dual personalities

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August 4, 2022

Hot time, summer in the city

by chuckofish

Praise God that His grace is sufficient for each day.

How is your week going? I have been working inside, moving things around to accommodate my new wing chair, which I am picking up later today with the assistance of the boy and his truck. My home is definitely a work in progress…adding and subtracting and rediscovering things that I have put away. As the @madcapcottage boys say: “When it’s time to change! Let’s rearrange…”

I worked in the yard for small amounts of time this week, but we have entered that portion of our flyover summer when it is too darn hot to do much outside. The yard is on its own.

I also worked on (and finished) my new Rifle Co. puzzle.

It was a fun one!

And I am reading J.C. Ryle’s oft-quoted book Holiness.

Published in 1879, it is remarkably readable and relevant. I highly recommend it!

“It is vain to shut our eyes to the fact that there is a vast quantity of so-called Christianity nowadays which you cannot declare positively unsound, but which, nevertheless, is not full measure, good weight and sixteen ounces to the pound. It is a Christianity in which there is undeniably ‘something about Christ and something about grace and something about faith and something about repentance and something about holiness’, but it is not the real ‘thing as it is’ in the Bible. Things are out of place and out of proportion.”

Boy, old J.C. should see what passes for Christianity these days!

Tomorrow is the birthday of film director and writer John Huston, who was born in Nevada, Missouri in 1906. He made a lot of movies–some bad and some good. You might want to watch one of his good ones such as Key Largo (1948) or The African Queen (1951). He also directed The Bible: In the Beginning, which was the second highest-grossing movie in 1966. (No kidding.) He also played Noah. It is not a great movie, but I would like to see Peter O’Toole as the Three Angels again. He was pretty great.

You will recall that he (they) brings down the wrath of God on Sodom and Gomorrah.

In my Bible reading I am currently in Judges and have recently read all about Samson and Delilah–quite a story! I was reminded that Cecil B. deMille made a movie about them with Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr cleverly titled Samson and Delilah (1949). I want to check it out.

I mean that story was made for the movies!

When Delilah saw that he had told her everything, she sent word to the rulers of the Philistines, “Come back once more; he has told me everything.” So the rulers of the Philistines returned with the silver in their hands. 19 After putting him to sleep on her lap, she called for someone to shave off the seven braids of his hair, and so began to subdue him.[a] And his strength left him.

20 Then she called, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you!”

He awoke from his sleep and thought, “I’ll go out as before and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had left him.

21 Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes and took him down to Gaza. Binding him with bronze shackles, they set him to grinding grain in the prison. 22 But the hair on his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.

–Judges 16: 18-22

Well, we amuse ourselves.

4 Comments
August 3, 2022

“There’s booze in the blender/and soon it will render/that frozen concoction that helps me hang on.”

by chuckofish

Not to sound like too much of a lush here, but I do love a margarita. And ever since Club Taco closed, I’ve been searching for my lost shaker of salt. No wait, I’ve been searching for a good replacement. Well, the last time I visited my favorite liquor store (I’ll take phrases I never thought I’d use for $200, Alex), I gathered several margarita-flavored seltzers for an afternoon taste test.

Hard seltzers are all the rage for the young people.

It was 82 lovely degrees on the back patio this Saturday, so my mother and I decided to split all four seltzers and rank them according to our preference. I was inspired by my favorite YouTuber, Matt Mitchell, and his series Bless Your Rank. We were judging primarily on taste. But you know the vintage cocktail hour theme of the Bud Light Seltzer gave it an advantage. Real Henry Mancini vibes.

Let the taste test begin!

We started off with the Bud Light seltzer which was in the lead out of the gate. It has a strong margarita flavor without being too sugary and, of course, it had a hint of that Bud Light essence. “These would be great by the pool,” I commented. This reminded me that although I had not won the billion dollar lottery the night before, I had decided that I was going to spend part of the billion dollars on pools for everyone in my family. Alas.

At the end of round one, Bud Light Seltzer was in first place. Because it was the only place to be.

Next, we tried the Topo Chico Margarita Seltzer. This also had a good margarita flavor. Topo Chicos are like a hip Perrier and apparently known for being highly carbonated. I guess it was bubblier than the Bud Light. I enjoyed it.

But was it more refreshing than the Bud Light? Probably not. After round two, Bud Light was still in first place.

Next, we tried the two Ranch Waters. It turns out I didn’t read the labels closely enough and they were really just lime flavored seltzers so not quite in the same category as the prior contestants. We enjoyed them, but we liked the Spicy version more.

Here’s the final ranking.

There you have it, highly official research conducted in the name of blog content.

4 Comments
August 2, 2022

Fun facts to know and tell and other stuff

by chuckofish

Does this picture spell summertime or what?

Summer is flying by, but there are actually 51 more days of summer!

Fun fact to know and tell: I always wondered where the French filmmaker, actor and spiritual father of the Fench New Wave, Jean-Pierre Melville, got the name Melville, which is very Scottish. Well, when he was with the French Resistance during WWII, he adopted the pseudonym Melville as a tribute to his favorite American author Herman Melville. He kept it as his stage name once the war was over. How about that? Please note that the famous Frenchman also died on this day in 1973, so you might want to toast him and watch one of his movies.

August is the Summer Under the Stars Month on TCM when a different star is celebrated every day. It’s not a particularly great lineup this year, but I will set my DVR on August 5 (Orson Welles), August 6 (Audrey Hepburn), August 9 (William Holden), and August 19 (Toshiro Mifune). And hold the phone, Gilbert Roland has his own day on August 24! Save the date!

This is a really good sermon. Read the whole thing.

Let’s forget about trying to please the world. The mission of the church is NOT to please the world anyway. So let’s not even try to be The Church of What’s Happening Now.

Instead let us please Christ by being the faithful church that “earnestly contends for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3) by the Scriptures and by the Apostles and Church Fathers. Then, and only then, we will be able wisely to “speak the truth in love” and to address what’s happening now, instead of being The Church of What’s Happening Now.

Here are some classic moments with Tony Dow as Wally Cleaver in Leave It to Beaver, which, let’s be frank, was really a great show. I chuckled throughout this highlight reel. Rest in peace, Tony, you were a great big brother.

And here’s a poem I like:

Blighted is the man
who doesn’t stick his neck out,
doesn’t think for himself,
doesn’t revere anything.
But he laughs on cue
while watching TV day and night.
He is like everybody else.
In all that he does, he gets by.
The believers are not so,
they don’t move with the times.
Therefore, the godly will not stand
in the court of human approval,
nor the Christlike at the best parties in town.
For who’s to say what is right?
And doesn’t everybody go to heaven?

–Ray Ortlund, “Psalm 1, a reverse translation”
Saying, “Hi, Mamu!”

Grace and peace to you today, my friends.

6 Comments
August 1, 2022

“Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take”*

by chuckofish

It is August now and our summer has been a hot one. I am thinking how nice it would be to be floating in a lake in Maine with my Massachusetts cousins (see above). Alas, I am not. Sixty or so years have passed since that picture was taken–hard to believe.

Happily, the temperatures came down this weekend to a very respectable low eighties. It was overcast, but pleasant enough to sit outside on the patio and contemplate the passage of time. I was happy that daughter #1 could join me for happy hour.

I spent a good part of Saturday attending an online auction where I was glad to see some vigorous bidding on “brown furniture.” This meant that I didn’t get anything, but c’est la vie. I was glad to see that there is still a market for tall case clocks. The prices are still amazingly low compared to twenty years ago, but they are, nevertheless, more than I am willing to pay for a rescue. I did buy a nice wing chair for $25. I mean, nobody wants a wing chair these days. Nobody but me.

On Sunday we went to church and were joined by the boy and his two wild monkeys. They checked their depravity and behaved, but when we got home they let loose and wreaked some havoc. (Note that our wing chairs took quite a beating.)

At some point the havoc moved outside (thankfully).

I am out of breath just looking at these pictures! When the wee babes headed home, daughter #1 also headed back to Jeff City, and the OM and I crashed for awhile before heading back to church that evening to celebrate the assistant pastor who is leaving with his family for a new job in Tuscaloosa.

Sunrise, sunset.

And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us;
The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him;
His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure,
One little word shall fell him.

–Martin Luther, Ein Feste Burg

*T.S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton”

5 Comments
July 29, 2022

The best laid plans…

by chuckofish

I had a super quiet but weirdly topsy-turvy week. The DH and I had intended to take a little trip. We had to take the car to the dealer in Plattsburgh, which is 2 hours away, so we figured we could combine that with a visit to the Wild Center in Tupper Lake that we’d been planning to visit for a while. The Plattsburgh portion of the trip was necessary because for the past few months our barely-a–year-old car had been knocking, clanging and moaning like Marley’s ghost. It had become so alarming that I felt the need to take it to an actual Honda dealer rather than our local garage. Of course, as soon as I made the appointment the noise stopped and hasn’t come back since. Whatever rock, stick or scary monster had gotten stuck in the undercarriage evidently worked itself out. The car is at peace – or maybe just toying with us à la Christine, the demonic car.

A movie I have NOT seen

Anyway, the appointment having been canceled, there was no longer any need to leave the comforts of home to “stay in some flea bitten hotel” as the DH so eloquently put it. Heat and a chance of scattered showers gave us the excuse to postpone the Tupper Lake part of the trip, so we stayed home and kept working.  

While we have been plodding along, our three sons have been busy, busy, busy. Our eldest, beating his deadline by a hair, will move into his new apartment this weekend; our middle son and his wife found a better house and will move in the next few weeks, and our youngest found a new job that he’ll start it in a week! I’ve been trying to remember a time when I had such energy but I cannot.

If anything exciting happens today or tomorrow, I’ll update the post – but don’t hold your breath. In the meantime, have a great weekend!

3 Comments
July 28, 2022

“And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the wind blew and slammed against the house”*

by chuckofish

Well, we had quite a storm earlier this week. We even broke a record for inches rained in a 24 hour period–9.04 inches! There was lots of scary flash flooding, as you can imagine, and people were forced out of their homes and apartments.

STL Post Dispatch photo

Of course, the OM had made an appointment to get his oil changed that day, so he drove off in the middle of the downpour at 6:30 in the morning. He made it there and to work afterwards, but good grief, Charlie Brown!

In other news I am enjoying spending time in the library of my local historical society. It is a pleasure to escape into the archives and read about another world where people were not confused about their pronouns. I am committed to volunteering, so we’ll see where this leads.

I love the #AskLigonier videos! You can learn a lot in these short clips! For instance, What would we be missing if our Bibles lacked the book of Galatians?

This is a good article about wrestling with the hard questions. “When we ask questions, we engage with what we say we believe. It is natural, normal, and understandable to have questions about our faith. The very essence of faith is believing in what we can’t see (Hebrews 11:6). That’s not easy to do!”

Well, all this rain makes me want to settle in with a Kurosawa movie where the driving rain or snow frequently adds a heightened tension to the action. Seven Samurai (1954), anyone?

*Matthew 7:25

2 Comments
July 27, 2022

“What are we standing around for? Put on some Sousa already. I want to get wild.”

by chuckofish

Last week, I didn’t blog because I was at the Unclaimed Property Auction in Kansas City. Unclaimed Property is one of the many things I’ve learned about as a state employee. Sadly, I have yet to discover $30,000 of long lost money (just $58 in the state of New York). But I digress.

The auction is an annual event (although this was the first since 2019) where the Treasurer’s Office auctions off items found in abandoned safe deposit boxes that have been turned over to the office. The earnings from the sale are kept in perpetuity for the owner.

I spent three full days with the Unclaimed Property staff, helping out where I could and creating some pretty great social content. It was a lot of work and long days–but also a fascinating event. I already knew about the random stuff you can find in a safe deposit box. I mean, you expect family heirlooms, documents, valuables like jewelry and coins. But you also find stuff that makes you scratch your head. A full clown costume–from the wig to the shoes. A DVD copy of The Notebook. A NASCAR hat signed by Richard Petty. And then there’s this:

“”You’re the department?”

She saluted. “Unclaimed property manager. I’m my own branch of the Wyoming State Treasury Department.”

“I have to ask. What kind of stuff do you find?”

She looked back out the windshield. “All kinds of things. We found an 1863 ambassadorial appointment signed by Abraham Lincoln, and just last week I found an old collection of Nazi campaign ribbons from World War II. Pocket watches, stocks, bonds…There was this one in Gillette that had a complete change of clothes, a ski mask, and a pistol.” I turned and looked at her. “Then there are the polaroids. We’ve got a stack of nude snapshots that is over a foot tall.””

Death Without Company, Craig Johnson

That’s right. Unclaimed Property even plays a (minor) role in one of the Longmire books. I sent a longer version of that passage to our Unclaimed Property Director and his response was “Hilarious. We could have wrote that.” He isn’t wrong. In fact, we have also found a ski mask, a change of clothes, and a handgun. A couple of months ago, we found a civil war-era journal kept by a soldier that contained a passage about President Lincoln reviewing the troops.

The auction draws serious collectors from around the country–yes, really–who mostly come for the coins and jewelry. Some of it will be melted down, other bits added to collections. I find it all interesting and sad at the same time–the heirloom jewelry that is kind of hideous, the fake Rolex watches they thought were real, the real Rolex they never wore because it was in a safe deposit box. Each item was important enough to someone that they wanted to keep in a bank and then it still ended up totally lost.

It’s a good reminder to always document if you have a safe deposit box so that it doesn’t get lost. And, of course, check ShowMeMoney.com (or unclaimed.org if you’re out of state) to see if you have any Unclaimed Property!

*Brooklyn 99, of course

6 Comments
July 26, 2022

Thou from the prairies*

by chuckofish

Last Saturday was the anniversary of the death of President Ulysses S. Grant in 1885. To me, he was a great man and one of the qualities that made him great, was his humility. His humble nature shines through in his Memoirs.

There are many men who would have done better than I did under the circumstances in which I found myself. If I had never held command, if I had fallen, there were 10,000 behind who would have followed the contest to the end and never surrendered the Union.

Debatable. Think of General McClellan, his predecessor as general-in-chief of all the Union armies. He thought he “could do it all” but he could not. And he blamed everyone else for his failure.

President Lincoln put his trust in Grant and was well served. And Grant was humble in victory.

General Lee was dressed in a full uniform which was entirely new, and was wearing a sword of considerable value, very likely the sword which had been presented by the State of Virginia; at all events, it was an entirely different sword from the one that would ordinarily be worn in the field. In my rough traveling suit, the uniform of a private with the straps of a lieutenant-general, I must have contrasted very strangely with a man so handsomely dressed, six feet high and of faultless form. But this was not a matter that I thought of until afterwards.

–Memoirs

I love that he wore “a soldier’s blouse for a coat, with the shoulder straps of my rank to indicate to the army who I was.”

Walt Whitman revered Grant and wrote a poem about the former president when he returned from his world tour.

What best I see in thee,
is not that where thou mov’st down history’s great highways,
Ever undimm’d by time shoots warlike victory’s dazzle,
Or that thou sat’st where Washington say, ruling the land in peace,
Or thou the man whom feudal Europe feted, venerable Asia swarm’d upon,
Who walk’d with kings with even pace the round world’s promenade;
But that in foreign lands, in all thy walks with kings
Those prairie sovereigns of the West, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois,
Ohio’s, Indiana’s millions, comrades, farmers, soldiers, all to the front,
Invisibly with thee walking with kings with even pace the round world’s promenade,
Were all so justified.

Here’s an article about Whitman and Grant if you’re interested.

A few weeks ago the wee laddie came up to me holding this little framed picture he had found in the living room:

“Who’s this, Mamu?” he asked.

“That’s Cousin Ulysses,” I said. “Some day I’ll tell you all about him.”

*Walt Whitman

5 Comments
July 25, 2022

This and that, here and there

by chuckofish

Every so often I just like to post this old Booth cartoon because it sums up my mood so well.

In other news, we continue to languish in our tropical flyover state where we have been tolerating/not tolerating super hot temperatures. On top of which, my allergies were terrible this weekend–the sneezing and the blowing–zut alors!

I did manage to go to one estate sale and I checked out my local antique mall where I found something I could not resist.

It’s a large lead soldier–a Cameron Highlander–in a nice case. It is very well painted.

You will say that I already have plenty of lead soldiers around my house, but I couldn’t help myself. He was on sale! It was a rescue job and I am not apologizing.

You may recall that our father was quite a hobbyist and one of his longterm hobbies was painting lead soldiers and collecting Britains. I do indeed have them all over my house.

So what’s one more soldier?

The OM and I went to church on Sunday where we heard a good sermon on Matthew 21: 33-46. We also sang some great old hymns lustily which is always a joy. The boy and his family were in KC this weekend so we ate brunch at our backup diner and then drove down to my favorite auction house to check out the preview of next weekend’s auction. I am keeping my eye on a few things and who knows, if there is no competition, I may win something.

And they say the intense heat will be vacating the area and we will be back to near normal temperatures and maybe some rain. That would be nice.

Did you watch Red River (1948) on Saturday? We did and it was great.

John Wayne is iconic and Montgomery Clift holds his own. And, boy, that is saying a lot.

And here’s a great rendition of a favorite hymn by Missouri’s own, the Petersens, to start your week off…

4 Comments
July 22, 2022

Where’s the beef?

by chuckofish

Earlier this week I made meatloaf for dinner — or at least tried to. I got it ready ahead of time and put it in the fridge, and then became deeply engrossed in a writing project. At the appropriate time, I took a break to put the oven on. Eventually, the DH arrived home from the office and I went to prepare potatoes and veg. When I opened the oven door to check the meatloaf, I was surprised to discover… nothing. How could this be? Where was the meatloaf? I found it in the fridge, where I had left it. Oops. My husband, who remained unperturbed, calmly suggested that we have bacon and eggs and save the meatloaf for the next day. So, we did. It all worked out, and hey, at least I didn’t do this:

In other beef related news, I saw a good movie on Netflix called Operation Mincemeat. I’m not saying it stands among the greats but compared to 99% of other new movies it was wonderful. Anyway, I thought it struck all the right chords, and it’s a true story!

It’s 1943 and the Allies are getting ready to invade Sicily. Rear Admiral John Godfrey and Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming (yes, the author who created James Bond) write a memo suggesting a way to hoodwink the Germans into believing that the attack will come in Greece rather than Sicily. Committee twenty (as in XX or double cross) is tasked with carrying out the deception, which involves finding an appropriate corpse, creating a backstory for it, putting Top Secret material in a briefcase attached to its wrist and then dumping it in the sea off Spain in such a way that the Nazis are certain to find it. Political problems, love triangles and plenty of nail-biting ensue. The movie has a good script, excellent cast (Colin Firth, Jason Isaacs, Penelope Wilton and Matthew MacFadyen), no violence to speak of and no sex. It was refreshingly normal. Back in 2020, my DP posted about an earlier version of the story that I have not seen, the 1956 film The Man Who Never Was starring Clifton Webb. If you are interested in Operation Mincemeat, you can watch this documentary to find out more.

It’s our anniversary today and also happens to be my turn to cook dinner. If you can recommend easy but delicious recipes that don’t involve long periods of inactivity during which I can get distracted and then forget to cook the rest, I’d be delighted if you’d put them in the comments.

Have a great weekend and stay cool!

6 Comments