dual personalities

Month: October, 2018

October 19, 2018

“My, my, hey hey”*

by chuckofish

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I got flowers delivered at work yesterday for my anniversary. How nice–and just the right size to be enjoyed on my desk.

Meanwhile it is finally fall here in flyover country. Screen Shot 2018-10-18 at 9.09.18 AM.pngWe are far from peak in the fall color scheme of things, but why rush it? Screen Shot 2018-10-18 at 10.37.57 AM.pngScreen Shot 2018-10-18 at 10.39.42 AM.png

Screen Shot 2018-10-18 at 11.33.12 AM.pngI am looking forward to a lovely fall weekend, how about you?

I plan to dig into this old chestnut…

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…and reading some newer books…IMG_3507.JPG

Miss Lottie got tubes in her ears yesterday. Hopefully we’ll get to see our brave girl on Sunday!

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And since Halloween is approaching, it might be time for an M. Night Shyamalan movie fest–at least a few of the good ones!

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Signs (2002)

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The Sixth Sense (1999)

Have a good weekend!

*Neil Young

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October 18, 2018

“Come to my heart and bring it to rest As the bird flies home to its welcome nest”*

by chuckofish

Earlier this week the OM made some grumbling reference to our upcoming anniversary (38!) and whether I wanted “to do anything.” I suppose if I had said–yes, let’s get dressed up and paint the town! Please make a reservation for two at Tony’s (or some other extremely expensive restaurant)–he would have grumbled and done so. However, he knows me well enough after all these years to know I would never say that. It is a school night, after all.

So, anyway, we will probably kick back tonight and watch a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie to celebrate his birthday (b. 1960) today. Maybe the OM will pick up dinner at Chick-fil-a on the way home.

“The Puritan ethic of marriage was first to look not for a partner whom you do love passionately at this moment but rather for one whom you can love steadily as your best friend for life, then to proceed with God’s help to do just that.”
― J.I. Packer

Image-1.jpgMeanwhile the wee babes came over last night and we watched Mary Poppins (1964)–they were mesmerized. [Don’t worry: we didn’t let them stand that close the whole time!] They love music and singing and Mary Poppins is one great song after another!

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Three hours with the wee babes is exhausting but also the most fun of the week!

*Paul Laurence Dunbar

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October 17, 2018

“Double, double toil and trouble”*

by chuckofish

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Well, it is that time of year when we look back fondly at Halloweens of yesteryear. Here is daughter #2 striking a pose circa 1994. She is wearing the witch costume that my mother made around 1987 for daughter #1 and that was worn for years afterwards.

This year super creative daughter #3 made Rapunzel and Flynn Rider (from the Disney epic Tangled) costumes for the wee babes:

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The cuteness level will be over the top!

For me, it’s more about the candy.

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Which I will deny myself.

The OM and I are babysitting for a few hours tonight. Zut alors!

*Macbeth: IV.i 10

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October 16, 2018

“There is nothing that sharpens a man’s senses so acutely as to know that bitter and determined enemies are in pursuit of him night and day”*

by chuckofish

I was reading about what happened in history on October 16–a lot, including the public burning alive of Ridley and Latimer in 1555 and the be-heading of Marie Antoinette–when I ran across the story of the long-forgotten near assassination of President William Howard Taft.

Taft met with Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz in Mexico in 1909, the first meeting between a U.S. and a Mexican president and also the first time an American president visited Mexico.

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The day of the summit, Frederick Russell Burnham and a Texas Ranger captured and disarmed an assassin holding a palm pistol only a few feet from the two presidents.

I followed the link to read about Frederick Russell Burnham and, boy, what a guy was he!

Major_Frederick_Russell_Burnham_DSO_1901.jpgBorn in 1861 on a Dakota Sioux Indian reservation in Minnesota to missionary parents, Burnham was an American scout and tracker in the Apache wars, world-traveling adventurer, conservationist, and Rough Rider. He is also known for his service to  the British Army in colonial Africa and for teaching woodcraft to Robert Baden-Powell in Rhodesia.  (Lord Baden-Powell adopted the Stetson and neckerchief worn by Burnham.)

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Burnham has a mountain named after him. Of course he does.

It is supposed that Sir Rider Haggard based his character Allan Quartermain on Burhnam. (Not surprising.) “Burnham in real life is more interesting than any of my heroes of romance!” he said.

I have checked out Burham’s book Scouting On Two Continents from my flyover university library (I’m sure it hasn’t been checked out in decades.) I’ll let you know how great it is.

*This quote of Burnham’s reminds me of this quote from El Dorado (1966):

Cole: Either one of ya know a fast way to sober a man up?

Bull Harris: A bunch of howlin’ indians out for hair’ll do it quicker’n anything I know.

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Have a good day–read some history!

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October 15, 2018

“How doth the little busy bee Improve each shining hour”*

by chuckofish

How was your weekend? Mine was nice and mellow. I watched two really good movies, went to a good estate sale, and my special program at the County Library was not bad. I find that the St. Louis Genealogical Society does not offer much to me personally as the members are mostly interested in researching their German and Irish ancestors. I really need to belong to the Kansas City Genealogical Society (if there is one) as that is where my ancestors made their mark. I learned some new things, however, and it was not a waste of time.

On Friday I moved all the plants in the Florida room into the dining room, because the outside temperature had plummeted. On Saturday I moved the plants to all corners of the house. Some of them have gotten to be pretty big, so it is not so easy to find space for them. Also they have to be placed where they are not overly accessible to the wee babes.

I found a couple of treasures at the one estate sale I went to.

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Very large, like-new chinoiserie pillow–great fabric!

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Needlepoint rescue/antique chair for $18

I convinced the OM to take me to lunch at the Sappington House, a nearby historic site, which I have never visited.

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Only the restaurant in the barn is open on the weekend, so I will have to visit the house, built around 1816, on a weekday.IMG_3495.JPG

The food was very good and I will definitely return.

We watched two good movies: The Chalk Garden (1964) starring Deborah Kerr, Hayley Mills, John Mills, and Edith Evans.

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[Once again the poster is way off.]

Based on the play by Enid Bagnold, this  movie was always a favorite of mine, but I had been unable to find it for years and years. When I saw the DVD on the TCM.com site, I bought it. I was not disappointed.

The second movie we watched was To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), which daughter #1  had watched earlier in the week, prompting me to consider it.

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Truly, you have to be in the right mood to watch this great, great movie and I was in the mood on Saturday night. It is definitely a top-ten movie. Everyone is perfect and the music is just the best. Gregory Peck was never better. He deserved every award he received that year.

And those kids…wow.

Screen Shot 2018-10-14 at 3.02.23 PM.pngThe wee babes finally were able to come over for Sunday night tacos. They were in fine fettle. They have come a long way in three weeks! Lottie can count to 10! The wee laddie weighs almost 19 lbs! His favorite word is “Go!”

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Lottie and her friends Annie and Andy.

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Oops!

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Have a good week! Eat your veggies!

*Isaac Watts

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October 13, 2018

Like some picture show across Idaho*

by chuckofish

Another super busy week began with a trip to a Columbus Day antiques auction. My son accompanied me, and we had a great time watching the proceedings. Some nice antiques went for practically nothing. If only I’d been in the market for a table… However, I did manage to rescue this little Hepplewhite-style chair as a temporary addition to my living room until I get around to reupholstering the one that normally sits there.

The angle is a little odd because I was trying to avoid my son as he lunched in the dining room, but then I took this picture, and I like the lighting, so here he is.

Are those elbows on the table???

Speaking of son #2, it’s now official that he and his other half, Nicole, will be moving to Idaho in about two weeks! Including a slight detour to Indiana to see his brother, the trip is a little over 2,500 miles.

That’s a lot of audio books and music!

Nicole has a job in Ketchum, the nearest town to Sun Valley ski area and the place where Ernest Hemingway committed suicide and is buried. Hemingway’s last abode is now a museum, and, if I have my facts straight, Nicole will split her time between the house, the town library, and the history museum.

They’ve taken a place in nearby Hailey, where people who can’t afford multi-million dollar resort homes live. It looks pretty nice to me.

We sure are going to miss them! Once they’ve moved I’ll have to watch movies alone, and get the DH to deal with giant spiders like this one on the ceiling outside our back door. That body is about the size of a large acorn or an almond still in the shell. No kidding.

I think it’s a spotted orb spider

Oh, well. Halloween is around the corner, so I suppose we should expect scary spiders and the like. Ugh.

One last thing…Gregory Alan Isakov’s new CD, Evening Machines, is out, and it is really good! You can listen to it on Spotify or Youtube.

Have a great weekend!

 

*Gregory Alan Isakov, That Empty Northern Hemisphere

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October 12, 2018

“Je maintiendra.”*

by chuckofish

Friday has arrived and Fall too, it would seem. The temperatures dropped yesterday and I must say I am enjoying the cooler temps and all that goes with that.

Talk about God rays…Is this photo cool or what?

Screen Shot 2018-10-11 at 11.41.58 AM.pngWell, I have no Big Plans for the weekend. I am hoping to go to a program co-sponsored by the Missouri Historical Society Library and Research Center and the St. Louis Genealogical Society. Who knows? I may learn something.

Screen Shot 2018-10-11 at 9.17.23 AM.pngI will catch up on puttering and house projects and reading.

Meanwhile the wee babes have been enjoying their little Lutheran pre-school/daycare…RenderedImage.jpeg

Screen Shot 2018-10-11 at 3.17.38 PM.png…but they have caught every bug out there, and are frequently home with a temperature.Screen Shot 2018-10-11 at 8.52.08 AM.pngSo we have not seen them in two weeks! Our regular Sunday night dinners are regular no more. C’est la vie. Here’s hoping (🙏) we see them this weekend!

The OM and I watched a good movie the other night which I recommend to you as my weekend movie pick.

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As usual, this poster in no way represents the tone of the actual movie or, indeed, what it is actually about.

One of Our Aircraft Is Missing! (1942) is an early film from “The Archers,” the terrific team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, who wrote, directed, and produced the film.

Screen Shot 2018-10-11 at 10.07.24 AMMade during the war, it is an exciting tale of six downed British airmen in German-occupied Holland, who are all very different, but all determined to get back to England and fight again. They are aided in their escape by stalwart Netherlanders, including some bright children and very brave women. [Sidebar: I couldn’t help wondering how the brash young women of today would fare against real Nazis.]

The filmmakers knew how to make all the characters distinguishable and real with just a few lines of dialogue. I was impressed.

Do check it out. It is available on Amazon Prime. Have a great weekend!

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October 11, 2018

Words of wisdom

by chuckofish

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“Our inability to see things that are right before our eyes, until they are pointed out to us, would be amusing if it were not at times so serious. We are coming, I think, to depend too much on being told and shown and taught, instead of using our own eyes and brains and inventive faculties, which are likely to be just as good as any other person’s.”

~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

[The photo of Monument Valley is from Pinterest; the quote was found on the Hay Quaker blog.]

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October 10, 2018

A chip off the old block

by chuckofish

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Thought for the day: “At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

Pictured above: the wee laddie (left)/the boy at approximately the same age circa 1988 (right).

I mean really.

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Of course, he is working hard on scarring up his precious new face. Par for the course.

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October 9, 2018

“I’ll make it.”*

by chuckofish

Last week the OM and I watched season one of Goliath (2016), the Amazon Prime original series “about a disgraced lawyer, now an ambulance chaser, who gets a case that could bring him redemption or at least revenge on the firm which expelled him.” (IMDB)

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Although pretty intense and typically vulgar (every other word was f–king), it held our interest, which is saying something these days.

On Friday night we watched Hoosiers (1986) because the main character in Goliath–Billy McBride, played by Billy Bob Thornton–was obsessed with the movie and watched it at times of high stress. (I read that George Steinbrenner admitted to watching the movie 250 times.)

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We enjoyed it very much.

Hoosiers is loosely based on the Milan High School team that won the 1954 Indiana state championship. With an enrollment of 161 students, it still stands as the smallest school to win a state basketball championship in Indiana. Hoosiers ranks high on all sorts of movie lists – 13th on the American Film Institute’s 100 Most Inspiring Films of All Times; fourth on an AFI poll of the 10 Greatest Sports Films of All Time; and first on USA Today’s For The Win list of the 25 Best Sports Movies Ever Made.

I must say, I can’t see this movie being made in Hollywood today. It takes place in Indiana–a flyover state after all–and is all about the old-fashioned virtues: hard work, dedication, forgiveness, humility. Characters say things like, “Five players on the floor functioning as one single unit: team, team, team – no one more important that the other.” It is about good people. There is no sex, no violence beyond some unsportsmanlike behavior on the part of opponents. And there are two ministers who travel with the team (on a church bus!) and pray before every game. At the final game: “And David put his hand in the bag and took out a stone and slung it. And it struck the Philistine on the head and he fell to the ground. Amen.”

Gene Hackman, who plays Coach Dale, thought the movie would bomb. He was wrong. It touched a cord with a lot of Americans. It is a very good movie, subtle and nuanced. Dennis Hopper is great. I wish he had won the supporting actor Oscar for which he was nominated.

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So my advice is that you should try it, if you haven’t seen it, or watch it again if you have.

BTW, I looked up the original review of Goliath in the New York Times and, of course, there was the de rigueur correction at the bottom: A television review on Friday about the new Amazon series “Goliath” included an inaccurate discussion of the show’s plot structure. The critic mistakenly watched the first two episodes out of order. Morons.

*Said by Jimmy Chitwood at the end of Hoosiers (1986).

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