dual personalities

Good Monday morning, friends. Daughter #1 here as my mother is traveling back from Maryland today. Early report indicate a wonderful time was had by all. Prayers for a smooth trip back to St. Louis today!

As it is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and I’m writing this on Sunday, the day when many churches dig into the hymnal to find something appropriate to sing, I thought I’d share the words to “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” It always used to make me cringe listening to Episcopalians sing this hymn once or twice a year. And it never helped that it is not an easy one to sing.

The poem was originally written in 1900 for the 91st anniversary of President Lincoln’s birthday by James Weldon Johnson and set to music by his brother. According to Wikipedia, the hymn is a prayer of thanksgiving for faithfulness and freedom, with imagery evoking the biblical Exodus from slavery to the freedom of the “promised land.” It is featured in 39 different Christian hymnals, and is sung in churches across North America.

Lift every voice and sing,
’Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on ’til victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers died.
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
’Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.

Some months ago, out of the blue, I received an email from an English writer researching a book about Harry Phelan Gibb, an artist who worked in Paris during the early decades of the 20^th century. In the course of his research my emailer had discovered that our grandparents, Arthur and Mira Chamberlin, had sublet Gibb’s apartment for a few months in 1921. This fact did not come as a great surprise, since we already knew that our grandparents were abroad at that time. Apparently, Gibb’s apartment proved uninhabitable due to an infestation of bedbugs, so Arthur packed up his pregnant wife and moved her to healthier digs in London, where our father was born a few months later. According to an announcement in the Burlington Free Press, Arthur was working as a correspondent for the “London Morning Express” at the time.

Out of curiosity, I looked up Harry Phelan Gibb (1870-1948) and discovered a perfectly competent English artist, who started out painting pleasing landscapes,

but then fell under the spell of Cézanne and began producing less conventional, post-impressionist paintings.

Unable to find a unique style of his own, Gibb never quite made it in the art world, although Gertrude Stein remained a staunch supporter and friend throughout his adult life. Like many struggling artists, he avoided financial ruin by taking on students. Not long after I received the above-mentioned email, I told my son James about Gibb and his studio, and since he (James) was bored out of his mind working from home due to Covid, he decided to look into the group.

One of Gibb’s students, a Canadian artist named Emily Carr, struck James as particularly interesting. Born and raised in British Columbia, Carr is known for her paintings of indigenous subjects and for the fact that she managed to go to Europe to study art at a time when few young women enjoyed such freedom. She spent 1910 studying in France, and at least some of that time with Phelan Gibb. Here is a photo of her from that period.

You can see a couple of the works she painted in France here. Carr studied with Gibbs only briefly and it seems that she developed her own independent style rather more successfully than he did. I like this painting called Indian Church, don’t you?

All of this brings me to my main point. Imagine my pleasure when I discovered this marvelous article about Emily Carr while exploring a favorite blog, At Sunnyside, whose author is a frequent visitor to this site!

Let us review the chain of relationships. A stranger’s email revealed a connection between our grandparents and an English artist, Phelan Gibb, who lived in Paris. Research into Gibb inspired my son to look into one of Gibb’s students, Emily Carr, and then we discovered Sunnyside’s post about the very same Emily Carr. As anyone can see, it IS a small world and we are all connected in unexpected and wonderful ways – sometimes by a shared past and sometimes by our present interests. We converge through art and literature, people and events. Laugh and call it coincidence if you must; I call it the steady hand of Providence.

*William James

This weekend, I took a brisk walk to the new pedestrian bridge near the Capitol that takes visitors over the train tracks to a new park right on the riverfront. It was about 15 degrees in the sun, but I had on my big puffy coat with the faux-fur trimmed hood, so I was toasty(ish).

There are trails for walking and although it is not a terribly scenic time to visit the river’s edge, I am looking forward to Spring days when I can escape the office in the afternoon for a little sunshine.

The new bridge/park provides a fresh perspective on the river in Jefferson City. Before this, you could really only view it from a high bluff and with the train tracks directly below.

I love when there are chunky pieces of ice in the river. Somehow, ice flowing down the river doesn’t seem real to me. Like, it might happen in a fantasy book or a cartoon, but not real life. Last year, five miles upstream, there was a giant ice jam that caused water levels to drop on the Missouri River. Nature is wild.

So, while I’m not technically up in the land of the ice and snow like the blog post title indicates, we’ve at least got the vibe.

The holiday festivities are well and truly over, and we have returned to reality. Poor James threw his back out on Tuesday and has been confined to his bed and forced to survive on chocolate and ibuprofen ever since. I had my booster shot yesterday, so we’re taking things slowly around here and finding ways to cheer ourselves up. So far, we’ve come up with two foolproof solutions to the January doldrums.

First, play with your Christmas presents. My BFF gave me this wonderful Leo Messi action figure that really kicks the ball! Just pull back the plastic tab on his left foot and wham-o, you score!

If your Christmas presents didn’t include such a gift, you can always watch Messi on Youtube. We agree that there is something mysteriously uplifting about watching him play. Start 2:06 into the video and you’ll see.

Second, go find a Yul Brynner movie you haven’t seen yet and settle down to watch. I guarantee you won’t regret it. Last night James and I enjoyed The Double Man, a 1967 classic in which master spy, Dan Slater (Yul), travels to Austria to investigate his son’s death in a skiing accident. Here he is on the cable lift questioning Gina Ericson (Britt Ekland), one of the last people to see the boy alive, and he will stop at nothing to get answers…

We like his Tyrolian hat, but later he switches to a balaclava. Is there a pandemic?

No, there are TWO Dan Slaters! Which is the real one? It’s a Russian plot!

This movie has everything: a jaunty 1960s soundtrack, some enthusiastic oompa-band-led night skiing, glamorous parties, Russian bad guys, and a couple of good chases. Of course, none of that would matter without Yul’s feline walk and gravely voice. He owns every scene.

There. Doesn’t reading about it make you feel cheerier? Think what watching Yul will do for your mood and have a great weekend!

Well, good Wednesday morning. It is Daughter #1 back again after a two-week break. I know my last post had no pictures and left some readers concerned about my mental state. But, never fear. I’ve been back at work two-days and already quoted in the paper once in an article where it was necessary to use my full name and title and that of the other five spokespeople who all replied with slight variations on the word “no.” Gotta hit that word count.

Nevertheless, I persist.

The big news in my neck of the woods is that I bought a new car! Yes, I know it’s the worst possible time to buy a new car but I’d been thinking about it for awhile. Plus, when my old car was damaged in the severe weather several weeks ago, I was curious about if the trade in price would be way less than the value or just the value less the amount of the damage. Turns out, the value was just fine. The dealer had the exact model and color I wanted (out of the two cars on the lot) and it felt like providence. I’m very happy and feel much more secure on the highway in my small SUV than I did in my zoom zoom car.

It looks much bigger from this angle, but she’s real cute.

In other big news, while home over the break, I started reading the Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett and I must admit, I can’t put the first book down. Some of you may recall from prior posts that I’ve had trouble reading for the past two years. My mother and I were talking about how little we read in 2021 and I jokingly suggested my list was like four books…and then it was like four books. So, it is wonderful to be reading again. This book is full of subtlety and has many characters plus it takes place in 16th century Scotland, so, it’s light reading. Just kidding. It is not an easy read–but it is really enjoyable.

One of my goals for the year is to take my mushy brain and make it rock hard again. (Seriously, if you haven’t been clicking the hyperlinks in my posts, you’re really missing out).

I’ll wrap this up with some funny things from the internet to get you ready to face the day.