dual personalities

Month: September, 2022

September 30, 2022

That country where it is always late in the year*

by chuckofish

My car windows were all frosted up this morning and the drive to work was misty and cool. The leaves are just beginning to turn; Fall is here. I’m afraid the last couple weeks have passed by in a blur. The DH and I have been suffering from the dreaded lurgy (i.e. croaky voice, runny nose and cough — not Covid) and it has put a damper on our seasonal adventures. All I want to do is transport myself to a John Singer Sargent painting and languish on an autumn river.

Or sit wrapped up in muslin or silk and just stare into space.

I’d even be willing to shroud myself in a black mosquito net if it meant I could lie still for a while.

You’ll notice a theme here. It all looks so comfortable, so cozy and so, so quiet. Like Virginia Wolff, “I want someone to sit beside after the day’s pursuit and all its anguish, after its listening, and its waitings, and its suspicions. After quarrelling and reconciliation I need privacy – to be alone with you, to set this hubbub in order.” That is, in fact, what the DH and I do every evening, at least until I go into our family room to watch TV. We relax and attempt to recharge. I’m quite sure that’s what everyone else does too. Perhaps all we need is some time to look at JSS paintings of ladies reclining. What do you think?

Have a good weekend and good luck recharging!

*Ray Bradbury

6 Comments
September 29, 2022

I look deep down

by chuckofish

We all have our pensive moods.

And when we do, it’s a good thing to have our quote books at the ready…

“Oh, grassy glades! oh ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul; in ye,—though long parched by the dead drought of the earthly life,— in ye, men yet may roll, like young horses in new morning clover; and for some few fleeting moments, feel the cool dew of the life immortal on them. Would to God these blessed calms would last. But the mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm. There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause:— through infancy’s unconscious spell, boyhood’s thoughtless faith, adolescence’ doubt (the common doom), then skepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood’s pondering repose of If. But once gone through, we trace the round again; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally. Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling’s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.”

And the same day, too, gazing far down from his boat’s side into that same golden sea, Starbuck lowly murmured:–“Loveliness unfathomable, as ever lover saw in his young bride’s eye!–Tell me not of thy teeth-tiered sharks, and thy kidnapping cannibal ways. Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe.”

–Moby-Dick, Herman Melville

We can also go to YouTube and line up our favorite movie scenes. Recently I saw someone’s list of the five best speeches in film. You can imagine what was on it: Jack Nicholson In A Few Good Men, Mel Gibson in Braveheart, Russell Crowe in Gladiator and so on. Ho hum.

These are the five that came immediately to my mind:

Gregory Peck in Twelve O’Clock High…

Olivia de Havilland in The Adventures of Robin Hood…

John Wayne in The Searchers…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFnwksDZ0lM

Burl Ives in The Big Country…

Gene Hackman in Hoosiers…

Watch them all–they’re short. They’re like quotes from Moby-Dick. They whet your appetite for the whole great thing. And they remind you why you are on this journey in the first place.

For the victory of battle standeth not in the multitude of an host; but strength cometh from heaven.

–1 Maccabees 3:19

And here’s one more, for good measure. Leslie Howard in The Petrified Forest:

10 Comments
September 28, 2022

A few notables

by chuckofish

Well, happy Wednesday, readers. I do not have a lot this week–my mother already covered my exciting weekend adventure. On Sunday (thru Tuesday), I’ll be up in Columbia for the Unclaimed Property Auction. Not going to lie, I’m pretty excited to see this.

Check out what passes for a clever headline in the capital city newspaper. I mean, talk about a news flash. Sometimes, I really think I am becoming the facepalm emoji.

In other exciting news, check out the fog over the river I spotted this morning on the way to work.

I am also on the hunt for cute Christmas fabric to make a dress for sweet Katiebelle. I’ve hit the minimal options in Jefferson City and have been pretty uninspired.

Cute, but not the right vibe.

Finally, I finished John Adams, and I’ve moved on to reading about Theodore Roosevelt’s childhood. McCullough makes the case that Adams was one of the most important figures in early American history but who doesn’t get much credit for everything he did. His critics painted him as vain and emotional and that’s how history has remembered him. As an old man, in a letter to his son John Quincy, Adams wrote, “Rejoice always in all events, be thankful always for all things is a hard precept for human nature, and in my religion a perfect duty.” He wasn’t wrong. A good reminder for the middle of the week.

3 Comments
September 27, 2022

Oh, here I am ‘neath the blue, blue sky a-doin’ as I please!

by chuckofish

Last week I read Anne Tyler’s latest book. It was quick and easy and not very thought-provoking. Her books are all the same now–about some average white, middle class family whose members don’t seem to get along but who are remotely devoted to one another. Her characters inhabit a godless universe where no one really seems to care much about anything. But come to think of it, maybe that is the depressing world that most people live in today. To me it feels alien and empty.

Daughter #1 returned my copy of The Lincoln Highway, because it is the next book to be discussed in my church women’s book club. I will have to re-read/skim it because, although I read it last fall, I forget books as fast as I read them.

My DP mentioned on Friday that Hilary Mantel had died. This was, indeed, sad, but not surprising, news. She had been sick for a long time and wrote those three last great novels despite being very ill. She was a brave soul who had something to say.

As the word of God spreads, the people’s eyes are opened to new truths. Until now…they knew Noah and the Flood, but not St. Paul. They could count over the sorrows of our Blessed Mother, and say how the damned are carried down to Hell. But they did not know the manifold miracles and sayings of Christ, nor the words and deeds of the apostles, simple men who, like the poor of London, pursued simple wordless trades. The story is much bigger than they ever thought it was….you cannot tell people just part of the tale and then stop, or just tell them the parts you choose. They have seen their religion painted on the walls of churches, or carved in stone, but now God’s pen is poised, and he is ready to write his words in the books of their hearts.

–Wolf Hall

The great thing about Hilary Mantel is that she did not think religion in the sixteenth was just a tool used to wield power by kings and popes and countries. She understood that it really meant something to people like Thomas Cromwell. Yes, he used his power to great effect; he was a political genius. But there was more to him than just that. She understood that Thomas More, who wanted to keep the Word out of the hands of the people, was the real monster.

Here’s a good post from Anne Kennedy, who is back from her lengthy summer break. I missed her a lot.

Today is the birthday of Johnny Appleseed (1744-1845)! Let’s all take a moment to sing along with Johnny from Walt Disney’s 1948 film Melody Time, made when Disney was reflecting a very different America. We used to sing this song at bedtime when my kids were little. We also sang it as a grace at snack time when I taught Sunday School back in the day. I’ll have to teach it to the twins.

I owe the Lord so much
For everything I see
I’m certain if it weren’t for Him
There’d be no apples on this limb
He’s been good to me

5 Comments
September 26, 2022

Let us love and sing and wonder*

by chuckofish

How was your weekend? We had lovely weather here in flyover country. Daughter #1 had a TV thing on Friday afternoon here in town, so she stayed over and on Saturday we went adventuring to St. Genevieve, Missouri, a town neither of us had ever been.

Ste. Genevieve was established in the 1750s by French colonists, when the territory west of the Mississippi River was part of French Louisiana. It became the principle civic center of the region, and continued to be so when the area passed into Spanish control with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. The original site of Ste. Genevieve, about 3 miles south of the present city, was severely damaged by major flooding in 1785. The city was relocated to its present site on higher ground over the next ten years. 

Ste. Genevieve is home to one of the highest concentrations of French colonial architecture known as poteaux en terre, or post in ground, and Poteaux-sur-sol, or post on sill. Both of these styles involve construction of walls consisting of vertical logs.

We visited the Felix Valle State Historic Site…

…and several interesting new museums…

…where we learned about dinosaurs in the region (!) and the Revolutionary War battle of Fort San Carlos in St. Louis, a battle about which I knew nothing. (The Spanish Militia and some local Frenchmen marched the 50 miles up to St. Louis to fight off the mercenary Indians. It was really not much of a battle.) The fort was right about where Busch Stadium is now.

We checked out the DAR marker…

…and the Mighty Mississippi…

…before heading over to the Chaumette Vineyards and Winery for lunch.

It was beautiful and the lunch was delicious! This dog came and sat with us. We didn’t mind.

We also enjoyed the musical stylings of Brian Tobin whom we had heard at our other favorite winery–Wild Sun. He provided the seventies playlist that we love.

All in all we spent a lovely day and we were reminded once again that Missouri is a very beautiful state. Why would anyone want to live anywhere else?

Os Guinness, who was in town for a conference, was supposed to preach on Sunday, but he didn’t feel well so some Covenant Seminary professor pinch hit. It was disappointing, but the large congregation shook the building with their singing.

Speaking of pinch-hitting, Albert Pujols hit his 699th and 700th homerun in Friday’s game, becoming the fourth player in MLB history to reach that mark. Pujols hit his first career home run in April of 2001 as a Cardinal rookie. I am not much of a baseball fan anymore, but I am happy and proud for Albert.

And high fives to the Chick-fil-A employee who foiled a carjacking at a restaurant in Florida. As John Crist says, “Chick-fil-A employees are next level…the Lord has their back.”

Have a blessed day! Happy fall!

*#172, John Newton

3 Comments
September 23, 2022

Mythical Friday

by chuckofish

While looking for illustrations of Greek myths, I came across some wonderful Pre-Raphaelite paintings, and I thought I would share a few of them this morning. Greek myth was the perfect subject for the overwrought Pre-Raphaelites. It’s full of pretty, half-naked nymphs and twisted plots. Take, for example, John Collier’s take on the mysterious Oracle at Delphi as she sits with her laurel branch over her hallucinogenic fumes.

John Roddam Spence Stanhope’s (that’s a mouthful) Orpheus and Eurydice is also darkly effective, though Orpheus’ drapery is unusual to say the least.

Much as I like the other two, this painting by John William Waterhouse of water nymphs charming Hylas takes ominous to another level.

The Oracle at Delphi and Orpheus and Eurydice are subjects that require a certain dark mystery, and the artists manage to convey that well. But Hylas and the water nymphs is deceptive. At first glance it seems pretty and romantic, but if you know the story and look again, something else emerges – the nymphs have a certain inhuman, predatory quality that is unsettling. Poor Hylas was a member of Jason’s expedition. One day he encountered the nymphs when he stopped at a pond to get a drink. The nymphs beguiled him and he disappeared never to be found. Hercules refused to continue with the Argonauts and spent a lot of time looking for Hylas without success.

If you are at all acquainted with Greek mythology, you’ll know that the ones depicted here are among the most straightforward and least twisted. Let’s just leave it at that. Have a wonderful weekend and do not let beautiful but soulless things beguile you!

******************************

A sad Friday update: my son just shared that Hilary Mantel, the author of the incomparable Wolf Hall and its sequels, as well as the excellent Place of Greater Safety, has passed away. She was a visionary writer who knew how to approach history and imagine a world beyond the present.

The BBC obituary quotes her:

“The essence of the thing is not to judge with hindsight, not to pass judgement from the lofty perch of the 21st Century when we know what happened,” she said.

“It’s to be there with them in that hunting party at Wolf Hall, moving forward with imperfect information and perhaps wrong expectations, but in any case moving forward into a future that is not pre-determined, but where chance and hazard will play a terrific role.”

She will be missed! Rest in peace, wonderful Hilary.

3 Comments
September 22, 2022

Thursday musings

by chuckofish

It is finally cooling off in flyover country–thank goodness. Fall is officially here by the way, so I am ready to switch to turtlenecks anytime soon.

Meanwhile I am immersed in bible study–both my daily reading and my weekly study of Hebrews. Phew. It is a lot. Currently in Ezekiel, The Lord is saying things like:

“Because you have spoken nonsense and envisioned lies, therefore I am indeed against you.”

–13:8

Things never change. Isn’t that oddly comforting? I think so too.

Also, in case you were interested, I am now a person who uses “Bible Safe Gel Highlighters”.

In other news, since Tuesday was Sophia Loren’s birthday, I watched Legend of the Lost (1956) starring John Wayne, Rossano Brazzi and Sophia. Even though it was beautifully filmed on location in Libya by Jack Cardiff, directed by Henry Hathaway and boasted big international stars, it was not a box office hit.

It has always been a favorite of mine. Sophia, who looks sensational even when hot and sweaty, and John Wayne make an appealing and believable pair. The duke is a match for Sophia any day and she seems to appreciate that.

Last week I watched Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)–another re-telling of the real-life mutiny of the HMS Bounty in 1789 by Fletcher Christian–when it was on TCM. Shot in widescreen Ultra Panavision on location at enormous cost, it nevertheless flopped at the box office and I can understand why. Most critics blamed its star Marlon Brando, who was mocked for his English accent and foppish airs. I was prepared to laugh as well, but I have to say I thought Marlon was pretty good. Sure, he was a pain on set and terrible to work with, but his acting was fine and he is really, really handsome.

He tried to play Fletcher Christian as a man who was changed by his experience aboard the ship and he does that rather well. He is not a hero at the beginning, but he is by the end. (Contrast this with Clark Gable’s 1935 portrayal in which he is a hero from the get-go.)

However, I found the movie to be slow, and despite all the sturm and drang of fighting the weather and the elements, boring. Also, Trevor Howard as Bligh left a lot to be desired. Anyway, I did watch the whole thing, so that says something–probably that Marlon Brando held my interest.

Truman Capote wrote an interesting profile of Marlon Brando for The New Yorker in 1957 called “The Duke in His Domain,” which I re-read after seeing this movie. He seems to prove the point he made another time when he said, “The better the actor, the more stupid he is.” Whatever. Brando was a good actor.

3 Comments
September 21, 2022

Too much fun, what’s that mean?

by chuckofish

Well, I’m back from Maryland after a super fun visit. As I mentioned last week, I had a very early flight. But, the benefit of arriving before TSA opens is that you reach your destination by 9 a.m., leaving you the whole day to visit. After dropping my bags at Susie’s house, we hit the road to outer suburbia to visit Glenstone, a DN favorite. According to the website, “Glenstone is a place that seamlessly integrates art, architecture, and nature into a serene and contemplative environment.”

A Koons peaks over the hill.

The website also says, “Guided by the personal vision of its founders, Glenstone assembles post-World War II artworks of the highest quality that trace the greatest historical shifts in the way we experience and understand art of the 20th and 21st centuries. These works are presented in a series of refined indoor and outdoor spaces designed to facilitate meaningful encounters for our visitors.”

It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed the sunshine and walking around. Next, we picked up Katie and headed to the University of Maryland campus for an ice cream treat and to meet up with Nate. Of course, we stopped by the Kermit statue.

The next day, since everyone was taking a day off from work, we ventured out to Annapolis.

We saw the Maryland state house, which is the oldest state capitol in continuous legislative use.

We also saw this old cannon that was brought by early settlers in 1634 and then found in the river in 1822. Naturally, the DAR presented the plaque.

We visited the William Paca house and gardens. Paca was one of Maryland’s four signers of the Declaration of Independence and a former governor. I did not get a good picture of the house, although it was a lovely example of Georgian architecture.

We also visited two playgrounds and had fun on the swings and other playground equipment.

On my last night, we secured a table at Zinnia, a restaurant in an old stage coach stop. It has a lovely garden that was just the right vibe.

I had the best time and was sad to leave on Sunday.

Sadly, we did not take any full group pictures, but this one is pretty cute.

3 Comments
September 20, 2022

A holy rest

by chuckofish

My lunch date was canceled yesterday so I was able to tune into the committal service at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor for Queen Elizabeth on the BBC.

It was remarkably humble and solemn.

As soon as the choir of men and boys began to sing, although I am no royalist, the tears came and I sobbed, surprising myself. Sitting alone, I had a good cry.

And the solitary piper doing the slow walk…

Well, this old (former) Episcopalian was quite moved.

And I have to say that I was mighty impressed to read that David Beckham had stood in line for thirteen hours waiting with his fellow countrymen to pay his respects to his queen. Isn’t it surprising when a celebrity acts well?

As a father shows compassion to his children,
    so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.
14 For he knows our frame;[a]
    he remembers that we are dust.

15 As for man, his days are like grass;
    he flourishes like a flower of the field;
16 for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
    and its place knows it no more.
17 But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him,
    and his righteousness to children’s children,
18 to those who keep his covenant
    and remember to do his commandments.
19 The Lord has established his throne in the heavens,
    and his kingdom rules over all.

20 Bless the Lord, O you his angels,
    you mighty ones who do his word,
    obeying the voice of his word!
21 Bless the Lord, all his hosts,
    his ministers, who do his will!
22 Bless the Lord, all his works,
    in all places of his dominion.
Bless the Lord, O my soul!

Psalm 103: 13-22

Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend your servant Elizabeth. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. Receive her into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. Amen.

7 Comments
September 19, 2022

We will feast in the house of Zion

by chuckofish

How was your weekend? Ours was quiet and we stayed close to home. The OM and I did venture out to the annual Greentree Parade which was on Saturday. We hiked over to Kirkwood Road to watch from our usual spot.

There were the usual Boy Scouts and the KHS marching band…

… and various veterans…

…as well as some floats…

But on the whole it was rather lackluster. All the kids seemed to care about was scrambling for candy. There were no churches represented and the businesses were mostly random dentists and the like. Well, whatever.

In other news, our neighbors across the street moved out. After seven years of them driving me crazy with their RV and their trampoline and their terrible lawn, I am kind of sad and I know I will miss them. They were really very nice people and I already miss their high school son coming and going in his little white car. God only knows who will move in.

Also I haven’t seen my foxy friend in over a week. For awhile I would see him every day walking across my yard or chillin’ on my driveway.

I hope he is okay.

Well, everything kind of makes me sad these days and I think that is because of the general sorry state of the world and the end of it as we knew it. Maybe I am just getting old and turning into one of those old ladies who likes to talk about the olden days. Change is hard.

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.

2 Corinthians 4:16

I’ll hang in there if you do. Because, as you know, we are bidden to rejoice and always to rejoice.

4 Comments