June | 2018 | dual personalities

June 30, 2018

Going once, going twice, sold!

by chuckofish

I went to an auction yesterday — the first one I’ve been to in ages and ages. The auctioneer had collected items from three local estates. It was a fascinating experience and I learned a lot. Namely, people like what they like whether it’s modern trash or a handcrafted antique, and if they want it they will bid on it. I could discern no rhyme nor reason to the prices that items fetched. For example, this antique ogee clock went for under $50 and the nice shaker rockers for about $25 apiece.

By contrast, these rustic wooden carrier boxes inspired fierce competition and eventually brought in over $100 each. After a similar contest, someone bought the tiny milking stool on the upper right for something like $75. Go figure.

I did not intend to bid on anything, but when NO ONE wanted this pair of lamps I couldn’t help myself. I won them for $10. I’ve always wanted one of those blue and white porcelain lamps. The other one is a very heavy art deco style brass desk lamp that is growing on me. Btw, someone got that nice cane-bottom rocker for about $20. I guess no one wants rocking chairs anymore.

With so much stuff to get through the auction was going to last until at least 10pm, and I did not intend to stay. Having bought my lamps, I prepared to leave, but when NO ONE wanted these two lovely cane-bottom maple chairs, I bid again and won them for — you guessed it — $10! Okay, so the seat on one of them is broken, but the other one is in perfect shape.

At that point I thought it best to leave while I was ahead. So, having spent a whopping $20, I loaded up Hobbes (the new car) and drove home. Not a bad way to spend a Friday evening.

Then I welcomed the new items into the home. I put the porcelain lamp and chair in the family room (at least for now).

But I haven’t decided on a location for the other lamp yet. Here’s what it looks like up close.

Finally and belatedly, here’s a photo of the chest I bought in Louisville in April. The fox lamp belongs to son #1, and you will remember that I bought the Edwin Booth print in St. Louis last summer. I still need to hang it on the wall!

The house is coming along! Stay tuned for updates on the kitchen renovation project. In the meantime, please read the transcript of this wonderful speech by biographer and historian David McCullough and have a wonderful weekend!

Note: auction photos borrowed from the auction web site.

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June 29, 2018

“Stick with me baby, I’m the guy that you came in with”*

by chuckofish

Today is the birthday of one of my favorites: Frank Loesser (June 29, 1910 – July 28, 1969) who wrote, among a lot of other things, the lyrics and music to Guys and Dolls. Over his career, he won four Tonys, a Pulitzer Prize for Drama and an Academy Award–all richly deserved.

Loesser, we are told, was one of those guys who, when four years old, could play any tune on the piano by ear (he never had a lesson). In WWII he joined the Air Force and wrote “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.” What a guy.

If I hadn’t just watched Guys and Dolls (1955) recently, I would watch it tonight in his honor. Instead I may watch Destry Rides Again (1939) in which Marlene Dietrich sings the Loesser classic “See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have.”

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Speaking of westerns, Loesser also wrote the classic “Jingle, Jangle, Jingle” as in “I’ve got spurs that jingle, jangle, jingle/ as I go riding merrily along/And they sing, oh, ain’t you glad you’re single?/And that song ain’t so very far from wrong.” I have known the song forever, but never knew who wrote it!

So a toast to Frank Loesser tonight! The weekend is almost here. I have no big plans beyond getting ready for the 4th of July holiday when we have guests arriving. And hopefully those wee babes will toddle over on Sunday night.

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Plus: This is a good one from one of my favorite female (Episcopal) clergypersons.

I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

–Ephesians 3:14–21

*”Luck Be a Lady Tonight” by Frank Loesser

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June 28, 2018

“For love of unforgotten times”*

by chuckofish

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oh antic God

return to me

my mother in her thirties

leaned across the front porch

the huge pillow of her breasts

pressing against the rail

summoning me in for bed.

I am almost the dead woman’s age times two.

I can barely recall her song

the scent of her hands

though her wild hair scratches my dreams

at night. return to me, oh Lord of then

and now, my mother’s calling,

her young voice humming my name.

–Lucille Clifton

June 26 was the 30th anniversary of our mother’s death. As a day it doesn’t mean that much to me, because I think of her every day.

I see her in me and in my children and in other people. I read her books and wear her jewelry. I sometimes get out her dishes and use them. I watch movies that we watched together. I am reminded of what she said and thought about things.

I went to the memorial service of a 96-year old friend the other day. Her adult granddaughter spoke lovingly about her and related how when she was a child, she would visit her grandparents in the summer. She would go to the grocery store with her grandmother, who would drive with her hand on her granddaughter’s leg. I thought of my mother and of myself, who did the same thing (and still do sometimes!) with our children–that wordless pat of affection saying, I’m so happy you are here with me.

“We ourselves shall be loved for awhile and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

–Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey

*Robert Louis Stevenson, from “To My Mother”

4 Comments

June 27, 2018

Wednesday round-up

by chuckofish

So did you read about the brouhaha over Laura Ingalls Wilder’s classic Little House on the Prairie series?

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A division of the American Library Association voted unanimously last week to strip Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name from a major children’s literature award over concerns about how the author referred to Native Americans and blacks. Funnily enough, I bought a hardback copy of Little House on the Prairie at an estate sale last Saturday. I started reading it on Sunday and I have to say I was impressed with the beauty and simplicity of the writing.

“In the West the land was level, and there were no trees. The grass grew thick and high. There the wild animals wandered and fed as though they were in a pasture that stretched much farther than a man could see, and there were no settlers. Only Indians lived there.”

Haven’t these PC-obsessed librarians ever heard of context?

I say, “Phooey!” to the American Library Association.

It may be time to road trip down to Mansfield, Missouri to see the “House on Rocky Ridge Farm”–where Laura Ingalls Wilder and her husband Almanzo lived and where she wrote her books.

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There is a museum there as well. Mansfield is located in the Ozarks on the south edge of the Salem Plateau. It is a 3.5 hour drive from St. Louis. Branson–which is not on my bucket list–is a little over an hour from there.

On the movie front the OM and I watched Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) last week when it was on TCM and I thoroughly enjoyed it. That dance sequence at the barn-raising is superb, as is the subsequent fight-dance. It is so appropriately athletic. All that stomping!

Wow. Sure looks like fun.

Anyway, you might want to check it out.

And speaking of drama, thunder storms here lately have been quite theatrical. This was how the sky looked as I drove home yesterday.

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I was reminded of the night of June 28, 1969 when a severe storm with winds of near tornadic force struck the St. Louis riverfront. The riverboat restaurant Becky Thatcher,

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with her barge and a replica of the Santa Maria (not kidding) alongside, broke loose and drifted several miles downstream, safely clearing two bridges, before crashing into the Monsanto dock on the Illinois side. One hundred restaurant patrons were aboard at the time and all were rescued by the towboat Larrayne Andress and taken back to St. Louis, where they were safely landed at the Streckfus wharfboat. The Santa Maria, we are told, sunk like a tub.

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Quelle flyover weather drama.

Well, try to take time to smell the flowers and enjoy the week. Read something controversial–like Little House on the Prairie!

8 Comments

June 26, 2018

“The singing heart of June”*

by chuckofish

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“How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!
Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
River and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside.
Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown–
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!”

– Robert Louis Stevenson, The Swing

You may have noticed that swings are becoming less common on school playgrounds throughout the country for liability reasons and because school officials are “looking for new ways to engage students in activities using safer equipment.” We are told that more than 200,000 children show up in hospital emergency rooms each year due to playground equipment injuries, according to the National Safety Council. Fewer than 20 of those accidents are fatal, but “swing set danger” looms large in the public’s imagination.**

Well.

I was a timid child. Lots of things scared me, but I loved to swing. And I liked to swing high, the higher the better. Sometimes I would swing and sing at the same time! Talk about feeling free! I mean I was never crazy and I held on tight–not like one of our friends who swears he could swing up and over on the swings at his elementary school. I was no dare-devil, but even timid kids like me can feel like they can fly on a swing. And they can flirt with danger in a way that is an important part of growing up.

Indeed, I’m with old RLS.

*Willa Cather; the illustration is by Mary Blair

**Statistics found here.

6 Comments

June 25, 2018

“Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, and his mercy endures for ever.”*

by chuckofish

How was your weekend? After a raging thunderstorm of a Friday afternoon we had a lovely Saturday with temperatures in the 70s! I had a great visit with my old friend Harriet–such a treat!–and daughter #1 breezed into town as well.

We buzzed around town hitting a couple of estate sales where I rescued a needlepoint pillow (see strawberries) and got a few books and a floor lamp. We dropped in on the boy who was working at his store.

Screen Shot 2018-06-24 at 1.38.25 PM.png We had lunch and walked around our hometown. She got the oil changed in her car and bought some great chinoiserie fabric to recover a chair. Then the wee babes came over on Saturday night and we reconnected with them. It had been awhile!

The wee laddie said hello to the handles on the highboy.

Little Miss Lottie said hello to Aunt Susie and Uncle Nate (in abstentia)…

…and gave Aunt Susie a kiss

The wee laddie wears an eye patch for a few hours a day.

I have 11 teeth!

Busy walking the circuit

After daughter #1 left on Sunday afternoon to go back to mid-MO, I got some laundry and housework done and talked to daughter #2, who is on the home stretch to her oral defense of her PhD thesis. You go, girl! The summer is zooming by.

Now it is back to the salt mine. Have a good week!

*Psalm 107:1

4 Comments

June 23, 2018

This and that, Saturday edition

by chuckofish

Another week has flown by, and I confess that I have little to show for it. Perhaps that’s what made it so pleasant. I avoided the office, puttered around the house, and read bits of everything from Alan Furst and P.G. Wodehouse to a new study of the Peloponnesian War, a book on world funerary customs, and the Oxford Book of Death. Sometimes it’s impossible to settle on one thing.

Though I spent a lot of time absorbed in the activities just mentioned, I did get out a little. The DH and I drove to Plattsburgh to turn in our old CRV and get a new one. We got exactly the same model and color (“obsidian blue pearl”) as the last one.

Can you tell which is which? Believe it or not, the new one is on top. The main “upgrade”, other than the protruding tail-lights, is the absence of a CD player. Apparently such things are now obsolete. Sigh.

On another note, I did find a good TV show to watch on Amazon Prime. It’s a 2011 BBC mystery called Case Histories, starring Jason Isaacs as a private-eye, who specializes in finding people.

The premise is nothing new: haunted ex-cop struggles to deal with his traumatic past, his recent divorce, and his current case load. Some elements may remind you of Ian Rankin’s Rebus novels and J.K. Rowling’s Cormoran Strike series. Case Histories’ main character, Jackson Brodie, isn’t an alcoholic or drug addict, and he just deals with his problems as best he can. How refreshing. Though the show naturally entails some violence, its depiction isn’t particularly graphic. Filmed and set in Edinburgh, the locations are stunning. If you want good characters (by which I mean admirable and interesting), and plots that tie everything together, give it a look. I give it two thumbs up.

And finally, a blast from the past. I discovered that YouTube has complete episodes of the 1960s TV show, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, starring Hope Lange, Edward Mulhare, Reta Shaw, and Charles Nelson Reilly! I remember watching the show and admiring both handsome Edward Mulhare and lovely Hope Lange, who had perfect clothes and hair.

Check it out here.

Have a mellow weekend!

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June 22, 2018

“A man never gets so old, that he forgets how it was being a little boy.”*

by chuckofish

The wee babes and their parents are back in town after a fun-filled vacay in Florida where they visited their other grandparents. The boy went to DisneyWorld, which is the happy place of his wife and in-law family, for the first time. He even wore a special shirt during the 14-hour day-trip. When in Rome…

The boy deserves a party, but he has to work all weekend at his store, so we will not be able to get together as I had hoped for a belated Father’s Day celebration. Sigh. Well, we’ll bring him some Chik-fil-A for lunch as a treat.

Funnily enough, now that summer is officially here, the temperature is dropping and we are in for some rain. Well, that’s flyover weather for you!

Screen Shot 2018-06-21 at 12.19.17 PM Daughter #1 is coming home for the weekend for a little R&R (and to see the wee babes). Plus, my oldest BFF is in town so we are getting together this afternoon for Episcopal souffle and a good old gab-fest.

I have nothing to complain about. I mean, look at the great bookmark daughter #2 sent me after she and DN visited Appomattox!

Perfect! Have a great weekend!

*Ward Cleaver

7 Comments

June 21, 2018

The golden stain of time

by chuckofish

In June 1874 Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman returned to St. Louis to make his home after an absence of almost 14 years. He had been president of the Fifth Street Passenger Railroad, a St. Louis streetcar company, at the outbreak of the Civil War.

Grateful local businessmen raised $30,000 to build and furnish a home for the general at 912 N. Garrison Avenue.

Screen Shot 2018-06-20 at 7.53.04 PM.png The Shermans lived there for 11 years before moving back to New York City. When his wife, a devout Catholic, died in 1888, she was buried in Calvary Cemetery back in St. Louis. Three years later when the great man died, their children buried WTS (an Episcopalian) beside his wife.

Screen Shot 2018-06-20 at 7.54.27 PM.png For four hours on February 21, 1891, a procession of 12,000 soldiers, veterans and notables marched past mourners on a winding, seven-mile path from downtown St. Louis to Calvary Cemetery.

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The home on Garrison passed out of the family and became a hotel, a rooming house, and after years of decay was demolished without much ado in 1974.

With few exceptions, most of the buildings in St. Louis built before 1890 are gone. What a crying shame! History is important! Are you a member of your local historical society? Do you visit historic sites and support them with the price of admission? What are you doing this weekend?

Discuss among yourselves.

Therefore, when we build, let us think that we build for ever…. For, indeed, the greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, nor its gold. Its glory is in its Age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation, which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity. It is in their lasting witness against men, in their quiet contrast with the transitional character of all things, in the strength which …maintains its sculptured shapeliness for a time insuperable, connects forgotten and following ages with each other, and half constitutes the identity, as it concentrates the sympathy of nations: it is in the golden stain of time, that we are to look for the real light, and colour, and preciousness of architecture; and it is not until a building has assumed this character, till it has been entrusted with the fame, and hallowed by the deeds of men, till its walls have been witnesses of suffering, and its pillars rise out of the shadows of death, that its existence, more lasting as it is than that of the natural objects of the world around it, can be gifted with even so much as these possess, of language and of life….

–John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture [1890]

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June 20, 2018

“What is this babbler trying to say?”*

by chuckofish

Daughter #1 sent this link to me and Chris Pratt is my new hero.

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“Nobody is perfect,” Pratt stated for rule No. 9. “People will tell you that you are perfect just the way that you are. You are not! You are imperfect. You always will be, but there is a powerful force that designed you that way, and if you are willing to accept that, you will have grace. And grace is a gift, and like the freedom that we enjoy in this country, that grace was paid for with somebody else’s blood. Do not forget that. Don’t take that for granted.”

What he said at the MTV Movie and TV Awards took real courage. It is one thing to stand up at the CMA Awards and thank your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in a roomful of Christians, but to do it at the MTV Awards…WOW. Sure, his “Nine Rules from Chris Pratt, Generation Award Winner” were riddled with vulgarities–he very cleverly kept their attention that way–but he got his main point across.

You rock, Chris Pratt. God bless you.

*Acts 17: 18–You remember, when Paul takes it to the marketplace in Athens. This is a reminder that we should too.

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Month: June, 2018

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