dual personalities

Month: January, 2019

January 31, 2019

What are you reading?

by chuckofish

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I read a lot and I am always looking for something new/old to read. Right now I am reading A Light in August by William Faulkner, which I have never read before. We’ll see how far I get.

Here are a few things to read from around the internet:

From the gee-no-kidding department.

This was interesting!

Here’s a picture of John Wayne and his daughter Aissa on the set of Hatari! (1962). He loved to have his kids with him on set/location. Sometimes they even had a little part in the film. She looks just like him.

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And this was a good thought from Conan O’Brien:

I had a great conversation with Albert Brooks once. When I met him for the first time, I was kind of stammering. I said, you make movies, they live on forever. I just do these late-night shows, they get lost, they’re never seen again and who cares? And he looked at me and he said, [Albert Brooks voice] “What are you talking about? None of it matters.” None of it matters? “No, that’s the secret. In 1940, people said Clark Gable is the face of the 20th Century. Who [expletive] thinks about Clark Gable? It doesn’t matter. You’ll be forgotten. I’ll be forgotten. We’ll all be forgotten.” It’s so funny because you’d think that would depress me. I was walking on air after that.

Stay humble.

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Enjoy your Thursday. Friday is just around the corner!

9 Comments
January 30, 2019

Polite infants or manners are important

by chuckofish

Today is the birthday of Frank Gelett Burgess (January 30, 1866 – September 18, 1951) who was an artist, art critic, poet, author and humorist.

I know Gelett Burgess mainly for Goops and How to Be Them, which was a book we loved as children. My children, in turn, loved it.

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The Goops books were originally published between 1900 and 1950. The characters debuted, conceptually, in the illustrations of Burgess’ publication The Lark, in the late 19th century. The Goops also appeared in panels in the popular monthly children’s publication St. Nicholas, as early as 1898.

We knew this poem by heart:

The Goops, they lick their fingers,

and the Goops, they lick their knives;

They spill their broth on the tablecloth,

Oh, they lead disgusting lives!

We loved to emphasize the word disgusting. In fact I recited it to the wee babes only last weekend! (Yes, even they can act like goops at the table.)

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Since the publication in 1900 of the original Goops book, Goops and How to Be Them, the series has come to be seen as the “quintessential series on teaching children the importance of manners and polite behavior.”

When you are playing with the girls,

you must not pull their pretty curls;

if you are gentle when you play,

you will be glad of it some day!

“Politically incorrect,” but correct nonetheless.

Can you spot the goop in this picture taken at Lottie’s preschool?

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Join me in toasting old Gelett Burgess tonight! But watch your manners!

TIDINESS

Little scraps of paper,

Little crumbs of food,

Make a room untidy,

Everywhere they’re, strewed.

Do you sharpen pencils,

Ever, on the floor?

What becomes of orange- peels

And your apple-core?

Can you blame your mother

If she looks severe.

When she says, “It looks to me

As if the Goops were here”?

Indeed, who can blame your mother when she looks severe?

4 Comments
January 29, 2019

“Blow, blow, thou winter wind”*

by chuckofish

Well, it is getting very cold here in flyover country. Not surprising, since it is January. But you know, people like to get panicky about weather.

Screen Shot 2019-01-28 at 5.41.32 PM.pngI must say, it is the kind of weather that makes one want to curl up on the couch and read a good book or watch a good movie.

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“To enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more. For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich. For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal.”

–Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

Oh, Mr. Melville, you are the best.

*William Shakespeare

The painting is by Mary Cassatt

5 Comments
January 28, 2019

“Strive for the greater gifts”*

by chuckofish

My weekend did not turn out as planned due to my ungainly fall outside an estate sale on Saturday morning. I was okay, just shaken up a bit, but I went home and stayed home.  I was grateful not to have broken anything, but falling makes one feel old and clumsy. It wasn’t even ice that tripped me up, but an uneven brick walk. C’est la vie.

At home I iced my knee, and worked in my office. I also got out my copy of Eudora Welty’s Collected Stories and read several, including “A Worn Path,” which was referenced in a story I linked to in a post last week.

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Old Eudora is so good and I encourage you to revisit her oeuvre.

The OM and I watched Scottish movies: Dear Frankie, Whisky Galore! and Tunes of Glory. As it turned out, Brigadoon (1954) was on TCM, but I only saw the last 20 minutes. (That was enough.)

I went to the annual meeting at church–

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and stayed for the cake after church. (Those are cupcakes surrounding the cake–not a terribly appetizing display.)

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Then I went home and wrote some notes and mailed some photos to my daughters. (I still believe in snail mail.)

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A 90+ year-old lady at work frequently exhorts me to have copies of photos printed and not just keep everything on my phone. Periodically I do that and I bring them in to show her. She is right, of course.

The wee babes and their parents came over per usual for Sunday night tacos.

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And Lottie found all the bunnies (Dedham pottery)–so many bunnies!

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Back to the salt mine today, limping but ready to go.

*I Cor. 12:31

7 Comments
January 26, 2019

“Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind.”*

by chuckofish

A couple of weeks ago my cousin Stephen sent me a marquetry plaque that once hung in my grandfather Cameron’s office.

Here’s a detail:

We can’t be absolutely sure that Bunker made the plaque, but given his penchant for woodworking, it’s a logical conclusion. I did a little digging around and discovered that marquetry kits were quite popular in the 1950s and ’60s, which, coincidentally, is exactly when our grandfather got serious about his carpentry. A typical kit included the backing board, directions and pieces of all the different woods involved.

You’ll notice that all the wood needed cutting, piecing together, gluing down and finishing — not an easy process by any means. On the back of my grandgather’s plaque is a list of all the exotic woods used and their origins, a fact that further supports the kit idea.

I am delighted to have the plaque, whatever its origin, and I have put it up in my newly renovated back hall.

Notice the new stair-rail

It looks a little lost there on the wall at the moment, but I haven’t put the mudroom back together yet. The key holder is a pre-renovation leftover that they guys apparently painted around. Now I dare not move it for fear of wrecking the wallboard and paint work. A small cupboard, which awaits re-painting, goes in that corner by the door and I left room for more pictures. But you get the idea.

My grandfather was a tireless, painstaking craftsman. Alas, I have always tended toward being impatient and slap-dash, but I’m trying to improve. As I work I think of him and of my mother, who was also a perfectionist. The sideboard is almost ready to go into the kitchen.

I have one door to put on and new shelf-paper to put in and then we can move it. I let it sit all week so the paint could cure — does that count as patience? It turned out to be difficult to find the right brass handles, because they are single-post (one attaching screw, rather than the usual two), but I finally found something suitable online at Hardware of the Past, an online restorers supply. I wanted something simple and fairly plain, but that proved a challenge. I could not find the single post Hepplewhite style ones that had been on the cupboard. But I think these look pretty.

As for the kitchen, well, we languish in limbo like a ship stuck in the doldrums. In other words, we have heard nothing and no progress has been made, unless you count the marble-look contact paper that I applied to the plywood so that we could wipe it off more easily.

Someday, when we finally get real counters, they should look somewhat similar. We live in hope…

Have a jolly weekend!

 

*Johannes Brahms

5 Comments
January 25, 2019

Scots Wha Hae

by chuckofish

Today is the birthday of Robert Burns (January 25, 1759–July 21, 1796)–beloved Scottish poet and lyricist. There are memorials to Burns all over the world: Scotland, England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, America…

…from Central Park…

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…to Cheyenne, Wyoming…

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…and even on the campus of my own flyover university where he was a favorite poet of many of the university trustees circa 1928. Artist Robert Aitken (1878–1949) completed the eight foot high bronze, which was ‘erected under the auspices of the Burns Club of St. Louis by admirers of Robert Burns and his genius’.

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Speaking of which, in 2004 the Robert Burns World Federation had 400 clubs affiliated to it and these reflected a membership of approximately 60,000. Burns Clubs exist throughout the world “to encourage and cherish the memory of Robert Burns, to foster a love of his writings and generally to encourage an interest in the Scots Language and Literature.” (Wikipedia)

Well, even Bob Dylan has named Burns as his greatest inspiration. And I did not know that Michael Jackson’s good friend, David Gest, theorized that “the King of Pop’s influential Thriller video was inspired by Burns’ poem Tam O’ Shanter, which tells the story of a drunk who passes a graveyard and witnesses witches, zombies and demons dancing to the tunes of the devil on bagpipes.”

So tonight we’ll toast the great Scot, maybe even with a dram of Scotch. Of course, we’ll have to watch something appropriate…

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Whisky Galore! (1949)

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Greyfriars Bobby (1961)

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Local Hero (1983)

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Dear Frankie (2004)

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Tunes of Glory (1960)

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Chariots of Fire (1981)

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I Know Where I’m Going (1945)

These are all great movies! And there are many more besides…This could be a weekend endeavor!

From Scenes like these, old SCOTIA’S grandeur springs,

That makes her lov’d at home, rever’d abroad:

Princes and lords are but the breath of kings,

‘An honest man’s the noble work of GOD.’

Have a great weekend!

8 Comments
January 24, 2019

Guiding light

by chuckofish

How about a little Mumford & Sons to get you started this morning?

I meant to mention earlier that Mary Oliver, the poet, died last week. Known for her “secular psalms,” she has been dubbed by some “the unofficial poet laureate” of the Unitarian Universalist denomination. Well, then. I liked her anyway.

Song of the Builders

On a summer morning
I sat down
on a hillside
to think about God –
a worthy pastime.
Near me, I saw
a single cricket;
it was moving the grains of the hillside
this way and that way.
How great was its energy,
how humble its effort.
Let us hope
it will always be like this,
each of us going on
in our inexplicable ways
building the universe.

You can read about her here and here.

I will also note that on this day in 1848 James W. Marshall found gold at Sutter’s Mill near Sacramento. Our great-great-great grandfather, Silas Hough, went west the following year to seek his fortune, but died of cholera just east of the Rocky Mountains.

Screen Shot 2019-01-23 at 12.27.49 PM.pngHis 16-year old son, our great-great grandfather John Simpson Hough who had accompanied him, went home to Philadelphia. He didn’t stay long though. He had seen the Rocky Mountains and there was no holding him back.

And, hey, this was an interesting interview. (I had never heard of this book. I may have to read it.)

When people talk about poverty, there are different kinds. There is a poverty of status in our country where you have all the food and water you need but you think other people are doing better all around you. You can also have a poverty of control. You feel you can’t choose how you spend your day, when to get up. We don’t talk about those kinds of poverty a lot.

Food for thought.

(The painting is Sunrise on the Mountains at the Head of Moraine Park, Near Estes Park, about 1920, by Charles Partridge Adams, CU Art Museum, University of Colorado Boulder

4 Comments
January 23, 2019

Small world department

by chuckofish

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This made me laugh.

The boy and daughter #1 are training to run in a half marathon in April. I salute them. I would be happy to be able to walk a half marathon, but it ain’t gonna happen. (My achilles tendons have not recovered as it is from my trip to Israel.) Well, I ride my stationery bike every morning for half an hour–the best I can do–while listening to my favorite Calvinists discuss scripture on Youtube. The half hour flies by!

One result of this foray into the evangelical world is that I discovered what became of a girl who was in the class above me at school growing up. I happened to be reading about Wheaton College in Illinois one day when I found out that one of its Presidents had the same last name as this girl.  I recalled that she (and her older sister) went to Wheaton. (Wheaton was not a college many people from my school went to, so I remembered.) They were a very religious family and their lovely daughters were always impeccably groomed and conservatively dressed. (Remember: this was the 1970s!) They were not concerned with being cool like the rest of us, but went about their business in a focused and serious way. Hmmm, I thought, I wonder if her grandfather had been the President? As it turned out, he was. (The libraries at both Wheaton College and Covenant Theological Seminary bear his name.)

This girl went on with her education and received a PhD in English literature from Vanderbilt. She is now an author and speaker who has taught literature, directed women’s Bible studies, and “loves working with women in studying the Scriptures.” She directed The Gospel Coalition’s women’s initiatives from 2010 to 2017. She is not just riding her stationery bike and listening to panels with the likes of R.C. Sproul and John Piper. She is on the panel with them!

It is a small world, n’est-ce pas? You can read one of her articles here.

Have a good day!

4 Comments
January 22, 2019

On a wing and a prayer

by chuckofish

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Recently I received the Williams College alumni  magazine, the one that just has all the class notes. I admit, I look at the obits first. I like to read about the old guys, class of 1939 and on…the WWII vets.

This one caught my eye:

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Imagine being a decorated dive bomber pilot in the war, coming home and settling in to a career in advertising! Talk about switching gears. Plus, I remember Wrestling at the Chase! We thought it was hilarious. Well, it sounds like he had a good long life, 100 years wittily re-writing song lyrics and all.

So did this guy, class of 1948:

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How great is it that he became a volunteer deputy sheriff in NC after retiring?. Also, he was from Worcester. I wonder if my mother knew him?

I love these WWII veterans–truly we will not see their like again. They worked hard, they supported their church and civic groups and charities…They had lived through the war–as dive bomber pilots–and had learned something. They had lost friends and knew they were lucky to be alive.

Maybe they knew what life is really all about: “He enjoyed a good burger, a good book, a glass of wine and a fire in the fireplace.” (A member of the class of 1950 recalled about a classmate.)

Let’s all take a moment.

Into paradise may the angels lead thee and at thy coming may the martyrs receive thee, and bring thee into the holy city Jerusalem. (BCP, Burial of the Dead, Rite I)

3 Comments
January 21, 2019

“Cheerful in God, arise and shine…

by chuckofish

…while rays divine stream all around.”*

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Daughter #1 found a few pictures on her phone from Christmas that I had not seen and I had to share this one. Those little faces–especially the little guy in the bow tie on the left– are sure to make you smile, right?

How was your weekend? We had fun celebrating other people’s birthdays.

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We drank Prosecco and listened to show tunes on the record player. We are such hipsters.

We unearthed some more toys in the basement and cleaned them up.

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I put the blocks away for a later date. I’m not sure the wee laddie is quite ready for them and we do not need to provide him with more missiles than he already has.

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I read a lot in this book which I bought for a dollar at an estate sale a few weeks ago.

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It is a children’s book from 1944, which tells the history of the world between the years 1809 to 1865, cleverly intertwining the stories. It is a book about people: Simon Bolivar, Napoleon, Queen Victoria, Benito Jaurez, Daniel Boone, Li Hung Chang, Buffalo Bill…which is the way I like history taught. I have enjoyed it a lot, especially the bits about Ulysses S. Grant.

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Anyway, if you ever run across this book at an estate sale or used bookstore, pick it up! pick it up!

It snowed some more (but not on the day predicted). We thought we had dodged it, but no. Why do we ever listen to the meteorologists? Everyone still came over for dinner on Sunday night and we had tortellini.

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And today is a day off!

*Philip Doddridge, hymn #543

4 Comments