dual personalities

This weekend we are babysitting the wee twins twice! Lucky for me, daughter #1 is coming home to assist.

Did you see that the oldest Medal of Honor recipient died last week? He sounds like he was quite a guy. He reminds me of the sergeant in Glory for Me. “My first concern when I was a platoon sergeant was my men,” Charles Coolidge told the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. “I didn’t care what happened to me, but I wanted to protect my men, under any circumstances. I always referred to them as my men — not anybody [else’s], not the company’s. They were strictly my men, and I’d do anything for them.”

Here is an interesting article from the currrent issue of True West magazine, “The Santa Fe Trail Beckoned the Mosty Brothers.” Albert Mosty, it turns out, worked for our ancestor, rancher John Wesley Prowers! He kept a journal and illustrated it. Check it out! It includes this nice photo of JWP.

Here are Paul Zahl’s movie pics for April, Part II. In the small (Episcopal) world department, PZ mentions our old friend Fred Barbee, who baptized daughter #2 oh so many years ago. Fred, besides being a priest at our old church, was also the editor for many years of The Anglican Digest. I did not know that his favorite movie was One Foot in Heaven (1941)!

Here is a fun movie quiz: So you think you know the Oscars? Personally I don’t, because I haven’t watched the Oscars for years and I can’t answer questions after the 1990s. I am so old, I can remember when Bob Hope hosted them.

Today is the birthday of the great Henry Mancini (1924 – 1994). We will toast him tonight and play some of our cool Mancini LPs. What is a cocktail, after all, without a little Mancini?

Please note that yesterday was the anniversary of the death of Abraham Lincoln in 1865. So here in remembrance are the first three stanzas of When Lilacs First by the Dooryard Bloomed:

1
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.

2
O powerful western fallen star!
O shades of night—O moody, tearful night!
O great star disappear’d—O the black murk that hides the star!
O cruel hands that hold me powerless—O helpless soul of me!
O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.

3
In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings,
Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,
With every leaf a miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard,
With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig with its flower I break.

(Read the whole poem here.)

Have a good weekend. Take a walk around the neighborhood–the azaleas are blooming!

O God, whose Son Jesus is the good shepherd of thy people: Grant that when we hear his voice we may know him who calleth us each by name, and follow where he doth lead; who, with thee and the Holy Spirit, liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

-BCP