August | 2024 | dual personalities

August 30, 2024

“There’s a secret magic password.”

by chuckofish

Well, here we are at Friday, again. And a three-day weekend! It was another uninspiring week for me and I’m very much looking forward to having minimal plans. I might scrub the grout in my bathroom with a Magic Eraser. I might deep clean the baseboards in the living room. I might finally make a decision about new light fixtures while everything is on sale. Or maybe not.

In the exciting news department, last week I won two seasons of The Simpsons on DVD in an online auction. I paid $3 for Seasons 7 and 8. Much of my motivation for cleaning was derailed by the enticement of watching The Springfield Files and other episodes I haven’t seen in many years.

Mr. Smith enjoyed it too.

Speaking of Mr. Smith, he has recently realized he can push through the gate blocking the entrance to the dining room and kitchen and now likes to sniff around for crumbs while I eat my dinner. He’s getting a bit aggressive.

It is hilarious to me how all dogs are alike, certainly all Westies.

And finally, the algorithm presented this oldie but goodie the other day and it brought back those mid-aught feelings.

Enjoy the long weekend. It’s a sprint to the new year from here!

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August 29, 2024

That pile of broken mirrors

by chuckofish

This week was a scorcher, but par for the flyover course. The forecast for the long weekend is optimistic so we’ll see.

Daughter #2 and her family escaped to Michigan, but they encountered a huge storm halfway through their vacay which knocked out the electricity to 400,000 people and their running water!

C’est la vie. Before the weather catastrophe, my brother and sister-in-law drove over for a short visit…

…and caught up with the comings and goings of Pete the Cat et al.

Yes, the month is winding down. I will toast Jorge Luis Borges again and suggest you read this short story about a man whose father tells him he had “Lunch with Borges” once. It reminded me of my father telling me he sat on Gertrude Stein’s lap as an infant. We know our parents so little really.

As in dreams
behind high doors there is nothing,
not even emptiness.
As in dreams
behind the face that looks at us there is no one.
Obverse without a reverse,
one-sided coin, the side of things.
That pittance is the boon
tossed to us by hastening time.
We are our memory,
we are that chimerical museum of shifting shapes,
that pile of broken mirrors.

This is an interesting reflection on Peer Gynt, showing how a troll becomes a troll. “In 2024, we live in a world of trolls. What is the name for cowardly people who leave hateful comments on the internet? Trolls. Our family’s word for road-ragers? Road trolls. Peer Gynt is a story for today.”

And here’s a heads up that the Church of England remembers John Bunyan with a Lesser Festival on 30 August. I was glad to see that a memorial window to Bunyan was unveiled in the west aisle of the north transept of Westminster Abbey in January 1912. It was erected by public subscription and designed by J. Ninian Comper and shows eight main scenes from the first part of Bunyan’s most famous work The Pilgrim’s Progress. The inscription reads: In memory of John Bunyan. The Pilgrim’s Progress. B.1628. D.1688.

“You are not yet out of reach of the gunshot of the Devil. You have not yet resisted unto death in your striving against sin. Let the Kingdom be always before you, and believe with certainty and consistency the things that are yet unseen. Let nothing that is on this side of eternal life get inside you. Above all, take care of your own hearts, and resist the lusts that tempt you, for your hearts `are deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.’ Set your faces like a flint; you have all the power of Heaven and earth on your side.”

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August 28, 2024

Minus One

by chuckofish

Godzilla Minus One (2023) is a Japanese epic kaiju film written, directed, and with visual effects by Takashi Yamazaki. Produced by Toho Studios and Robot Communications and distributed by Toho, it is the 37th film in the Godzilla franchise and Toho’s 33rd Godzilla film. I would venture to say it is the best. Seriously, I thought it was great–made in the tradition of the best Japanese films (i.e. Kurosawa films) but with a thoughtful bow to the original Godzilla franchise of the 1950s.

Unfortunately, I viewed it at my friend’s house on her very large TV and was distracted by her incessant talking throughout. She was not riveted as was I. At one point, she fell asleep. So I guess it is not for everybody. But as soon as it becomes available on DVD, I will buy it and watch it again.

The actors are all excellent, in particular Ryunosuke Kamiki as the penitent Kamikaze pilot who has survived WWII and is wracked with survivor guilt.

All the characters are well-defined, highly distinguishable, and display significant development. That’s saying something for a “monster movie”! I also thought it was interesting that the movie is critical of Japan and its part in the war and in the manner it treated its citizens. The way the veterans come together to solve the problem and take down Godzilla is moving and patriotic.

Come to think of it this country has treated life far too cheaply. Poorly armored tanks. Poor supply chains resulting in half of all deaths from starvation and disease. Fighter planes built without ejection seats and finally, kamikaze and suicide attacks. That’s why this time I’d take pride in a citizen led effort that sacrifices no lives at all! This next battle is not one waged to the death, but a battle to live for the future. (Kenji Noda)

And there is a miracle at the end of the movie, complete with angelic singing, which made me very happy.

If you have Netflix, watch this movie! It is definitely the best movie I have seen in a long time.

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August 27, 2024

An air of invincible energy and cheerfulness

by chuckofish

One more week of August! Signs of fall are everywhere!

I continue to unbox the books I hurriedly boxed up last Friday…

I am especially enjoying these books which include articles and reviews from The New Yorker, back when it was a magazine worth reading…

Take for instance Wolcott Gibbs’ review of Guys and Dolls when it opened in 1950. He starts off with this:

I don’t think I ever had more fun at a musical comedy than I had the other night, when an association of strangely gifted men put on a Broadway epic known as Guys and Dolls. There have been loftier moral and aesthetic experiences, like Show Boat and South Pacific; there have been more enduring musical accomplishments, like Porgy and Bess; there have been occasions when the humor was clearly on a more ambitious level, like Of Thee I Sing; there have been sensational individual performances, like practically anything involving Miss Ethel Merman. There has, however, been nothing I can remember that sustained a higher level of sheer entertainment than the operation at the Forty-sixth Street Theatre.

Well.

There are book reviews, television and movie reviews, poetry, fiction, and longer pieces on “the American Scene”, “Artists and Entertainers”, current events, “Characters”, “Curious Developments”, and a lot more. Certainly enough to keep me busy for some time.

I especially enjoyed a long article by Winthrop Sargeant on the poet Marianne Moore, “Humility, Concentration and Gusto”, in the 2/16/1957 issue. I wrote an article about Moore for the Kirkwood Historical Review last year, but I was unaware of this piece in The New Yorker. It is a wonderful in-depth portrait and it reinforces my impression of her. “To some of the more complicated types who frequent literary teas and cocktail parties in…

…well, you understand. I’m afraid they don’t make ’em like Marianne Moore anymore. More’s the pity. Anyway, I am going to aim at exuding an air of invincible energy and cheerfulness. It won’t be easy.

Enjoy your Tuesday!

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August 26, 2024

Our strength and refuge

by chuckofish

How was your weekend? Friday I went to lunch with some old friends at my former flyover university faculty club. Then we went back to their house where I boxed up some books to take home. They are getting ready to downsize and that means getting rid of a ton of books. But God only knows where I am going to put more books! Daughter #1 came over to their house and filled a box for herself. I would have taken more, but as I told my friends, I already have a lot of their books.

The rest of the weekend I spent looking at/reading my new-old books. What a pleasure! I also took some old computer monitors over to a nearby recycling event and enjoyed a great sense of accomplishment which I relished all weekend. And daughter #1 and I continued our scientific study of the correct wine-bread ratio…

On Sunday the OM and I picked up the twins to take them to church with us since their parents are very busy getting ready to move. It had been awhile since the twins had been to church so they needed to re-learn some church behavior basics. They did pretty well. The bud drew some interesting pictures…note the devil prominently portrayed in hell…

After church we went home with the twins and the OM picked up lunch at McDonald’s. Then we took a little walk where the bud was able to pet a nice black Lab named Titan, who sniffed his face. Then we played more or less quietly at home while the OM took a nap. Lottie beat me repeatedly at Chutes and Ladders, but the bud told me that winners are losers and losers are winners, so there. And the first shall be last, right?

The boy picked them up mid-afternoon and stayed to chat for awhile, always a treat for me.

I changed my clothes for a third time and we headed back to church at 4:30 for the ordination service of our youth minister. Once again I was overcome with thankfulness that I am a member of this church.

Meanwhile daughter #2 and her family drove up to Lake Huron to spend the week, leaving at five in the morning for the long drive.

I remember those days–leaving before dawn to get a jump on the driving while the kids sleep! (Note both babes are wide awake.)

They are having a good ol’ time.

And not to get political, but this was hilarious.

So put your phone down, look up, and thank God for the day. Then read some old books!

4 Comments

August 23, 2024

Réflexions

by chuckofish

I have had a quiet, contemplative week–no visits from rambunctious twins or feisty dogs. No severe weather or noisy street construction. Sigh. In other words, nothing very exciting to write about.

I did a lot of puttering around in my home and in my yard. I caught up with some “desk work”. I went to the Dollar Tree to buy candy. I watched some bad movies. Ye gods–The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969), despite an all-star cast including Katharine Hepburn, Paul Henreid, Yul Brynner, Richard Chamberlain, Giulietta Masina, Edith Evans, Danny Kaye, etc., was unwatchable.

As Vincent Canby wrote at the time, “[Bryan] Forbes, who persists in making conventional films of unconventional properties…moves his cameras around quite a lot, but there is really little he can do to hide the fact that “The Madwoman of Chaillot” is—as it was 20 years ago—an incredibly precious theatrical conceit, just the sort of thing somebody might think would make a great Broadway musical comedy. As we all know, it didn’t.”

We also watched Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down (2001), which I had not seen since it came out, lo, so many years ago.

It is successful in getting across the horror of war, especially a war in that part of the world, but it was unrelentingly violent. Also, despite it having a great cast, I could not tell who anyone was. The characters were practically indistinguishable. The sound and the editing were impressive (they won Oscars) but only made it harder to watch, as did the frenetic cinematography. Impressive in its own way–I watched the whole thing–but I don’t need to watch it again, ever.

Here are three things to remember as we seek to build God-centered homes where sound doctrine is the foundation and our Lord Jesus Christ is the cornerstone.

And this is a great one from John Piper. I love it when he really gets going on a topic! “‘Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.’ You cannot be neutral to Jesus Christ. There is no neutrality in dealing with Jesus. If you are not for him, you are against him. If you are not seeking to gather faith and obedience from those around you, you are scattering people away from him.”

And forgive me, here’s Jiminy Glick…

Yes, it was a slow week, but I did go over to daughter #1’s house last night for a glass of wine and to let Mr. Smith practice his balancing act…

Have a good weekend!

4 Comments

August 22, 2024

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh*

by chuckofish

Today we toast Ulysses S. Grant and Julia Boggs Dent who were married on this day in 1848 in the Dent family townhouse in St. Louis. The ceremony was performed by Reverend Dr. William S. Potts, who was a close friend of the Dent family.

The Dent townhouse was torn down some time ago, but the Dent’s country home, named “White Haven”, still remains. Julia’s father, Col. Frederick Fayette Dent, was a fur trader operating along the Mississippi River. He became quite wealthy and built a 850-acre plantation outside of St. Louis. Julia Dent, the fifth of seven children, grew up at White Haven. She attended the Misses Mauros boarding school in St. Louis and graduated at the age of seventeen.

Following his marriage and after serving with distinction in the Mexican-American War, Ulysses Grant resigned from the army in 1854 and returned to civilian life somewhat impoverished. Grant tried several business ventures but failed. Julia and Ulysses returned to White Haven and lived there for five years until Grant reenlisted in the army to serve in the American Civil War. In 1866 Grant purchased parts of the property and established a commercial farm and horse breeding operation. Amid an increasingly volatile economy, Grant sold off livestock in 1875 before losing the estate outright in 1885 to William Henry Vanderbilt, just three months before his death.

A portion of the plantation was later purchased by Adolphus Busch where he developed his Grant’s Farm property. The acreage around the main house was initially rescued from development of a Grant-themed amusement park in 1913 by Albert Wenzlick, a St. Louis real estate developer. The house was maintained by Wenzlick and his son until the latter’s death in 1979 when, after years of public engagement and fundraising by local advocates, the 9.6-acre property was finally acquired by a joint venture between the Missouri Department of Natural Resources and St. Louis County. The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986.

This is a fascinating article about the years-long struggle to save White Haven, which once again underscores the importance of grassroots support of historic preservation. I was surprised to learn that I knew several of the major players, but was unaware of all that was going on at the time.

Earlier this year I also learned that part of the original acreage where Grant’s Hardscrabble log cabin was located is now a cemetery owned and maintained by the St. Paul’s UCC Church since 1926.

A marker was placed in 1946 by the Webster Groves chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution to mark the site of Hardscrabble in the current St. Paul Churchyard. (The cabin now resides at Grant’s Farm.)

Since then the OM and I have bought grave sites at the cemetery. It seems entirely appropriate that the final resting place for our earthly remains will be in Cousin Lyss’s Hardscrabble farm.

*Ecclesiastes 1:4

7 Comments

August 21, 2024

Curved in the flesh of temptation*

by chuckofish

In my ongoing search for something to watch, I spent two hours viewing Duel in the Sun (1946) the other night. It was a more enjoyable melodrama than last week’s Suddenly Last Summer, but really, once again, the over-acting and the sexual turmoil became almost comic.

The story goes that producer David O. Selznick wanted to top the great success of Gone With the Wind (1939) and he let out all the stops on Duel in the Sun. The script is attributed to Selznick himself, “suggested” by a novel by Niven Busch, but he couldn’t leave the script alone and kept revising it as the movie was shot. There is even a “preface” which is narrated by none other than Orson Welles. The lurid technicolor and the overblown score by Dimitri Tiomkin contribute to the mess, but they also make it more watchable. I found myself humming the main theme days afterwards.

There are a lot of stars in the movie, led by the producer’s wife, Jennifer Jones, who chews the scenery with aplomb as an orphaned halfbreed who experiences prejudice and forbidden love while living with her white relatives on a large ranch in Texas. Joseph Cotton plays the “good” (boring) older brother and Gregory Peck plays the “bad” (exciting) younger brother. Lionel Barrymore plays their crippled, racist, cattle baron father and Lillian Gish is his long-suffering, southern belle wife. Walter Huston plays a wild-eyed preacher. Really there are no likable characters in this story and that is the main problem. People are either weak in a bad way or strong in a bad way. The only mediating character is played with some subtlety by Harry Carey. His part is minor and appears to have been mostly cut. I’m not sure who “Lem Smoot” actually was. He seems out of place in this emotional mish-mosh.

I remember seeing this movie as a child and being moved by it, probably because I had no idea what was actually going on and the music was exciting. I can’t say I really understood what was always going on now 60 years later. Interestingly, it is the first movie Martin Scorsese saw as a child and it had a great impact on him at the time as well. I wonder what the twins would make of it?

Well, you win some, you lose some. Back to the drawing board. Any ideas?

*Walter Huston as “Jubal Crabbe, the Sinkiller”

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August 20, 2024

Days consecrated to the useless*

by chuckofish

My week is off to a quiet start and that is okay with me. I don’t have much going on besides having to do my homework for my Bible Study which starts anew on Thursday.

This week I will also be reading works by Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine writer, poet and philosopher, whose birthday we celebrate on August 24. Here is a snippet from an interview with William F. Buckley where he speaks about the English language…

I could listen to him talk for hours.

Meanwhile Don’s dahlias are beautiful…

As a member of the Asteraceae family, the dahlia has a flower head that is actually a composite with both central disc florets and surrounding ray florets. Each floret is a flower in its own right, according to Don, but is often incorrectly described as a petal. God’s amazing creation!

I guess things went well on the first day of school…

And here’s a fun fact to know and share: In 1954, Charles Schulz introduced Charlotte Braun to the Charlie Brown cast as a loud-mouthed female character (a role Lucy would later inherit). Readers disliked Charlotte, and she disappeared a few months later after only about 10 times in the strip.

I have a feeling Charlotte may have hit too close to home for some people (loud-mouthed females). But she’d fit right in now…

Enjoy your Tuesday!

*Jorge Luis Borges, from the poem “That One”

5 Comments

August 19, 2024

Blessed be my rock

by chuckofish

How was your weekend? It was warm and humid here in flyover country, but basically very nice considering it is August. No complaints from the peanut gallery. Saturday morning I got up early and went to Trader Joe’s to buy flowers and then buzzed over to church where I arranged them for Sunday morning.

As with all things, I like to keep it simple.

After that, daughter #1 and I drove out to the western suburbs to pick up a chandelier which daughter #2 had purchased on Facebook Marketplace.

We also went to an estate sale–a good one–in a house people had lived in a long time. I even figured out whose house it was! Daughter #1 found a nice little shelf and some other odds and ends and I got an old book.

The illustrations reminded me of our own wee bud (see below). We went to lunch afterwards. A productive morning, indeed, and the rest of the day I was free to putter around.

On Sunday we headed to church and Sunday School. You could tell that everyone was back from vacation and we had a full house–our singing raised the roof! Delightful! Our young seminarian preached on Psalm 11 (In the Lord I take refuge) and he did a fine job. He will be ordained next Sunday and I am looking forward to attending that special service.

Afterwards we went to daughter #1’s house where we had bagels and fruit salad and sat outside on the deck while Mr. Smith frolicked with the twins. Then we walked up to Jackson Park for some playground time.