dual personalities

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September 3, 2019

Par for the course

by chuckofish

As predicted, I had a very quiet long weekend. Daughter #1 got a lot done while she was here, but I spent the weekend reading and napping. No matter how much I nap, though, I never feel less fatigued. This is problematic and annoying, but par for the chemo course.

I re-read Rest and Be Thankful by Helen MacInnes, published in 1949, a novel which I found not to be dated, still relevant and very enjoyable. I started Wildfire at Midnight by Mary Stewart (1956). We watched Hatari (1962) on two nights so we could maintain our 8:30 bedtime.

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You gotta love those baby elephants!

On Sunday night the boy brought the wee laddie over for a Labor Day barbecue. (Little Lottie was under the weather and stayed home with her mother.)

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Best Book Ever

It is always fun/interesting to see one twin without the other. The wee laddie was well behaved and mellow, but we did have to have a lesson in not playing “catch” with the tator tots at the dinner table.

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Daughter #1 headed back to Mid-MO on Monday morning and I continued with my reading/napping routine.

Can’t quite believe it’s September. I have a very busy week at work–here’s hoping I can get through it without too much ado. How is your week shaping up?

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August 23, 2019

True for you or me

by chuckofish

Well, the kids are back in school. They’re back at my flyover university and in all the schools around town. I can tell because the traffic is different in the morning. Even the wee babes are back and loving it.

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So much to do! So much to learn! Life is good.

In honor of being back in school, here is a poem by Langston Hughes…

The instructor said,

Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you—
Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it’s that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I’m what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me—we two—you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York, too.) Me—who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?

Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white—
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That’s American.
Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that’s true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me—
although you’re older—and white—
and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

(Langston Hughes, “Theme for English B”)

Have a good weekend.  Go home and write/a page tonight./And let that page come out of you—Then, it will be true. 

1 Comment
August 16, 2019

So brave a palace

by chuckofish

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Well, the wee babes went back to school this week. They were pretty excited about it.

As you can see, Lottiebelle is already co-leading the class…

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Tomorrow the OM and I are heading down to Jefferson City to hang out at daughter #1’s new apartment. (Check out the new video on the JC Visitor’s Bureau webpage–JC is a happening place.) I’m sure we won’t be much actual help unpacking stuff etc, but we can lend moral support and give advice.

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Yeah, that lamp looks swell over there….

I am looking forward to a change of scenery!

Today I start a new, once-a-week chemo routine and I am hoping it is a bit easier than the last rotation. On verra bien.

For us the winds do blow,
The earth doth rest, heaven move, and fountains flow.
     Nothing we see but means our good,
     As our delight or as our treasure:
The whole is either our cupboard of food,
          Or cabinet of pleasure.

          The stars have us to bed;
Night draws the curtain, which the sun withdraws;
     Music and light attend our head.
     All things unto our flesh are kind
In their descent and being; to our mind
          In their ascent and cause.

          Each thing is full of duty:
Waters united are our navigation;
     Distinguishèd, our habitation;
     Below, our drink; above, our meat;
Both are our cleanliness.
  Hath one such beauty?
          Then how are all things neat?

          More servants wait on Man
Than he'll take notice of:  in every path
     He treads down that which doth befriend him
     When sickness makes him pale and wan.
O mighty love!  Man is one world, and hath
          Another to attend him.

          Since then, my God, thou hast
So brave a palace built, O dwell in it
     That it may dwell with thee at last!
     Till then, afford us so much wit,
That, as the world serves us, we may serve thee,
          And both thy servants be.
--George Herbert, from "Man"
3 Comments
August 2, 2019

“What ho, Tashtego!”

by chuckofish

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Where did the week go? Daughter #2 and I went to work every day and got things done until about 1:00 and then went home and collapsed. This is my new normal. She made tasty dinners hoping I would eat them and I mostly did. We watched Lonesome Dove and Love With the Proper Stranger (1963).

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This movie was better than I remembered!

But we didn’t get much else done and that’s okay. DN arrives today while we are at chemo…

Screen Shot 2019-08-01 at 10.07.50 PM.png…and we will put him to work, busting up chifforobes etc. Daughter #1 rolls into town later this afternoon, and then we will all go into Melville party mode for the big day tomorrow.

Have a great weekend! Don’t forget to toast Herman Melville at least once!

PSA: Just a reminder that August is the month for TCM Summer Under the Stars, wherein each day of the month is devoted to a full 24 hours of films featuring a single outstanding actor or actress. Returning favorites include June Allyson, Fred Astaire, Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando, Kirk Douglas, Irene Dunne, Errol Flynn, Henry Fonda, Ava Gardner, Susan Hayward, Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine, Red Skelton, Ann Sothern and James Stewart.

Check out the full schedule here and start setting your DVR.

And please say a little prayer for the wee laddie who is having another corrective surgery on his eye this morning. 🙏🙏🙏

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3 Comments
July 23, 2019

Let it rain, rain down on me*

by chuckofish

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I thought I was taller than you…

Well, your dual personalities had a lot of fun hanging out, not doing much, but just being together. And that’s what it’s all about, right?

My sister got to hang out with the wee babes, who are admittedly more fun than a barrel of monkeys…

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Lottie go to the beach?

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Come in the water, Wheeler! It feels great!

…and she went estate sale-ing with daughter #1 and to lunch at the Women’s Exchange, but the rest of the time, we were pretty mellow. And now I miss her. Sigh.

But things are bubbling over at work and daughter #2 arrives on Thursday, so dull  moments do not accrue.

“No stars gleam as brightly as those which glisten in the polar sky. No water tastes so sweet as that which springs amid the desert sand. And no faith is so precious as that which lives and triumphs through adversity. Tested faith brings experience. You would never have believed your own weakness had you not needed to pass through trials. And you would never have known God’s strength had His strength not been needed to carry you through.”
― Charles H. Spurgeon

Have a good Tuesday!

*Crowder

4 Comments
July 19, 2019

Hanging out

by chuckofish

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Which DP is that? It must be “Great-Aunt Sarah”!

Well, the dual personalities have been hanging out and gabbing away for several days now…

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…talking over the events and people of our shared lives. We haven’t dined out or visited any points of interest or gone shopping or anything.

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And now, on to another round of chemo.

The question is not whether the things that happen to you are chance things or God’s things because, of course, they are both at once. There is no chance thing through which God cannot speak — even the walk from the house to the garage that you have walked ten thousand times before, even the moments when you cannot believe there is a God who speaks at all anywhere. He speaks, I believe, and the words he speaks are incarnate in the flesh and blood of our selves and of our own footsore and sacred journeys. We cannot live our lives constantly looking back, listening back, lest we be turned to pillars of longing and regret, but to live without listening at all is to live deaf to the fullness of the music. Sometimes we avoid listening for fear of what we may hear, sometimes for fear that we may hear nothing at all but the empty rattle of our own feet on the pavement. But be not affeard, says Caliban, nor is he the only one to say it. “Be not afraid,” says another, “for lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” He says he is with us on our journeys. He says he has been with us since each of our journeys began. Listen for him. Listen to the sweet and bitter airs of your present and your past for the sound of him.

–Frederick Buechner, from The Sacred Journey 

3 Comments
July 3, 2019

“I haven’t lost my temper in 40 years”*

by chuckofish

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Tomorrow is the 4th of July–let’s whoop it up some!

In the morning TCM is playing some great John Wayne movies…

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…and that night they’re showing some appropriate musicals…

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We will probably be taking it pretty easy here in our flyover neighborhood. We won’t be attending Fair St. Louis or anything big like that. (We’ll watch the parade on TV.) But the OM will fire up the barbecue and the wee babes will come over for awhile. (They have new outfits.)

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We’ll dig out the sparklers and bang some pots and pans. Maybe we’ll play some patriotic music…

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And let’s all say a prayer:

Lord God Almighty, in whose Name the founders of this country won liberty for themselves and for us, and lit the torch of freedom for nations then unborn: Grant that we and all the people of this land may have grace to maintain our liberties in righteousness and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Collect for Independence Day, BCP)

There are a lot of movies with 4th of July scenes, but lists almost always forget the classic finale of McClintock! (1963) wherein John Wayne spanks Maureen O’Hara and everyone cheers. Here’s another great scene featuring our quintessential American hero.

Have a good one. Make good choices.

*John Wayne in McClintock! (1963)

2 Comments
June 26, 2019

They neither toil nor spin

by chuckofish

It is daylily season in our flyover town.

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As you know, I love them and their heat-loving generosity of spirit. We have had a very long wet, fairly cool spring but the lilies seem to have adjusted. They just go with the flow and fill in and keep going.

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his span of life? 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O men of little faith? 31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.

34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day. (Matthew 6:25-34

Here are some pics from a friend’s blog. He has a much more diverse display than we do.

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(And let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day!)

4 Comments
May 16, 2019

Jesus take the wheel*

by chuckofish

Well, I got some hard news last month. I have cancer and will have surgery tomorrow. We have been through this in my family quite recently with the boy and now it is my turn. I hope I can handle it all with as much grace and confidence as he did.

This article from the desiringGod.org website

was very helpful to me and Piper/Powlison even refer to a favorite prayer of mine–what we call in the Episcopal Church, Saint Patrick’s breastplate:

Christ be with me, Christ within me,

Christ behind me, Christ before me

Christ beside me, Christ to win me,

Christ to comfort and restore me,

Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ in quiet, Christ in danger

Christ in hearts of all that love me,

Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

In the meantime my DP will continue with the blog while I recover, ably supported by daughters #1 and #2 who have pledged to fill in along with DN. So keep checking in!

And keep me in your prayers please.

I can do all this through Christ who gives me strength. (Philippians 4:13)

*Brett James / Gordon Sampson / Hillary Lindsey for Carrie Underwood

21 Comments
May 13, 2019

“Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice: him serve with mirth, his praise forth tell”*

by chuckofish

I had a lovely weekend, how about you?

Although Saturday was the coldest May 11 on record (!) here in our flyover city and it was pouring rain most of the day, daughter #1 and I had fun. We went to an auction…

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…and I rescued an early 19th century reverse painted mirror. We then went to a hipster restaurant for lunch (avocado toast, yum) in an unfamiliar neighborhood.

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Coincidentally (?) Gary and Don were playing there, along with Don’s daughter Stephanie, and the ambiance/music was great.

We went home and prepared for the wee babes to come over and celebrate Mother’s Day. Daughter #1 made Episcopal Souffle. Nothing fancy, but my favorite. We had a lovely time.

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IMG_1493.JPGOn Sunday we went to church and and then the OM took us to Ted Drewes afterwards.

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It was nippy out so we ate in the car!

I gabbed on the phone with dear daughter #2 and with my siblings. A perfect weekend!

*William Keble, hymn 377 (Old 100th)

5 Comments