While the rest of us have been adjusting to the inevitable sadness of the holidays concluding, Katie has been seriously moving and grooving. She now sits up unassisted for long periods of time, rolls back and forth across the floor (often in pursuit of toys), and wiggles like mad on her tummy. All of this is supremely adorable.
Now that she can topple her own toy bin, I’ve added “baby proof the bar cart” to my to-do list.
Larry Bird doesn’t do as much ball-handling in one night as you do in an hour!
In other news, she has added bananas and broccoli to her dietary repertoire.
Clearly, she wasn’t sure how that would go, but she’s been devouring the bright green purée for several days in a row now, so she must take after her father in her taste for cruciferous vegetables. More power to you, honey!
Finally, Katie’s biggest development — just in time for us to return to work — is that she consolidated her naps! She has a morning nap and an afternoon nap and a nice long evening wake window with her mom and dad after they close their laptops. It’s really lovely, and I truly do appreciate every day that I get to stay home with her, nutball that she can be.
Well, here we are in 2021. Everyone seems to be trying real hard to convince themselves things are going to get better. I am less optimistic. Nevertheless, I continue onward.
I don’t know about you, I joke about my brain becoming mush, but sometimes I worry it really is. I barely read a word over my Christmas break. I mean, I’d think about opening a book and then be like NAH. The only thing I was able to read was Swan Lake by Mark Helperin. It’s a children’s book, so roughly my 2020 reading level.
It was the kind of writing that feels poetic, almost rhythmic, while still being prose. I don’t know, I enjoyed it.
“Perhaps you have felt the presence of such places when, in a darkened concert hall, the music makes the moon rise, perfectly fresh and bright, as if the roof has opened up above you, or when the trees shudder in a sudden wind and the sun unexpectedly lights the undersides of their rustling leaves. They do exist, although they are so hard to find that it is tempting to believe they are illusions. But all places cannot be exactly the same. Some are slightly better than others; some are much better; some are vastly better. Were the world uniform, you not be able to distinguish a pin from a needle. But you can, of course. And what about a pin and a hippopotamus? And that is just the beginning. As for those who would deny the existence of forests hidden in a crown of mountains, of sheltered places, of charged landscapes that can put together broken hearts, or at least keep them from shattering into pieces, ask them about hippopotamuses and pins.”
Swan Lake, Mark Helperin
This passage reminded me of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when the narrator is describing the house with its many rooms and hallways. The writing itself reminded me of Amor Towles. It was refreshing.
This passage also struck me as a good reminder of why we are all different and why that is a good thing. It is also a good reminder that there is beauty in the world–even if we are becoming conditioned only to find flaws.
The next time I’m home I’ll have to dust off the other two books in the trilogy. For now, I’m going to attempt reading Winter’s Tale, an actual chapter book for adults. I’ll report back.
*It is probably useful to ask oneself this question at the start of a new year, right?
How was your first Monday of 2021? I was back to work and Zoom classes, and my day included a fair share of technical difficulties.
Ugh. It may take awhile to get our Zoom mojo back…
FYI Robert Duvall turns 90 today. As you recall, Duvall graduated from The Principia, a boarding school in my hometown. He also went to Principia College in Elsah, IL across the river. He still considers himself a Christian Scientist. We will toast him tonight and perhaps watch him as Ned Pepper, the murderous outlaw who fails to heed the “bold talk from a one-eyed fat man” (John Wayne) in True Grit (1969).
I have been out of the media loop for several weeks (and gladly so), but this made me laugh (and cringe). Love the Luther insults.
“Cringe-o-meter going off the charts on this one.”
Don’t forget that tomorrow is Epiphany, the twelfth day after Christmas, which begins the season of Epiphany. In Western Christianity, the feast commemorates the visit of the Magi to the Christ Child. Time to watch 3 Godfathers (1948)!
O GOD, who by the leading of a star didst manifest thy only-begotten Son to the Gentiles: Mercifully grant, that we, which know thee now by faith, may after this life have the fruition of thy glorious Godhead; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
BCP
I’m trying hard to stay positive and test negative and to love one another–hope you are too. Sparklers help.
P.S. This video, which shows takeoff and flight sequences of insects spanning 5 different taxonomic orders in slow motion, is wild. Hello, Katydids.
I am going to try to be a better, lest judgmental neighbor (see here) but it is hard. Case in point: Last week I noted that our neighbor had left the side door of her minivan wide open (dome light on) after returning from visiting grandparents over Christmas. I waited a few hours and, when the door was still open, texted her that she had left her minivan door open. She texted back, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t notice! Thank you so much!” Eight hours later the door was still open and it was dark. [Insert shrug emoji.]
Anyway, wish me luck. In the meantime daughter #1 and I worked very hard on New Year’s Day and the day after to put everything Christmas away. It is much easier and less depressing to do this with someone and I am grateful to have had help with this arduous task. We listened to show tunes and classic 70s rock and the hours flew by.
She delayed her drive back to mid-MO a day because of icy weather conditions and we organized the TV room and all the CDs and LPs which were in a state of serious disarray due to many dance parties and DJ sessions.
She even alphabetized the CDs! The boy stopped by after work on Saturday and helped take the extra leaf out of the dining room table and carry it down to the basement. We ate salsa and chips and had a round of margaritas. Thus endeth the 2020 cleaning up ritual. Oh, later that night we watched Rio Bravo (1959) which kicks off my end-of-the-holidays John Wayne marathon of sadness alleviation.
John Wayne and the often overlooked Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez
On a more serious note, here’s some Frederick Buechner to start the year off:
IF GOD SPEAKS anywhere, it is into our personal lives that he speaks. Someone we love dies, say. Some unforeseen act of kindness or cruelty touches the heart or makes the blood run cold. We fail a friend, or a friend fails us, and we are appalled at the capacity we all of us have for estranging the very people in our lives we need the most. Or maybe nothing extraordinary happens at all—just one day following another, helter-skelter, in the manner of days. We sleep and dream. We wake. We work. We remember and forget. We have fun and are depressed. And into the thick of it, or out of the thick of it, at moments of even the most humdrum of our days, God speaks. But what do I mean by saying that God speaks?
He speaks not just through the sounds we hear, of course, but through events in all their complexity and variety, through the harmonies and disharmonies and counterpoint of all that happens. As to the meaning of what he says, there are times that we are apt to think we know. Adolf Hitler dies a suicide in his bunker with the Third Reich going up in flames all around him, and what God is saying about the wages of sin seems clear enough. Or Albert Schweitzer renounces fame as a theologian and musician for a medical mission in Africa, where he ends up even more famous still as one of the great near-saints of Protestantism; and again we are tempted to see God’s meaning as clarity itself. But what is God saying through a good man’s suicide? What about the danger of the proclaimed saint’s becoming a kind of religious prima donna as proud of his own humility as a peacock of its tail? What about sin itself as a means of grace? What about grace, when misappropriated and misunderstood, becoming an occasion for sin? To try to express in even the most insightful and theologically sophisticated terms the meaning of what God speaks through the events of our lives is as precarious a business as to try to express the meaning of the sound of rain on the roof or the spectacle of the setting sun. But I choose to believe that he speaks nonetheless, and the reason that his words are impossible to capture in human language is of course that they are ultimately always incarnate words. They are words fleshed out in the everydayness no less than in the crises of our own experience.
–The Sacred Journey
Let’s all take a moment and think about the fact that God made you a human being and not a chair. Be a good one. Glorify God.
Winter has deposited a few inches of snow as if to say “get ready, I’m here now”. But it is pretty.
After a wonderful Christmas, my sweet, shaggy sons have returned to their homes and jobs.
The DH has returned to work with a will because his classes start on Monday, while I’ve been puttering, reading, listening to Christ Stapleton on repeat (thank you my darling DP!), and looking for something good to watch. Last night my search paid off and I found a good movie on Netflix. The Professor and the Madman stars Mel Gibson as James Murray, the founding editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, and Sean Penn as William Chester Minor, the American inmate at Broadmoor Insane Asylum who helped Murray and became his friend.
William Chester Minor
It’s quite a story. Having graduated from Yale Medical School, Minor served as a Union doctor during the Civil War, after which he developed paranoid delusions that someone was out to kill him. He traveled to England to escape, but once there his mental state deteriorated further until he mistook an innocent man for his imaginary assailant and killed him. Minor was committed to Broadmoor Asylum where he remained for over thirty years. When Murray asked the public to contribute words and quotes to the OED project, Minor devoted himself to the task, sending thousands of notes. The two became fast friends, and eventually Murray helped Minor return to the United States.
Murray (center) and OED staff
James Murray was also an interesting character. The son of a Scottish draper, Murray left school at 14 but continued his studies by himself, eventually concentrating on languages. According to Wikipedia (which apparently stole it nearly word for word from the film), “he claimed an ‘intimate acquaintance’ with Italian, French, Catalan, Spanish and Latin, and ‘to a lesser degree’ Portuguese, Vaudois, Provencal, & various dialects’. In addition, he was ‘tolerably familiar’ with Dutch, German and Danish. His studies of Anglo-Saxon and Mœso-Gothic had been ‘much closer’, he knew ‘a little of the Celtic’ and was at the time ‘engaged with the Slavonic, having obtained a useful knowledge of the Russian’. He had ‘sufficient knowledge of Hebrew and Syriac to read and cite the Old Testament and Peshito’ and to a lesser degree he knew Aramaic, Arabic, Coptic and Phoenician.” You can see how Murray would have gotten along with Minor — both were on the obssessive side.
The film was well shot, had an excellent script and was well-acted, although given a choice I would not have cast Mel Gibson as Murray. His fake Scottish accent brought back memories of Braveheart (shudder) and it was impossible to forget that one was watching Mel. To be fair, Mel, the impetus behind the film, is one of the only people in Hollywood who would take on such an offbeat project, and so his presence may be forgiven. Though I am not a fan, I thought Sean Penn did very well as Minor. That he was unrecognizable probably helped. The supporting cast, which included Ioan Gruffudd, Anthony Andrews, Jennifer Ehle and Eddie Marsan, did a wonderful job. If you are in the mood for an intelligent movie about the importance of words and the possibility of redemption, watch it. It has a good message and refers to everyone from Milton to Emily Dickenson. The movie introduced me to her poem:
“The Brain – is wider than the Sky – For – put them side by side – The one the other will contain With ease – and You – beside –
The Brain is deeper than the sea – For- hold them – Blue to Blue – The one the other will absorb – As Sponges – Buckets – do –
The Brain is just the weight of God – For – Heft them – Pound for Pound – And they will differ – if they do – As Syllable from Sound.”
Enjoy your weekend and fare forward into 2021 with a happy heart!
Well, happy new year! Much has been said about the terrible year 2020, but I am content to have lived through it. So onward and upward say I. Tally ho.
Here is the TCM Remembers video for 2020, noting the movie stars and directors who didn’t survive the year. There are a few surprises.
For instance, I did not know Stuart Whitman had died. It may be time to view The Comancheros (1961) again.
“Mon-sewer, words are what men live by… words they say and mean.”
Also, Harriet Frank Jr. died. She co-wrote a lot of good screenplays along with her husband Irving Ravetch, notably Hud (1963), Hombre (1967) and The Cowboys (1972). Check out the list to find some good movies to watch.
January may be the month to do a thorough investigation/viewing of the late Sean Connery’s oeuvre. I mean, who doesn’t love everyone’s favorite Scotsman who died this year at age 90? Granted, his type of sublime white masculinity is viewed by many as toxic these days, but whatever. Bah humbug. Come the apocalypse, I want to be on team Sean Connery.
(Not team Keanu Reeves/Stephan Colbert.)
Daughter #1 and I walked around Laumeier Sculpture Park yesterday morning. It was very cold.
Later the boy and his wee family came over for some New Year’s Eve fun. We ate a lot of chips ‘n dips and had a dance party and set off some fire crackers.
We watched Last Holiday (2006) starring our favorite, Queen Latifah, not to mention LL Cool J and Gerard Depardieu.
The OM, daughter #1 and I actually stayed up til midnight and then went outside (it was sleeting) and blew our party horns with the other rowdy neighbors. And today we start the new year–let’s count our blessings and make it a good one!
*Auld Lang Syne by Robert Burns
We twa hae run about the braes, and pou’d the gowans fine; But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit, sin’ auld lang syne.
dual personalities 