feet
and the wee lassie careening around on all fours.
She is fast!
Daughter #1 headed off to DePauw in the morning. Her cousin Tim and longtime girlfriend Abby drove down from Crawfordsville, Indiana to meet her and go to Marvin’s, a Greencastle landmark.
I caught up with daughter #2 on the phone and then the OM surprised me by wanting to do something. We decided to go to Lone Elk Park, which was always a fun Sunday drive when our kids were little. Of course, it has been awhile and the OM got lost (several times) getting there, but we made it eventually. We saw some big ol’ elk and a little herd of buffalo.
Don’t worry–we did not get out of the car and try to take selfies with the buffs. (Pardon my iPhone photos taken through the window.)
I skipped church to have breakfast with daughter #1 before she left Sunday morning, but I did watch most of Billy Graham’s funeral. I was especially struck by his three daughters’ eulogies, especially Anne’s (below at 1:24:17).
Wow. Of course, there was a piper at the end.
And if anyone is wondering which movie I chose to watch on Sunday night instead of the Oscars, it was The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938).
Excellent choice. Best direction, best script, best use of technicolor, best star, best supporting cast, best choreographed swordplay, best stunts, best music, best everything! And the movie is 80 years old! Zut alors!
Have a great week!
*Mary Chapin Carpenter
dual personalities 