November 30, 2016

Faithful soldiers and servants

by chuckofish

Blessed Lord, who wast tempted in all things like as we are, have mercy upon our frailty. Out of weakness give us strength; grant to us thy fear, that we may fear thee only; support us in time of temptation; embolden us in time of danger; help us to do thy work with good courage, and to continue thy faithful soldiers and servants unto our life’s end.

–Brooke Foss Westcott, British bishop, biblical scholar and theologian, serving as Bishop of Durham from 1890 until his death in 1901

These woodcuts are by Frances Hammell Gearhart (b. 1869-1958), California artist known for her color woodcuts of the Sierras, the Pacific Coast, and the area around Big Bear Lake. Aren’t they wonderful?

4 Comments

November 17, 2016

Thanks—joyful thanks!

by chuckofish

Here we are halfway through November and Thanksgiving is a week from today! Let’s get serious about having thankful thoughts! Here’s some Walt Whitman to help with that.

Thanks in old age—thanks ere I go,

For health, the midday sun, the impalpable air—for life, mere
life,

For precious ever-lingering memories, (of you my mother dear
—you, father—you, brothers, sisters, friends,)

For all my days—not those of peace alone—the days of war the
same,

For gentle words, caresses, gifts from foreign lands,

For shelter, wine and meat—for sweet appreciation,

(You distant, dim unknown—or young or old—countless, un-
specified, readers belov’d,

We never met, and ne’er shall meet—and yet our souls embrace,
long, close and long;)

For beings, groups, love, deeds, words, books—for colors, forms,

For all the brave strong men—devoted, hardy men—who’ve for-
ward sprung in freedom’s help, all years, all lands,

For braver, stronger, more devoted men—(a special laurel ere I
go, to life’s war’s chosen ones,

The cannoneers of song and thought—the great artillerists—the
foremost leaders, captains of the soul:)

As soldier from an ended war return’d—As traveler out of
myriads, to the long procession retrospective,

Thanks—joyful thanks!—a soldier’s, traveler’s thanks.

–Walt Whitman, 1888-89

The paintings are by John McCartin, Patrick William Adam, Bruce Yardley, and Mark O’Neill. Pretty pictures always help, right?

3 Comments

September 20, 2016

Humble and hearty thanks

by chuckofish

Fall arrives tomorrow. However, it is still hot as blazes here.

But that’s all right! Autumn weather is not far off.

Eternal God,
you crown the year with your goodness
and give us the fruits of the earth in their season:
Grant that we may use them to your glory,
for the relief of those in need
and for our own well-being;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–BCP, 2004

First four images via Pinterest; fifth, Virginia Lee Burton, The Little House

6 Comments

June 2, 2016

Tonight I long for rest

by chuckofish

Here’s a great poem, “The Day is Done,” from the forgotten Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Read the whole thing.

The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o’er me
That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time,

For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life’s endless toil and endeavor;
And tonight I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have a power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And comes like the benediction
That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.

–Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882

The painting is “Fire Fancies” by Arthur Hacker, 1865

2 Comments

May 11, 2016

Mid-week meditation

by chuckofish

“[All the ancient wisdom] tells us that work is necessary to us, as much a part of our condition as mortality; that good work is our salvation and our joy; that shoddy or dishonest or self-serving work is our curse and our doom. We have tried to escape the sweat and sorrow promised in Genesis – only to find that, in order to do so, we must forswear love and excellence, health and joy.”

–Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays, “The Unsettling of America”

The wood engraving is by Clare Leighton – Scything, 1935

2 Comments

April 15, 2016

“An habitation of dragons, and a court for owls”*

by chuckofish

Yesterday morning at around 4:00 a.m. the OM and I were awakened by a heated argument outside our bedroom window. It was one of those what-the-heck moments when you have no idea what is happening.

Then we realized it was a pair of owls.

We hear owls all the time in the evening, but this was a first–being woken up by their racket. They seemed angry. They might have been Barred Owls and or maybe Great Horned Owls. Not sure.

Here is a video of some Barred Owls laughing it up.

Our pair definitely seemed to be arguing, but perhaps we misinterpreted their mood. They were loud anyway.

Here is a Great Horned Owl:

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4CRqJJW6S8

Anyway, this got me thinking about owls, so here are a few pictures of owl representations through the ages…

Exeter Cathedral

Kano Sansetsu (1589-1651)

Gustave Dore

Portrait of James Boswell at Twenty-Five by George Willison

Albrecht Durer 1508

John James Audubon

Ernest Shepard

Athenian coin, 5th century BC

Temple University adopted the owl as its mascot in 1888, the first school in the nation to choose the bird. The nocturnal hunter symbolized Temple’s early mission: to be a night school for ambitious young people of limited means. In 1912 Rice University adopted the Owl as its mascot. Hilarity ensued.

Rice Owl mascot captured by Texas A&M students in 1917

One more fun fact: the Brandeis University mascot, Ollie the Owl, is named after Louis Brandeis’s colleague, Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Owls are great. As carnivorous birds of prey they live mainly on a diet of insects and small rodents such as mice, rats and rabbits. They do an important job in the wild, i.e. keeping down the rodent population. Another cool thing about owls: They can rotate their heads and necks as much as 270 degrees.

In western culture the owl is generally associated with wisdom. This link originated in ancient Greece where Athena, the goddess of wisdom, had the owl as a symbol. In Rome the owl was considered a bird of ill-omen, however. Pliny the younger reports that owl’s eggs were commonly used as a hangover cure.

So keep your eyes and ears open for owls in your yard. They are hard to see because it is usually dark when you hear them and they blend in very well with their habitat, but sometimes you can catch a glimpse.

Have a good weekend!

*Isaiah 34:13 (KJV)

5 Comments

April 8, 2016

Time out for some art

by chuckofish

Today is the anniversary of the death of the great artist Pablo Picasso (October 25, 1881 – April 8, 1973) who was baptized Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso, a series of names honoring various saints and relatives. Wow.

I admit I had a poster of his Don Quixote in my college dorm room.

I know what I like, and I liked it. And I always liked this sculpture that he donated to the city of Chicago in 1967.

Picasso was very prolific and several of his paintings rank among the most expensive paintings in the world. In US currency, Garçon à la pipe sold for $104 million in 2004; Dora Maar au Chat sold for $95.2 million in 2006;

Nude, Green Leaves and Bust was sold at $106.5 million in 2010.

And fun fact: more of Picasso’s paintings have been stolen than those of any other artist.

Here’s a picture of the living room of his Cannes villa.

Vanity Fair

Homey, don’t you think? Full of stuff, which I like. Nothing in its “place.”

Well, as Groucho Marx once said, “Art is art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now, uh… now you tell me what you know.”

Hey, it’s Friday! Have a good weekend!

4 Comments

March 3, 2016

“A chiz is a swiz or swindle as any fule kno.”*

by chuckofish

Today is the birthday of Ronald William Fordham Searle, CBE, RDI (March 3, 1920 – December 30, 2011) who was a British artist and illustrator, best remembered as the creator of St. Trinian’s School

and for his collaboration with Geoffrey Willans on the Molesworth series.

We were very fond of Ronald Searle growing up and my family always read aloud the Christmas chapter from How to Be Topp on Christmas Eve.

Searle grew up in Cambridge. At the age of 19 he gave up his art studies and joined the Royal Engineers at the start of WWII. Searle was stationed in Singapore. After a month of fighting in Malaya, Singapore fell to the Japanese, and he was taken prisoner. He spent the rest of the war as a prisoner, first in Changi Prison and then in the Kwai jungle, working on the Siam-Burma Death Railway. He contracted both beri-beri and malaria. He was liberated in late 1945 with the final defeat of the Japanese.

I have a copy of his book Ronald Searle To the Kwai and Back, War Drawings 1939–1945, an amazing pictorial record of his war years, three of them in Japanese prisoner of war camps.

In it he recorded the “grafitti of a condemned man, intending to leave a rough witness of his passing through, but who found himself–to the surprise and delight–among the reprieved.”

Immediately after the war, he served as a courtroom artist at the Nuremberg trials.

Eichmann in court

Like many funny men, he had a very serious past.

So a birthday toast to Ronald Searle!

And another toast to George Kennedy who died last Sunday. Like Searle, he was 91 when he died and had a long, interesting life. A prolific actor of film and television, he won a best supporting Oscar for Cool Hand Luke (1967) and made several movies with John Wayne, including Cahill U.S. Marshall (1973), The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) and In Harm’s Way (1965). He also had memorable parts in Charade (1963), Bandolero! (1968) and The Dirty Dozen (1967).

Quite a career. Any of these movies are worth watching. As for me, it might be time to watch The Sons of Katie Elder again.

*Molesworth, “Down with Skool!” (1953)

2 Comments

February 29, 2016

Tell old pharoah

by chuckofish

The Old Testament reading on Sunday was about God appearing to Moses in the form of a Burning Bush (Exodus 3:1-15). I suppose that was why we sang Go Down, Moses as our communion hymn. We ~~gave it our best shot~~ tried, but Episcopalians plus negro spirituals equals truly awkward. We just can’t swing it, literally.

We had a lovely, balmy weekend and I tried to get out and about, but was still recovering from my cough/cold/whatever. I re-organized a large cupboard filled with an assortment of dishes, serving pieces, silver, holiday decorations, cleaning supplies, ephemera, etcetera. This turned into quite a job as you can imagine, but I got it all sorted out, cleaned and put away. I actually threw away very little (typical).

Since officially giving up on Humboldt’s Gift, I perused several bookshelves at home and picked out several possible books to read. I settled on The Proper Bostonian by Cleveland Amory, which I had picked up some time ago at an estate sale. It proved to be very enjoyable and full of information. Published in 1947, it “is as humorous and entertaining as anything that could be written about the Boston Brahmins–the Cabots, Lodges, Lowells, Adamses and others that make Boston a synonym for staidness and sobriety.” (Chicago Tribune) Now there’s a qualified recommendation for you! I am learning all about Boston’s First Families and the foibles of the “Proper Boston lady” and the “Proper Boston gentleman.”

This is particularly interesting to me as our maternal grandmother was a Sargent after all and lived on Clarendon Street in Back Bay for years. She was, indeed, a “Proper Boston lady.”

When our parents gave their third child the middle name ‘Sargent,’ our grandmother’s response was not, “Oh, how nice,” but “Well, finally.”

Well, more on this later, because it is Monday and the bell tolleth for me. Have a good week!

P.S. I watched part of the Oscars–why? Why did they keep playing Que Sera Sera? It was a strange show. But I didn’t watch the whole thing. I went to bed. Give me some credit.

(The OM took the photo of the amaryllis.)

3 Comments

February 17, 2016

Pick a little, talk a little

by chuckofish

Is anyone else as tired as I am of headlines like this?

The (Secretly Filthy) Winter Wardrobe Staples You Need to Wash Right Now

I mean c’mon. It’s the “You Need” and the “Right Now,” you know?

Isn’t there enough stress and pressure on us without getting hit right and left on the internet with orders about stuff like that?

Well, I say you need to sit down right now

George Willison, “Nancy Parsons in Turkish Dress”

and stare out the window.

Winslow Homer, “Looking Out the Window”

Eat some candy if you feel like it

James Peale, “Still Life With Fruit”

and have a glass of wine.

Johannes Vermeer, “The Glass of Wine”

Then watch some great old tv show without commercials.

But under no circumstances plan

9 DIY Projects That Help You Stay Organized.

And P.S. I don’t care if they are secretly filthy. I am not going to hand wash my leather gloves.

But I might re-read this old poem by W. Wordsworth that daughter #2 emailed me yesterday.

SHE was a Phantom of delight

When first she gleamed upon my sight;

A lovely Apparition, sent

To be a moment’s ornament;

Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;

Like Twilight’s, too, her dusky hair;

But all things else about her drawn

From May-time and the cheerful Dawn;

A dancing Shape, an Image gay,

To haunt, to startle, and way-lay.

I saw her upon nearer view,

A Spirit, yet a Woman too!

Her household motions light and free,

And steps of virgin-liberty;

A countenance in which did meet

Sweet records, promises as sweet;

A Creature not too bright or good

For human nature’s daily food;

For transient sorrows, simple wiles,

Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.

And now I see with eye serene

The very pulse of the machine;

A Being breathing thoughtful breath,

A Traveller between life and death;

The reason firm, the temperate will,

Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;

A perfect Woman, nobly planned,

To warn, to comfort, and command;

And yet a Spirit still, and bright

With something of angelic light.

I’m just saying.

3 Comments

dual personalities

Category: Art

November 30, 2016

Faithful soldiers and servants

by chuckofish

November 17, 2016

Thanks—joyful thanks!

by chuckofish

September 20, 2016

Humble and hearty thanks

by chuckofish

June 2, 2016

Tonight I long for rest

by chuckofish

May 11, 2016

Mid-week meditation

by chuckofish

April 15, 2016

“An habitation of dragons, and a court for owls”*

by chuckofish

April 8, 2016

Time out for some art

by chuckofish

March 3, 2016

“A chiz is a swiz or swindle as any fule kno.”*

by chuckofish

February 29, 2016

Tell old pharoah

by chuckofish

February 17, 2016

Pick a little, talk a little

by chuckofish

The (Secretly Filthy) Winter Wardrobe Staples You Need to Wash Right Now

9 DIY Projects That Help You Stay Organized.