dual personalities

Earlier this summer I signed up for a ‘flower CSA’ run by a colleague’s entrepreneurial eleven-year-old daughter. She lives on a farm where there is plenty of space for flower-growing. I think it was a clever business idea, and she is doing a great job. The weekly bouquet has proved a wonderful morale booster. Last week I received this pretty bunch,

and here is the one that I picked up today:

I confess that I cannot identify most of the flowers, and I know that my arranging style is probably best described as chaotic, but I love the way they brighten up a room. Honestly, I’d rather participate in a flower CSA than a vegetable one. We’ve done that before but gave up because we mostly received unidentifiable greens. What can I say? I am not fond of kale.

In other news, I found out that our great aunt and uncles – Dora (age 10), Kenneth (age 9) and Thomas (age 7) Cameron – went from South Africa to the poorhouse in Dundee Scotland, which they entered on July 19^th, 1870. Our great-grandfather Daniel ended up in similar straits but in Edinburgh, presumably because he was 13 (I posted about him back in 2013). Here’s the front of the Dundee poorhouse which was a much larger complex of buildings than this photo suggests.

I suspect that the younger children went to Dundee because it’s in Forfar, and that’s where their mother came from. If so, they arrived only to discover that the family couldn’t take them, didn’t live there anymore, or had all died out. At any rate, the children didn’t stay in Dundee for long, for they appear in the 1871 census living in Kilmallie, Argyll with two spinster sisters, Elizabeth and Mary McColl. All of this raises several questions. Thomas was not the son of our great grandfather who died in 1861. What happened to his father, and why did Thomas go by Cameron? Did Ann’s second husband have the same surname as our great grandfather? Was there no second husband? Also, I find it interesting that the children ended up in Kilmaillie, their father’s birthplace. Could the spinster ladies have been related to his mother? Perhaps they were aunts. It’s all an intriguing mystery. I’ll keep digging…

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with some ‘ancestral mathematics’ to consider.

Food for thought… Have a great weekend!

*Thomas Gray, An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.

Plans were interrupted this weekend when I had to take the OM in to the ER when he thought he was having a heart “event”. Long story short, he is still at the hospital and will have a procedure this morning. He will be okay, but once again, we are reminded that things can change on a dime. I am always so grateful that our hospital is close by, the parking is easy and everyone is always so nice.

Daughter #1 drove back to town to keep me company and the boy has been, as always, supportive too. I had been planning to babysit the wee twins today and daughter #1 will take over that duty. We spent some time yesterday going through boxes of old Legos and washing them, so they can play with them today.

The coping mechanisms we employ–zut alors!

Anyway, blogging may be spotty this week, but we’ll be hanging in there!

For we are glad when we are weak and you are strong. Your restoration is what we pray for.

2 Corinthians 13:9

I’ve been watching quite a few movies lately, and my choices have oscillated wildly between recent releases (e.g., Belfast, Prey, and Thirteen Lives) and classics like To Be or Not to Be (1942), Objective Burma (1945) and last night’s The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936). Few of these films were great but most were eminently watchable. The Charge of the Light Brigade was not. It had a great director (Michael Curtiz of the Adventures of Robin Hood fame) and a stellar cast, including Errol Flynn, Olivia DeHavilland, Patric Knowles, David Niven, Donald Crisp, Nigel Bruce and other stalwarts. But let me tell you, not even that cast could save this train wreck of a movie.

Recognizing the movie’s flaws, Curtiz includes a disclaimer admitting that it takes liberties with history. That should have warned me. Most of the movie – everything except the last fifteen minutes – takes place in India and involves the machinations of a perfidious local raja named Surat Khan, a love triangle involving Errol, Olivia and Patric, and several interminable sequences of cavalry maneuvers to loud martial music.

The idea that Olivia would prefer Patric to Errol is absurd, as indeed is the whole Indian plot. At the beginning Errol saves Surat Khan from a leopard, so that Khan owes him his life. A few months later, Khan attacks the British fort where Errol is stationed. British incompetence allows Khan to lure a major portion of the cavalry away from the fort which he duly attacks. Eventually, Errol meets Khan to negotiate terms and nobly rejects Khan’s offer of free passage out of the war zone. After Khan attacks again, and Errol and Olivia manage to escape (Patric being elsewhere), everyone else, including the post’s women and children, gets slaughtered. Errol returns with help only to find the carnage. He and his men vow revenge, forcing Khan to flee India and take refuge with – you guessed it – the Russians. After Errol faces the fact that his fiancée Olivia loves his brother Patric, and his unit is transferred to the Crimea, he falsifies their orders so they can charge the Russian position and kill Surat Khan who is there watching. Have you got all that?

Let’s just review our history for a minute. The charge of the Light Brigade occurred at the Battle of Balaclava in 1854. Due to Lord Lucan’s misunderstanding of Lord Raglan’s vague order, the Light Brigade attacked the Russian artillery position and got blown to bits. It was a disaster, but the media (remember Russell’s Dispatches from the Crimea?) put a good face on it, and then Alfred Lord Tennyson immortalized the action in poetry. What made it worthy of celebrating was that the men knew the order would get them all killed, but they obeyed anyway. There was no Surat Khan and no revenge story. Why anyone thought that muddling history in such a way would be a good idea remains a mystery.

I can’t help feeling that Curtiz started out making a movie about British India, but partway through decided that he needed some hook to get people into the theater, so he added a voiceover at the beginning and a bit at the end, and voilà, we get The Charge of the Light Brigade.

All of this goes to show that bad movies have always been made, and while The Charge of the Light Brigade is far, far from the bottom of the heap, I did hate myself a little for watching the whole thing. Watch something else this weekend!

I recently finished reading David McCullough’s 1776 which was a fascinating read, especially in our current age. I learned A. LOT. and was left wanting more when I turned the last page. I decided to pick up A Treasury of the World’s Greatest Speeches, which I’m sure I paid a dollar for at an estate sale. You know I love grabbing books off a shelf and flipping them open and seeing what I find.

“In these sentiments, sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe further that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other. I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, sir, to find the system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the builders of Babel; and that our states are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another’s throats. Thus I consent, sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best. The opinions I have had of its errors, I sacrifice to the public good. I have never whispered a syllable of them abroad. Within these walls they were born, and here they shall die. If every one of us in returning to our constituents were to report the objections he has had to it, and endeavor to gain partisans in support of them, we might prevent its being generally received, and thereby lose all the salutary effects and great advantages resulting naturally in our favor among foreign nations as well as among ourselves from our real or apparent unanimity. Much of the strength and efficiency of any government in procuring and securing happiness to the people depends on opinion, on the general opinion of the goodness of the government, as well as of the wisdom and integrity of its governors. I hope therefore that for our own sakes as a part of the people, and for the sake of posterity, we shall act heartily and unanimously in recommending this Constitution (if approved by Congress and confirmed by the Convention) wherever our influence may extend, and turn our future thoughts and endeavors to the means of having it well administered.

On the whole, sir, I cannot help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it would with me, on this occasion, doubt a little of his own infallibility and, to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this document.”

Benjamin Franklin, September 17, 1787

This week the DH and I managed to get away for a day-trip to the Adirondacks. Did you know that the Adirondack Park is the biggest preserve in the lower 48 states? Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Glacier, and Great Smoky Mountains National Parks could all fit inside it. Of course, those parks do not have (as far as I know) towns within their borders, so the statement isn’t really fair. Anyway, we went to visit the Wild Center, a facility devoted to educating people about the flora and fauna of the Adirondacks. It has a big exhibition center (the building by the pond in the photo below) and loads of great hiking trails including a walkway above the trees (bottom right).

Tupper Lake, where the Wild Center is located, is an easy hour’s drive from our house. We timed the trip perfectly; the weather was a balmy 78 and sunny, there were no bugs to speak of, and since it was the middle of the week, it wasn’t very crowded.  The wild flowers were blooming like crazy and very tall. This isn’t the greatest photo, but you get the idea.

The nonchalant deer did not even pause their munching as we wandered by. Can you spot the second deer in this photo?

We climbed up to the treetops and navigated the funky rope bridges and walkways, some of which swayed alarmingly.

From the upper portions of the sky trail, we enjoyed beautiful, tree-filled views.

After thorough exploration, we stopped at the café for a cup of coffee and a packet of Lorna Doons, and then we came home and collapsed, tired but happy. I can’t tell you how nice it was to get out and get some fresh air! Really, we need to make more day-trips!

To start your weekend off with a cute baby, let me introduce our new great-nephew Charlie. The little guy is already six weeks old! Here is our brother proudly holding his first grandchild:

And the happy parents with their bundle of joy.

Welcome to the world, little Charlie!