dual personalities

We all look for things to divert us from our cares, but after a while it can be difficult to find anything new to watch (of books the number is infinite). I am pleased to say that this week I have TWO viewing recommendations, one on Amazon and the other on Netflix. Let’s start with Amazon. This one is not free but it didn’t cost much and it was worth it. It is the 2017 German-French (?) miniseries called Maximilian and Marie de Bourgogne. The story of Maximilian, son of the Holy Roman Emperor, and the Duchess of Burgundy takes place in the 1470s. After Charles the Bold is killed in battle, his daughter Marie inherits the Duchy, but without a husband to fight for her, struggles to stay independent of France. Meanwhile, Maximilian of Austria, frustrated at his father’s passivity, seeks action. In this photo, Maximilian has just won a duel and is plotting to save his 12 year old sister from being married off to the king of Hungary who is nearly four times her age. It was a hard world for female royals — well, for everyone.

It is worth watching just for the production values. Like the miniseries Wolf Hall, Maximilian is all shot on location and in natural light. I cannot vouch for its historical accuracy, since I am unfamiliar with this period, but it sure is nice to watch and the tone feels right. The main characters all face difficult challenges, so they are serious and not given to flights of emotion. The Duchess is in a terrible position, but she does not weep and wring her hands; she thinks and does what she needs to do.

Try this. You won’t regret it.

Last night I watched another historical drama, Netflix’s just released The Dig, a wonderful film about the excavation of the Sutton Hoo ship burial in Suffolk on the eve of WWII. Ralph Fiennes stars as Basil Brown, the local amateur archaeologist hired by Mrs. Pretty (Carey Mulligan) to find out what is in the barrow on her property. Both Fiennes and Mulligan deliver excellent performances. The little boy who plays Mulligan’s son is noteworthy as well. Here’s the preview:

Although the Ipswich and British Museums compete (gently) to become custodians of the treasure, the only real conflict takes place internally, as each character deals with the vicissitudes of life. This is a very British film; everyone is flawlessly polite, secrets are known but not acknowledged, and kindness prevails. We can forgive the director for modeling the onset of the war scenes on those in The King’s Speech and for being scrupulously secular. That the underlying philosophy is more Anglo-Saxon than Christian is no accident and perfectly fits the Sutton Hoo context. More a meditation on time and mortality than a treasure hunt, The Dig reminds us that life is fleeting and fragile, and we should make the most of it while we can. It’s a sad movie that emphasizes the importance of history and recognizing that we belong to an unbroken chain of human endeavor. If you think about it, the title of this post might as well refer to the whole earth as to any specially designated corner of it. Fight and compete though we must, we are all humans and will one day meet the same end. The only thing we can hope to control is what we do with the time we have.

Take heart. There are good movies/shows out there. You just have to keep looking. And if you come up short, read a book!

P.S. I put the subtitles on for The Dig — sometimes those local English accents are a little hard to process and as I get older I like to use subtitles as back-up.

*Basil Brown in The Dig.

Katie has been doing lots of cheeping and chirping lately. She had a full on conversation with her mamu on FaceTime, exchanging “Ahh!” and “Ehh!” back and forth. She finds it very amusing when we “talk” to her.

What do you think she is saying?

Lately, I’ve been watching some classic episodes of Designing Women.

And I’m still reading No. 1 Detective Agency.

“She had a taste for sugar, however, and this meant that a doughnut or a cake might follow the sandwich. She was a traditionally built lady, after all, and she did not have to worry about dress size, unlike those poor neurotic people who were always looking in mirrors and thinking that they were too big. What was too big, anyway? Who was to tell another person what size they should be? It was a form of dictatorship, by the thin, and she was not having any of it.”

Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“Mma Ramotswe looked at the woman in front of her. As the newspaper photographs had suggested, she was traditionally built about the face, but also everywhere else, and her dress was straining at the sides. She should move up a size or two, thought Mma Ramotswe, and then those panels on the side would not look as if they were about to rip. There really was no point in fighting these things: it is far better to admit one’s size and indeed there is even a case for buying a slightly larger size. That gives more room for manoeuvre.”

Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

And then this is what my day-by-day Peanuts calendar had yesterday.

What is the universe telling me? I know when I’ve been insulted.

My dual personality’s wonderful post yesterday got me thinking. She’s right about the senseless self-help drivel the internet spews at us these days. Aside from the general inanity, the underlying logic is faulty, for it assumes that the natural human state is happiness and that if we aren’t happy then we need fixing. Bunk. Life is a struggle. Get working.

Remember when people just got on with things and didn’t sit around worrying about their emotional state? They might look at one another with sympathy but they didn’t stop functioning just because life was hard. Let’s consider, for example, the days when the Texans had to deal with the double-whammy of invading Mexicans and the most threatening of all Native American tribes, the Comanche.

In the 1830s and 40s the Comanches reached the peak of their power on the Great Plains. People feared them for good reason. They made quick, ruthless raids and slaughtered everyone — Indian, Mexican and U.S settler alike — except for the occasional woman or child that they adopted into the band. It is worth noting that the conflict was not an exclusively Anglo vs. Indian fight; various different tribes, including Apaches and Tonkawas, allied with the Texans against the Comanches. Nevertheless, when the Texas Rangers formed to deal with the threat, they were woefully unprepared. Single shot, black-powder guns were no match against mounted bowmen who could deliver dozens of arrows accurately while the dismounted Rangers struggled to reload. The Rangers suffered 50% casualties in the early years.

Enter John Coffee Hays. Born in Little Cedar Lick, Tennessee on January 28, 1817, Hays moved down to Texas in 1837. Within three years, at the age of 23, he became captain of the San Antonio Rangers, and soon after he transformed them into a formidable fighting force.

First, he studied and then adopted Comanche tactics. He enacted elaborate drills to train his men to fight on horseback, to track and move like the Comanches, and to take the offensive. Having studied the Comanches’ behavior, he realized that they were predictable and superstitious. If he killed their war leader, they would scatter. The tactic proved extremely effective. He also adopted the new Colt Paterson revolver.

His success with the weapon saved Colt from bankruptcy and leveled the playing field with the Comanches. A good example of both the gun’s advantages and Hays’s ability as a leader is the Battle of Walker Creek. Read the whole thing.

In short, Hays was an excellent leader and a very smart man. He did not sit still wringing his hands or waiting for someone else to solve his problems; he paid attention to his surroundings, studied his enemies and came up with a solution. Moreover, he led by example and from the front. As S. C. Gwynne summed up his character, “What Hays did appeared to be unbelievably brave to men who did not have his ability to calculate odds; he was also, it must be said, unbelievably brave.”

I cannot do Hays justice in a short post, but if you are interested, there is much more about him around the internet and in actual books. We can learn a lot from such indomitable and resilient characters. And, of course, there’s nothing like studying the past to put our present woes (such as they are) into perspective.

If I’m ever allowed to leave New York again, I’d like to visit Texas!

Congratulations on making it to Thursday, our almost-Friday designated dose of darling. Katie continues to be sweeter than ever. I amuse myself by continuing to plan my wardrobe around hers:

Katie has mixed feelings about this development.

Aside from sartorial happenings, we have mostly been continuing to enjoy the fun that sitting up affords.

And, while we must bundle up to do so, going for walks.

We have also been reading lots: Where the Wild Things Are is a new (classic) favorite. A couple of times, I have read some poetry aloud to Katie, mostly because I have felt like it for myself. I pulled out Leaves of Grass this week and will give my routine reminder that Whitman will seriously cures what ails you.

What will be, will be well—for what is, is well,
To take interest is well, and not to take interest shall be well.

The sky continues beautiful,
The pleasure of men with women shall never be sated, nor the pleasure of
women with men, nor the pleasure from poems,
The domestic joys, the daily housework or business, the building of    
houses—these are not phantasms—they have weight, form,
location;
Farms, profits, crops, markets, wages, government, are none of them
phantasms,
The difference between sin and goodness is no delusion,
The earth is not an echo—man and his life, and all the things of    
his life, are well-consider’d.

You are not thrown to the winds—you gather certainly and safely    
around yourself;
Yourself! Yourself! Yourself, forever and ever!

Walt Whitman, “To Think of Time”

Happy Wednesday, readers. It feels like a Tuesday. I had a restful long weekend. I did such things as drive all the way to the Midway Antique Mall only to arrive and fall victim to the Apple Weather App’s errant weather reporting. I drove all the way back to Jefferson City only to find zero sleet and/or precipitation of any kind. Thus, I hauled it to Home Goods where I bought some bins and finally organized those drawers I’ve been talking about since March.

I also watched The Birds. I got a five disc Hitchcock DVD set for Christmas and I’ve been enjoying watching the classics I haven’t seen in ages. I will admit that I had forgotten what a drip Tippi Hedren is at the end of the movie–but up until the point that she [SPOILER ALERT] goes upstairs alone to see what that sound of flapping wings is and then enters a room and falls in front of the door, blocking access, while being attacked by birds–I enjoyed it. I related to this guy:

I also watched The Rewrite on Hulu. This is one of those movies that has a cool Hollywood cast (and Hugh Grant playing all Hugh Grant characters) but does anyone remember this coming out? Of the script, Grant said:

“I love Marc’s stuff, and [‘The Rewrite’] made me laugh .[I wasn’t interested] in the sort of marketed, Hallmark, ‘Valentine’s Day’ sense — I find that repugnant. Here, the romantic comedy part of it is only a small part; it’s about this broken guy who mends himself.”

In the movie, Grant plays an Oscar-winning screenwriter who hasn’t had a hit in years who takes a teaching job at Binghampton College in New York. Naturally, he overcomes his shallow LA ways and learns to love teaching and falls for the single mom in his class (but remember, this isn’t a Hallmark movie, that’s repugnant). This movie was supremely average. And unmarketed, apparently.

After watching The Birds, I wanted to read the short story which I last read in Mrs. Copley’s ninth grade English class. I remembered it being much creepier than the movie. So, I opened my phone, pulled up the Amazon app and ordered a book of Daphne du Maurier short stories. It magically arrived in my mailbox a day and a half later. My memory was accurate about the creepy-factor–and I’m enjoying the other stories as well. I’ve also been reading some No.1 Ladies Detective Agency which is good for the soul.

“Though for Mma. Potsane, the landscape, even if dimply glimpsed, was rich in associations. Her eyes squeezed shut, she peered out of the van, pointing out the place where they had found a stray donkey years before, and there, by that rock, that was where a cow had died for no apparent reason. These were the intimate memories that made the land alive–that bound people to a stretch of baked earth, as valuable to them, and as beautiful, as if it were covered with sweet grass.”

Alexander McCall Smith, “Tears of the Giraffe”

I will leave you with this Frasier clip because a) it inspired the title and b) it made me lol.