dual personalities

Category: family

November 12, 2019

Mish mosh*

by chuckofish

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We had our first snow of the season yesterday and, in fact, I had to call off afternoon classes and send everyone home early.  It is always a bit weird, though, when it snows and most of the leaves are still on the trees. The temperature dropped 40 degrees from what it had been over the sunny weekend.

Daughter #1 came into town on Friday because she was part of the big Veterans Day doings at the Soldiers Memorial downtown on Saturday.

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Members of the Scottish-American Military Society

I liked what Chris Pratt wrote about his older brother, a vet, on his Instagram:

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And this great picture of the Queen with her poppies. She remembers.

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scottmeachamwood @Instagram

I had my last chemo treatment on Friday and it was a surprisingly emotional experience to ring that bell and say goodbye to all those nice people who work in the Cancer Center at Missouri Baptist Hospital.

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Well, on to the next phase.

Over the weekend I re-read Delano Ames’ Corpse Diplomatique which I thoroughly enjoyed. Jane and Dagobert Brown are very diverting amateur sleuths and Jane is always saying things like:

I glanced at him witheringly and risked no comment. But Henry did not wither readily.

And we watched The Ten Commandments (1956). It is hard to beat Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner together in a movie.

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Be still my heart.

This movie holds up remarkably well and the pre-CG special effects–the parting of the Red Sea in particular–are impressive. I will also note that Yul Brynner was also in the King and I and Anastasia in 1956. Seriously–wow–quelle year.

The wee babes came over Sunday night for dinner, but no one took any pictures!

Today I will remind you is the 359th anniversary of the day John Bunyan was arrested and taken into custody for preaching in a Puritan meeting house in England. He was convicted as a dissenter and spent 12 years in jail. While there, he began a book–The Pilgrim’s Progress.

“Mr. Worldly-Wiseman is not an ancient relic of the past. He is everywhere today, disguising his heresy and error by proclaiming the gospel of contentment and peace achieved by self-satisfaction and works. If he mentions Christ, it is not as the Savior who took our place, but as a good example of an exemplary life. Do we need a good example to rescue us, or do we need a Savior?”

No surprise that it is still in print and read all over the world. It’s a story that never gets old. My denomination is full of Worldly-Wisemen, that’s for sure.

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Stay warm and drive safely.

*Yiddish for a motley assortment of things

3 Comments
November 8, 2019

The checkered game of life

by chuckofish

Today is the birthday of Milton Bradley (November 8, 1836 – May 30, 1911) who was an American business magnate, game pioneer and publisher, credited by many with launching the board game industry, with the Milton Bradley Company.

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The Checkered Game of Life, Bradley’s first big success, was originally created in 1860 and like many 19th-century games, such as The Mansion of Happiness by  S.B. Ives in 1843, it had a strong moral message. In 1960 the modern version, The Game of Life, was introduced. The Game of Life was updated several times through the years. In 1991 the ‘moral message’ contained in the game was players being rewarded for good behavior, such as recycling trash and helping the homeless. They were virtue-signaling even then!

I remember playing board games and card games with my siblings–

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Mille Bornes, French for a thousand milestones, referring to the distance markers on French roads, in particular–but I was never very good at games. There are too many rules to remember.

I remember playing riotous games of Hearts, and Categories was always a favorite of ours.

What games do you remember from your childhood?

So regarding a Friday movie pick…it might be time to watch Jumanji (1995) or Jumanji: Return to the Jungle (2017) in honor of old Milton Bradley.

Screen Shot 2019-11-07 at 2.25.28 PM.pngThis is how my mind works after all…

Of course, since yesterday was the anniversary of the day Steve McQueen died in 1980, we might want to go in that direction.

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(@john.wayne.fans Instagram)

Well, decisions, decisions…

Have a good weekend!

4 Comments
November 5, 2019

Praise God from whom all blessings flow

by chuckofish

We thank thee, O God, for the saints of all ages; for those who in times of darkness kept the lamp of faith burning; for the great souls who saw visions of larger truths and dared to declare them; for the multitude of quiet and gracious souls whose presence has purified and sanctified the world; and for those known and loved by us, who have passed from this earthly fellowship into the fuller life with thee. Accept this our thanksgiving through Jesus Christ, our Mediator and Redeemer, to whom be praise and dominion for ever.

–Kendall Harmon, A prayer for All Saints Day

So Halloween and All Saints Day have come and gone and we are on the downward slide to the end of the year! Zut alors, the year has sped by.

We had a lovely weekend visit from daughter #2 all the way from Maryland. She went with me to my weekly chemo session…

Screen Shot 2019-11-04 at 4.30.56 PM.png…and we managed to do some of our favorite things as well. Daughter #1 joined us from mid-MO and we went to estate sales…

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…and went out to lunch. We frolicked with the wee babes…

IMG_3774.jpegIMG_3769.jpegWe watched Spy (2015), which we still think is hilarious,

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and a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie starring Jodie Sweetin which was part of the Countdown to Christmas. (Yikes.)

Screen Shot 2019-11-04 at 4.39.23 PM.pngAnd daughter #2 made her famous macaroni and cheese. In addition, we gave each other foot spa treatments and sat around and talked and talked. And went to bed early.

Nothing better, am I right?

It was a good start to November which is a month when we like to consider how much we have to be thankful for, including these guys.

Enjoy your week!

6 Comments
November 1, 2019

“Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord.”*

by chuckofish

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We had a very quiet Halloween, as we usually do, but it was even more so since it was freezing cold here in flyover country. Literally freezing! There were snow flurries in the morning!

Luckily this had no impact on daughter #2 arriving on time from Maryland. 🙌🙌🙌 She arrived and then the wee babes dropped by after school to show us their Halloween costumes.

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They got to wear their costumes at school.

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They were the cutest little Triceratops ever. (Daughter #3 made the costumes. She has mad skills.)

Lest we forget, yesterday was also Reformation Day, when we celebrate Martin Luther’s nailing of his ninety-five theses to the church door on October 31, 1517, which provoked a debate that culminated finally in the Protestant Reformation.Screen Shot 2019-10-31 at 9.03.08 PM.png

Praise ye the LORD. Praise God in his sanctuary: praise him in the firmament of his power.

And now I will concentrate on the simple joy of having all my children home for the weekend. Everyone will be over on Saturday night for a little party and what is better than that? (Okay, we wish DN were here, but we will toast absent friends.)

*Psalm 150:6

 

 

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October 29, 2019

“Hold the selfies, put the Gram away/ Get your family, y’all hold hands and pray”*

by chuckofish

 

IMG_4072.JPGOn Friday I received my copy of Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout in the mail. It was a quick read and I finished it in a day. It was a big disappointment. All of the reviews I have read have been raves, so I am in a distinct minority it seems.

Olive, Again is a sequel to Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, which I loved. I have liked most of her books and almost all of them are tied up in this one. Indeed, in a series of linked short stories, we find out what happens to all those Maine characters who have populated her books. What we find out, basically, is that they are all frightened and lonely people with no spiritual life. It is a bleak world where nothing has much meaning. At the end of the book, Olive writes (spoiler alert!), “I do not have a clue who I have been. Truthfully, I do not understand a thing.”

I could go on, but it is just kind of depressing, so why bother.

Anyway, despite reading this disappointing book, daughter # 1 and I got quite a lot done this weekend, tidying up the house for daughter #2’s visit this coming weekend. I even persuaded the OM to hang up a pair of new drapes in my office. I got them on Etsy.com and I think they look great.

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We also watched Ghostbusters (1984) which I thought held up very well and is kind of a classic at this point.

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The scene at the beginning in the New York Public Library…

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reminded us of Lottie…LOL!

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“No human being would stack books like this.”

Meanwhile, the boy had a fine time at the wedding in Rye, New York.

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There he is to the right of the bride

And now he is home again, home again, jiggety jig.

And now I am back to wondering what to read. Have a good week!

“I don’t myself think much of science as a phase of human development. It has given us a lot of ingenious toys; they take our attention away from the real problems, of course, and since the problems are insoluble, I suppose we ought to be grateful for distraction. But the fact is, the human mind, the individual mind, has always been made more interesting by dwelling on the old riddles, even if it makes nothing of them. Science hasn’t given us any new amazements, except of the superficial kind we get from witnessing dexterity and sleight-of-hand. It hasn’t given us any richer pleasures, as the Renaissance did, nor any new sins-not one! Indeed, it takes our old ones away. It’s the laboratory, not the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world. You’ll agree there is not much thrill about a physiological sin. We were better off when even the prosaic matter of taking nourishment could have the magnificence of a sin. I don’t think you help people by making their conduct of no importance-you impoverish them. As long as every man and woman who crowded into the cathedrals on Easter Sunday was a principal in a gorgeous drama with God, glittering angels on one side and the shadows of evil coming and going on the other, life was a rich thing. The king and the beggar had the same chance at miracles and great temptations and revelations. And that’s what makes men happy, believing in the mystery and importance of their own little individual lives. It makes us happy to surround our creature needs and bodily instincts with as much pomp and circumstance as possible. Art and religion (they are the same thing, in the end, of course) have given man the only happiness he has ever had.”
― Willa Cather, The Professor’s House 

*Kanye West, “Closed on Sunday”

4 Comments
October 25, 2019

“Another fall, another turned page…”*

by chuckofish

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Less than a week of October left! Can you believe it?

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The fall goes by in such a rush…and then it is dark at 5:00 p.m. and it is winter. Sigh.

Daughter #1 had work to do in town so she is home for a long weekend. One of her meetings was at Anheuser Busch and she got to hang out with these guys…

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She’ll go with me to chemo today and on Saturday we’ll venture out to an estate sale or two and maybe…lunch! The boy is in New York for a wedding where he’ll get to wear a tux. I wish I could be there with him, but we do what we can do.

The wee babes have had a busy week at school and Lottie has worn a variety of hair bows.

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Teach us, O God, to trust your providence, ordered and sure; to accept your wisdom, unerring and true; and to rejoice in your love, unbounded and eternal; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

–Charles Simeon (1759-1836)

Paintings are (top down) by Nikolai Matveevich Pozdneev, Vincent Van Gogh, Winslow Homer, Norman Rockwell.

*Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

2 Comments
October 22, 2019

“Somebody’s comin’, Pa!”

by chuckofish

Well, for anyone who was wondering, the OM and I watched Shane (1953) the other night for our anniversary and we were reminded, once again, what a really great movie it is.

hqdefaultReaders of this blog know how much I love John Ford westerns, how I think some of them are truly works of art, and that John Wayne is my favorite actor of all time. However, Shane, directed by George Stevens and starring the unlikely Alan Ladd, is my favorite western and, probably in the last analysis, my favorite movie.

Based on a novel by Jack Schaefer, the screenplay is by the great A.B. Guthrie. Everything is not black-and-white in this story. The good guys (the homesteaders) are sometimes weak and whining. The bad guys (the ranchers) make some strong arguments and are understandably frustrated. Into this mess rides Shane, the reluctant gunslinger, who is hired by Joe Starrett to help on his homestead. Shane likes Starrett and wants to help him, but his presence shifts the balance, and the ranchers bring in their own equalizer, the gunfighter Wilson.

Screen Shot 2019-10-21 at 2.33.55 PM.pngOne hot-headed homesteader is killed and the other homesteaders want to run.

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Shane rallies the homesteaders; the inarticulate but stalwart Starrett says he’ll take care of things. (My son thinks Starrett is the real hero of the film–the hardworking father and husband who is willing to die so his family can have a better life.) But Shane, even though he has fallen in love with Starrett’s wife, can’t let his friend get himself killed, so he goes into town himself to take care of Wilson.

It is a simple story beautifully told with minimal dialogue. The characters are so authentic in their ill-fitting, wrinkled clothes and muddy boots. The children, especially Brandon de Wilde, are real in ways seldom caught on film.

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The pacing and balance of this film are near perfect with homey moments of family life on the frontier interspersed with moments of jangling violence. Indeed, the editing of this film is some of the best ever in film history. It is sharp and crisp and drives the action.Think of the barroom brawl where Starrett and Shane fight together against the cowboys with the timid homesteaders watching, and then later when they fight each other in the yard with the horses and cattle going nuts and Marian screaming and Joey wide-eyed. And yet nothing is overdone.

Prior to Shane, George Stevens was a good director, but here he rises to a whole other level. He never patronizes the homesteaders (or his audience) with any aw-shucks scenes. Their feelings are real and raw. The funeral scene is a good example: the quietly sobbing wife, the distracted children, the heartbroken dog, the harmonica-playing friend, and Starrett standing in for a minister, because they have no one else. And Stevens pulled a truly great performance out of B-team player Alan Ladd, who surprised everyone with his portrayal of the lonely gunfighter who tries to seize one last chance at a “normal” life, but sacrifices himself for the greater good. Ladd was not particularly good at expressing feelings (as I have mentioned before) and in Shane he is all about repressed feelings. It works.  All the actors in this movie are excellent and believable in their parts.

Shane won the Oscar for Best Color Cinematography (Loyal Griggs) and the award was well-deserved. How beautiful is this movie!

shaneWell, I guess I got a  little carried away, but I will stop here and just recommend that you watch this movie. I saw Woody Allen interviewed once where he was talking about Shane and how it is one of his favorite movies. He has probably seen it 100 times, he said, and no matter where he is, if the movie comes on tv, he will stop and watch the whole thing through.  I can relate. No matter how many times you see Shane, you see something new.

Anyway, the rest of my weekend was pretty quiet. The wee babes came over for dinner on Sunday night. They rearranged the furniture as usual.

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I can’t wait until they are old enough to watch Shane!

4 Comments
October 18, 2019

Hanging in there

by chuckofish

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“Love is not a big enough word.”

So the OM and I are celebrating our 39th anniversary today! I grant you that celebrating may be too strong a word for what we will actually be doing…

…but you know that I am always looking for a reason to toast or celebrate.  And 39 years is a long time!

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1970s College ID–good grief!

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He still has that shirt and it still fits…

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The parade did not pass us by…

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…and the soundtrack never changed…

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(Always with the free advertising…)

Thirty-nine years deserves champagne, but we will probably be hunkering down in front of the telly and watching a movie (sans champagne), per usual on a Friday night.

However, the list of movies that comes up when you google “wedding anniversary movies” is truly bizarre. I mean, really, Gone Girl (2014) is #1.

Shane (1953) is #22 on the list, I suppose because Joe and Marian Starrett celebrate their wedding anniversary on the 4th of July shortly before the denouement of the film.

Screen Shot 2019-10-17 at 11.43.04 AM.pngWell, I haven’t been able to come up with a list of my own…except that Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) comes to mind…

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…wherein Diane Keaton and Woody Allen play a married couple trying to solve a mystery involving a neighbor who may or may not have been murdered. I think it is hilarious but the OM despises Woody Allen. (And there is something vaguely familiar about Diane and Woody.)

Then there’s always Cary Grant and Irene Dunne or Rock Hudson and Doris Day or William Powell and Myrna Loy in a variety of films featuring them as married couples.

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Well, we’ll figure something out. Any suggestions?

Here’s to 39 years! And to a few more!

Have a good weekend!

7 Comments
October 15, 2019

Release one leaf at break of day

by chuckofish

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O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.
–Robert Frost

I love October; it is my favorite month. But I feel that it is rushing by and that I am not able to savor its beauty. No long walks or day trips to mid-MO wine country. Well, c’est la vie. We do what we can.

This past weekend daughter #1 came for a short visit and we did get out on Saturday to a good estate sale where we did rather well. She got a chair and I got a Christmas present for someone. We also went out to lunch. And we met the wee babes at the local farmer’s market to watch them frolic on hay bales and in the corn box.

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They also came over afterwards for pizza and more time with the dollhouse.

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We were certainly living our best lives.

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The painting is Autumn Branches by Jan Schmuckal (found on Etsy.com).

3 Comments
October 11, 2019

This and that

by chuckofish

Well, when you least expect it, you get a surprise. And the Cardinals really surprised me. They won the NLCS in a remarkable game 5, scoring 10 runs in the first inning and winning 13-1.

Screen Shot 2019-10-10 at 9.16.21 AM.pngScreen Shot 2019-10-10 at 9.08.54 AM.pngIn other news I went to the pumpkin patch at the local Methodist Church and met the wee babes there after school.

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We picked out some pumpkins and they ran around.

FullSizeRender-1.jpegFullSizeRender.jpegIMG_3007.jpegA good time was had by all! And we got pumpkins.

History Fun Fact for the day: During a visit to St. Louis on this day in 1910, Theodore Roosevelt flew with pilot Arch Hoxsey, becoming the first U.S. president to fly. The former president must have been a pretty fearless guy–to go up in a plane with a 26-year old pilot! (A few years earlier he had startled the country by diving beneath the waters of Long Island Sound in a submarine.)

Screen Shot 2019-10-10 at 2.38.32 PM.pngSadly, the pilot died a few months later while trying to set a new altitude record. The Wright brothers paid for his funeral.

Yesterday was the start of Dolly Parton Week at the Opry where they are celebrating Dolly’s 50th Opry Member Anniversary. This week-long celebration of her impact on music and the Opry leads up to her 50th anniversary performance on the Opry stage on Saturday. How I wish I could be there Saturday night! I’d also like to see that, yes, truly “every sequin tells a story” at “Dolly: My Opry Memories”, a special limited-time exhibit at the Opry House. I want to “go back in time with wardrobe pieces Dolly has worn on the Opry and Ryman stages over her Opry career!”

Screen Shot 2019-10-10 at 4.03.21 PM.pngDisappointing, indeed, but as usual, I’ll be hanging out at home having a quiet weekend. I  hope to at least make it to an estate sale that looks promising. Maybe I’ll watch a Dolly movie this weekend. Anyone for Steel Magnolias (1989)?

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or Rhinestone (1984)?

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Well, we’ll see.

 

Have a good weekend!

O Lord, heavenly Father, in whom is the fullness of light and wisdom: Enlighten our minds by thy Holy Spirit, and give us grace to receive thy Word with reverence and humility, without which no man can understand thy truth; for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord.

–John Calvin (1509-1564)

4 Comments