Well, it’s been 38 years since old Steve McQueen died on November 7, 1980. Sigh.
Tonight I’ll drive (pretty) fast in my Mini Cooper in his memory. (He owned a Mini, among many other two- and 4-wheeled vehicles.)
And I’ll watch one of my favorite S. McQ movies.
I guess “The Magnificent Seven” is in the Westerns section.
Sounds like a good plan.
*Sheryl Crow
Why do plumbing emergencies always happen on the weekend? Because they just do. C’est la vie.
The OM keeps an eye on the plumber as he snakes the sewer line.
Well, we had one such emergency on Saturday. The OM dealt with it mostly, since daughter #1 and I were out garage/rummage sale-ing when it occurred. Don’t worry, I helped with the clean-up on Sunday (following the longest church service in history–Pledge Sunday, All Saints Sunday and two baptisms all in one.)
The wee babes and their parents were in Kansas City, so I didn’t get to see them! Daughter #1 hurried back to Mid-MO so she could catch them as they paused in Columbia on their drive back Sunday afternoon. Sigh. I missed seeing them.
But I had a fun weekend, nevertheless. The bluegrass concert on Friday night was great. We checked out all the new Christmas stuff at Home Goods. We watched one of our favorite movies, The Man Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain (1995), in which Hugh Grant stars and actually plays a nice guy for a change.
On Sunday afternoon, after vacuuming and cleaning up, I went through my “keep out” closet where I stow all my presents (like Babe Paley, I shop for Christmas presents all year long) and made lists of what I have for Christmas and what I still need to do.
It is time to get serious about the holidays.
And now it is Monday (!) and I’m back at the salt mine…
*Revelation 21:5
It is November and we are three weeks away from Thanksgiving! Zut alors!
I am also three weeks away from leaving on a big trip–a pilgrimage to the Holy Land! Am I ready? Not exactly. (I did renew my passport.) Good grief, I need to get my act together and fast. Hopefully, I will make some progress this weekend. Last weekend daughter #2 brought me a large suitcase to use for the trip, so I will start filling it up.
I have been reading up on Israel lately.
I’ll be ready…in the meantime, time marches on relentlessly and November is turning out to be a very busy month. First up, the OM and I are going to see “legendary bluegrass group Hot Rize” at the Sheldon tonight. Daughter #1 is driving in for it. Maybe the boy will join us.
By the way, we did watch Pony Express (1952) one night this week, but I have to confess I fell asleep. This has less to do with the quality of the film and more to do with my being an old lady who gets up too early every day to be able to watch TV at night. I must say I thought the cinematography (of the little I saw) was very good and the location shots in Kanab, Utah were impressive.
Maybe I’ll try again some time. On Halloween night we turned off the lights and proceeded to watch House of Wax (1953) with hometowner Vincent Price on TCM.
I fell asleep. Maybe I should stop pretending and just turn in at 7:30 pm.
Have a good weekend. Get some rest.
Thank goodness today is Friday! And bonus: this morning I am running up to the airport to pick up daughter #2 who is popping in for a quick visit from Maryland! Daughter #1 will drive in from mid-MO to join us later tonight.
We’re going to have a little Halloween party so the wee babes can come over and wear their costumes again. In between we’ll do our usual old-lady stuff: go out to lunch, check out estate sales and sip margaritas in the afternoon. Who cares if it’s going to rain all weekend?
You will recall that today is the 157th anniversary of the day the Pony Express ceased operation in 1861. The idea of a fast mail route to the Pacific coast was prompted largely by California’s newfound prominence and its rapidly growing population. William Russell, Alexander Majors, and William Waddell, who were already in the freighting and drayage business, founded the Pony Express in St. Joseph, MO in 1859, delivering messages, newspapers, and mail from St. Joseph to Sacramento, CA along an approximately 1,900-mile-long route.
Majors was a religious man and resolved “by the help of God” to overcome all difficulties. He presented each rider with a special edition Bible and required them to sign an oath:
I, …, do hereby swear, before the Great and Living God, that during my engagement, and while I am an employee of Russell, Majors, and Waddell, I will, under no circumstances, use profane language, that I will drink no intoxicating liquors, that I will not quarrel or fight with any other employee of the firm, and that in every respect I will conduct myself honestly, be faithful to my duties, and so direct all my acts as to win the confidence of my employers, so help me God.”
The Pony Express demonstrated that a unified transcontinental system of communications could be established and operated year-round. When replaced by the telegraph, the Pony Express quickly became romanticized and its reliance on the ability and endurance of individual young, hardy riders and fast horses was seen as evidence of rugged American individualism and awesomeness.
In honor of this anniversary I propose we try to find Pony Express (1953) starring Charlton Heston as Buffalo Bill and Forrest Tucker as Wild Bill Hickok. I’m sure it is highly fictionalized (i.e. made up out of whole cloth), but any movie with a young Chuck Heston is probably worth watching.
And here is Crowder’s new song, which I like a lot.
Have a great weekend!
The weekend turned out to be busier than anticipated, mainly because the weather was so beautiful.
After my estate sale adventures proved uninspiring, I convinced the OM to take an autumnal drive to Washington, MO in Franklin County (about an hour’s drive)…
…and have lunch at The Green Duck.
Despite a wrong turn and an unnecessary 20-minute detour, we found our destination and enjoyed a yummy lunch which was definitely a step above our usual weekend Steak ‘N Shake indulgence. I will note that the OM appears to have forgotten all his Boy Scout orienteering skills in his embrace of and subsequent dependence on Google Maps and his iPhone. Then again, it must be admitted that we were looking for The Blue Duck restaurant as opposed to The Green Duck. (Blue Duck, you will recall, was a bad guy in Lonesome Dove.) Zut alors! Life is so complicated.
On Sunday I went to church and read an odd lesson from Hebrews wherein I had to say Melchizedek twice. Later that afternoon I had to go to a work event (the 2nd annual “Hootenanny”) held at the Ethical Society…
The Sunday School room wall at the Ethical Society–God love ’em
…where old hippies sang protest songs and promised to Resist Authority.
This is my life
Of course, seniors singing protest songs is akin to Episcopalians singing gospel music…so I was not uncomfortable. When I got home it was nearly time for the wee babes to come over for Sunday tacos with their parents and I barely had time to vacuum up the crumbs from their last visit.
So you can see that my weekend went by in a flash. I did manage to watch Signs (1999) as well as a “quirky” English spy thriller, Q Planes (1939) which starred Laurence Olivier, Valerie Hobson and Ralph Richardson (always a favorite of mine.)
It is definitely worth watching.
I am presently working my way through season 2 of Miami Vice, which in retrospect, is decidedly not the great show we thought it was back in the 1980s. (Except episode three–“Out Where t he Buses Don’t Run”–which is great.) Now I watch it mainly to see this guy…
…and remember/chuckle at the 80s fashions…
La di da, la d i da.
Have a good week!
*Hymn #389, John Milton
Earlier this week the OM made some grumbling reference to our upcoming anniversary (38!) and whether I wanted “to do anything.” I suppose if I had said–yes, let’s get dressed up and paint the town! Please make a reservation for two at Tony’s (or some other extremely expensive restaurant)–he would have grumbled and done so. However, he knows me well enough after all these years to know I would never say that. It is a school night, after all.
So, anyway, we will probably kick back tonight and watch a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie to celebrate his birthday (b. 1960) today. Maybe the OM will pick up dinner at Chick-fil-a on the way home.
“The Puritan ethic of marriage was first to look not for a partner whom you do love passionately at this moment but rather for one whom you can love steadily as your best friend for life, then to proceed with God’s help to do just that.”
―
Meanwhile the wee babes came over last night and we watched Mary Poppins (1964)–they were mesmerized. [Don’t worry: we didn’t let them stand that close the whole time!] They love music and singing and Mary Poppins is one great song after another!
Three hours with the wee babes is exhausting but also the most fun of the week!
*Paul Laurence Dunbar
How was your weekend? Mine was nice and mellow. I watched two really good movies, went to a good estate sale, and my special program at the County Library was not bad. I find that the St. Louis Genealogical Society does not offer much to me personally as the members are mostly interested in researching their German and Irish ancestors. I really need to belong to the Kansas City Genealogical Society (if there is one) as that is where my ancestors made their mark. I learned some new things, however, and it was not a waste of time.
On Friday I moved all the plants in the Florida room into the dining room, because the outside temperature had plummeted. On Saturday I moved the plants to all corners of the house. Some of them have gotten to be pretty big, so it is not so easy to find space for them. Also they have to be placed where they are not overly accessible to the wee babes.
I found a couple of treasures at the one estate sale I went to.
Very large, like-new chinoiserie pillow–great fabric!
Needlepoint rescue/antique chair for $18
I convinced the OM to take me to lunch at the Sappington House, a nearby historic site, which I have never visited.
Only the restaurant in the barn is open on the weekend, so I will have to visit the house, built around 1816, on a weekday.
The food was very good and I will definitely return.
We watched two good movies: The Chalk Garden (1964) starring Deborah Kerr, Hayley Mills, John Mills, and Edith Evans.
[Once again the poster is way off.]
Based on the play by Enid Bagnold, this movie was always a favorite of mine, but I had been unable to find it for years and years. When I saw the DVD on the TCM.com site, I bought it. I was not disappointed.
The second movie we watched was To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), which daughter #1 had watched earlier in the week, prompting me to consider it.
Truly, you have to be in the right mood to watch this great, great movie and I was in the mood on Saturday night. It is definitely a top-ten movie. Everyone is perfect and the music is just the best. Gregory Peck was never better. He deserved every award he received that year.
And those kids…wow.
The wee babes finally were able to come over for Sunday night tacos. They were in fine fettle. They have come a long way in three weeks! Lottie can count to 10! The wee laddie weighs almost 19 lbs! His favorite word is “Go!”
Lottie and her friends Annie and Andy.
Oops!
Have a good week! Eat your veggies!
*Isaac Watts
Friday has arrived and Fall too, it would seem. The temperatures dropped yesterday and I must say I am enjoying the cooler temps and all that goes with that.
Talk about God rays…Is this photo cool or what?
Well, I have no Big Plans for the weekend. I am hoping to go to a program co-sponsored by the Missouri Historical Society Library and Research Center and the St. Louis Genealogical Society. Who knows? I may learn something.
I will catch up on puttering and house projects and reading.
Meanwhile the wee babes have been enjoying their little Lutheran pre-school/daycare…
…but they have caught every bug out there, and are frequently home with a temperature.
So we have not seen them in two weeks! Our regular Sunday night dinners are regular no more. C’est la vie. Here’s hoping (🙏) we see them this weekend!
The OM and I watched a good movie the other night which I recommend to you as my weekend movie pick.
As usual, this poster in no way represents the tone of the actual movie or, indeed, what it is actually about.
One of Our Aircraft Is Missing! (1942) is an early film from “The Archers,” the terrific team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, who wrote, directed, and produced the film.
Made during the war, it is an exciting tale of six downed British airmen in German-occupied Holland, who are all very different, but all determined to get back to England and fight again. They are aided in their escape by stalwart Netherlanders, including some bright children and very brave women. [Sidebar: I couldn’t help wondering how the brash young women of today would fare against real Nazis.]
The filmmakers knew how to make all the characters distinguishable and real with just a few lines of dialogue. I was impressed.
Do check it out. It is available on Amazon Prime. Have a great weekend!
* 
Last week the OM and I watched season one of Goliath (2016), the Amazon Prime original series “about a disgraced lawyer, now an ambulance chaser, who gets a case that could bring him redemption or at least revenge on the firm which expelled him.” (IMDB)
Although pretty intense and typically vulgar (every other word was f–king), it held our interest, which is saying something these days.
On Friday night we watched Hoosiers (1986) because the main character in Goliath–Billy McBride, played by Billy Bob Thornton–was obsessed with the movie and watched it at times of high stress. (I read that George Steinbrenner admitted to watching the movie 250 times.)
We enjoyed it very much.
Hoosiers is loosely based on the Milan High School team that won the 1954 Indiana state championship. With an enrollment of 161 students, it still stands as the smallest school to win a state basketball championship in Indiana. Hoosiers ranks high on all sorts of movie lists – 13th on the American Film Institute’s 100 Most Inspiring Films of All Times; fourth on an AFI poll of the 10 Greatest Sports Films of All Time; and first on USA Today’s For The Win list of the 25 Best Sports Movies Ever Made.
I must say, I can’t see this movie being made in Hollywood today. It takes place in Indiana–a flyover state after all–and is all about the old-fashioned virtues: hard work, dedication, forgiveness, humility. Characters say things like, “Five players on the floor functioning as one single unit: team, team, team – no one more important that the other.” It is about good people. There is no sex, no violence beyond some unsportsmanlike behavior on the part of opponents. And there are two ministers who travel with the team (on a church bus!) and pray before every game. At the final game: “And David put his hand in the bag and took out a stone and slung it. And it struck the Philistine on the head and he fell to the ground. Amen.”
Gene Hackman, who plays Coach Dale, thought the movie would bomb. He was wrong. It touched a cord with a lot of Americans. It is a very good movie, subtle and nuanced. Dennis Hopper is great. I wish he had won the supporting actor Oscar for which he was nominated.
So my advice is that you should try it, if you haven’t seen it, or watch it again if you have.
BTW, I looked up the original review of Goliath in the New York Times and, of course, there was the de rigueur correction at the bottom: A television review on Friday about the new Amazon series “Goliath” included an inaccurate discussion of the show’s plot structure. The critic mistakenly watched the first two episodes out of order. Morons.
*Said by Jimmy Chitwood at the end of Hoosiers (1986).
Yesterday I started off the day with a two-hour torture session at the dentist. I know there are worse things, but as I lay there defenseless, I kept thinking of Dustin Hoffman being harassed by Laurence Olivier
in Marathon Man (1976) and Steve Martin working on Bill Murray in Little Shop of Horrors (1986).
Ye gods. My dentist is very sweet and ladylike and a perfectionist, but, still, fear and loathing of the dentist must be a universal thing.
Well, thank goodness it is Friday!
I don’t have any big plans for the weekend. Daughter #1 is coming home as she has a three-day weekend. I do not, but c’est la vie.
Tonight I plan to watch some feel-good movie that will de-stress me. What do you think?
1964
1963
1959
1937
1963
2006
You can see the direction I’m taking…any suggestions?
*Jerry Warriner in “The Awful Truth”
dual personalities 