April | 2018 | dual personalities

Here in flyover country we are still experiencing winter…although the daffodils are blooming, they are forecasting snow. This is not unusual for us. People just forget from year to year that Mother Nature is a big tease. C’est la vie.

Someone at work brought in a pile of old New Yorker magazines from the year 1947. I grabbed them from the “take one” basket and I am happily going through them. It was a different world in 1947, that’s for sure. All My Sons opened on Broadway, as did A Streetcar Named Desire, where Harvey, Brigadoon, Born Yesterday, Annie Get Your Gun, Finian’s Rainbow, and Oklahoma! were enjoying long runs.

The cartoons are dated, but very funny. These two made me LOL.

Screen Shot 2018-04-04 at 11.17.31 AM.png Screen Shot 2018-04-04 at 11.47.57 AM.png The movie reviews are short and very subjective:

“The Romance of Rosy Ridge” presents us with Van Johnson as a schoolteacher in 1865, out to settle the postwar animosities between Confederate and Union sympathizers in the fur-cap area of the Ozarks. Mr. Johnson performs on the harmonica and banjo, and also sings. Even if he cut loose on an organ, however, he couldn’t make this one anything but relentlessly boring.

Well, gee whiz, personally I think this is an unfair evaluation of this particular movie, but I guess we know how John McCarten, the reviewer, felt.

The book reviews contain comments like: “The writing is banal; the love scenes read like excerpts from a novel by a solemn child” and “this one…isn’t helped very much by what appears to be an awkward attempt to pilfer the best prose style of the Old Testament.”

Well, I am getting a big kick out of reading these old magazines, which is like looking through a window into another world–a postwar world where my parents were finishing up at college.

There has been a lot of talk about Mr. Rogers lately, I guess because it is the 50th anniversary of his show premiering on PBS and a movie with Tom Hanks is in the making. The movie is not a biography of Mr. Rogers, but is based on the book You Are My Friend by journalist Tom Junod, which I have read. I found it quite self-serving by the author and more about him than Mr. Rogers, who was just a very nice (famous) man who was nice to the journalist and the journalist figured out a way to work that up into a book and make a buck. Phooey.

Anyway, this article is lovely.

And my Liz Climo calendar, which I received for Christmas, gives me joy every morning:

And I like this new song by Matt Maher.

And the end of the week is just around the corner!

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April 4, 2018

A day of remembrance

by chuckofish

Lord…
We thank you for your church, founded upon your Word, that challenges us to do more than sing and pray,
but go out and work as though the very answer to our prayers depended on us and not upon you.
Help us to realize that humanity was created to shine like the stars and live on through all eternity.
Keep us, we pray, in perfect peace.
Help us to walk together,
pray together,
sing together,
and live together
until that day when all God’s children
– Black, White, Red, Brown and Yellow –
will rejoice in one common band of humanity
in the reign of our Lord and of our God, we pray. Amen.
– The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Today we remember the tragic event that happened 50 years ago, the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee. Bells will toll at places of worship, college campuses and institutions 39 times across the nation “to honor the number of years Dr. King dwelled on this earth and to pay homage to his legacy.” Oddly, I see no mention of this on our cathedral’s website–only a link to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.

I do not have many memories of this event. I was in the sixth grade and not terribly clued in to current events. I remember that it was our father’s birthday and we were focused on that. He turned 46. A pall was thrown over the day, much as a pall was thrown over daughter #1’s birthday years later on September 11 in 2001. The world intrudes.

My father had many shortcomings, but he was a gentleman of the old school. He treated everyone the same; he was kind and courteous, regardless of race, color or creed. I try to be like that as well. There is certainly not enough kindness or courtesy around these days.

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April 3, 2018

“I had a vague idea that I’d like to see the Pacific Ocean and perhaps drown in it…”*

by chuckofish

Well, today happens to be the birthday of two of my favorite actors: Leslie Howard (1893-1943)

and Doris Day (b. 1922).

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What a quandary this puts me in! TCM is showing Doris Day films all day:

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(so set your DVR)…

but I think I will opt for an evening of Leslie Howard. The Petrified Forest (1936) was the movie that made me a lifetime fan. I was in the tenth grade and was just dumbstruck by how great he was. I still think so.

Add Humphrey Bogart, a young and appealing Bette Davis, funny, old Charlie Grapewin and you have a stellar cast in a really good play by Robert Emmett Sherwood, who was one of the original members of the Algonquin Round Table and won four Pulitzer Prizes and an Academy Award (for the screenplay of The Best Years of Our Lives.) You can’t go wrong.

Anyway, a toast tonight to Leslie Howard AND Doris Day!

P.S. I will also toast Stephen Bochco, who died on Sunday. You remember, he was the producer behind such groundbreaking series as Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, and L.A. Law. He enjoyed pushing boundaries and challenging the status quo. Those shows (especially NYPD Blue) were terrific, and so much better than anything on television today. With large ensemble casts supported by great writing, these shows were character-driven and real. Andy Sipowicz is, in my humble opinion, one of (if not) the all-time best characters in TV history.

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*Alan Squier in The Petrified Forest

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April 2, 2018

“Jesus paid it all, All to him I owe”*

by chuckofish

It was a busy weekend and I feel like the wee laddie (above) at church–overstimulated and worn out.

I don’t want to give you the wrong idea though–It was a joyful and fun weekend. Daughter #1 and I managed to fit in an estate sale, margaritas, and watching Ben-Hur (1959) in its entirety. We enjoyed Ben-Hur immensely as always. Traditions are a great thing and I encourage you to start your own movie-watching ones. Teach your children (and grandchildren) to sit and pay attention to movies–I fear this is fast becoming a lost art.

We toasted Yakima Canutt, did you?

I made Episcopal Soufflé, a family favorite, for Easter brunch (because that’s what the boy always requests) and it was a crowd pleaser. The wee babes liked it too. They are little Episcopalians in the making, I tell you.