Once again daughter #1 has been busy criss-crossing the state,
so I am once again filling in on Wednesday with more blather from my world.
I had one of those days yesterday that started at 7:30 am and finished at 7:00 pm! One of those days when the computer guy was at our house for 5 hours. Aaargh. And it rained all day. When I finally sat down in front of the tv and put on The Wind and the Lion (1975), I promptly fell asleep.
So all I have today is this scene from Frasier about Politics: Frasier finds the perfect candidate.
And for good measure (and because she’s adorable) here’s a picture of Katiebelle.
Today we toast Theodore Roosevelt on his birthday.
Roosevelt in 1885, the year he moved to his ranch in the Dakotah Territory.
I think I will watch The Wind and the Lion (1975) in honor of our 26th president. This film, you will recall, is about an international incident being (almost) triggered when an Arab chieftain (Sean Connery) kidnaps an American widow and her children. President Theodore Roosevelt (Brian Keith) deals with it American style–He sends in the Marines.
It is also the anniversary of the day Rebel Without a Cause debuted in 1955, 65 years ago! James Dean had just died less than a month before in a car wreck at the age of 24. It is hard to imagine that this story of teenage angst and rebellion was viewed as being quite shocking back in the day, but it was. It seems quite innocent, even sweet, to our jaded eyes.
And, hello, how did I miss the fact that American golf legend Tiger Woods attended the grand opening of Payne’s Valley Golf Course at Big Cedar Lodge in Ridgedale, Missouri (near Branson) on Tuesday, September 22. Named after Ozarks native and fellow golf legend Payne Stewart, it is the first public-access golf course designed by Woods. The 19th hole at Payne’s Valley, we are told, is quickly becoming one of the most talked-about golf holes in the world (see below). “Nature golf” looks kind of like miniature golf for grown ups, but who am I to say.
Mid-MO makes the theBig Time.
Finally, here is a great version of the classic Townes Van Sant song “Pancho and Lefty” performed by Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan. (Also, I spy with my little eye a young Marty Stuart on mandolin.) Check it out.
Another busy weekend went by too fast. We accompanied this little monster and this little unicorn (“Princess Celesia”)…
to the haunted drive through at Grant’s Farm.
Good times (and appropriate social-distancing!)
Our family “pod” had fun with the Beanie Babies and ate pizza.
Climbing in that mosh pit never gets old.
We also picked out some pumpkins at the Methodist Church pumpkin patch on Friday. It was cold and rainy, so I did’t get any pictures, but I was glad to load up the Cooper with pumpkins recklessly chosen by the wee babes.
And there were donuts…
All in all, a fun weekend indeed. Now it is back to the salt mine and another gloomy week of overcast skies and rain. I think we’ll see the sun on Friday.
And as they say, “I’d tell you a pandemic joke. But there’s a 99.9996% chance you won’t get it.”
The title above is from the book Captain Alatriste by Arturo Pérez-Reverte and translates to something like, “…and no one can escape his own shadow”. In an effort to escape, not my shadow but the banal limbo of our present circumstances, I started watching the Spanish TV version on Amazon Prime. For those of you unfamiliar with the book, our swashbuckling hero is a Spanish musketeer turned swordsman for hire.
Stubble shows that he’s poor but principled
He has a great hat, a voluminous cape, several love entanglements who all look alike, a difficult past, and friends in high places. Naturally, he is loyal to the crown and determined to foil the plots of the evil inquisition.
No wonder Alatriste has a troubled love life. His ladies all look alike.
The program is entertaining but it has the worst subtitles I’ve ever seen. Characters burble along for minutes and then a subtitle flashes up and is gone in a millisecond. When subtitles do stay on screen long enough to read, they obviously leave out loads of dialogue and sometimes mix two different speakers together. Strangely enough, it doesn’t really matter. The plot is so transparent (and repetitive) that subtitles seem optional. In each episode Alatriste ends up fighting five or six opponents simultaneously and then getting hauled off to prison, from which his powerful friends free him or he escapes unaided. A requisite love scene or two allows some female nudity, but in general the show is pretty tame.
The fact that I bothered to post about this show tells you all you need to know about my life at the moment. Outside of work, nothing — but nothing — is going on. And that’s perfectly fine by me. It just makes it difficult to come up with a worthwhile Saturday post. If anyone out there has discovered a great new book, movie or activity, please share it in the comments!
In the meantime, stay healthy and have a great weekend.
What a long, hard week this has been! But it is Friday at last and I am ready to relax a little.
Yesterday in the midst of numerous Zoom calls/classes and a national conference, the wee babes came over for a short visit while their dad went downtown to pick up a desk for me. I had won it at an online auction, but it was too big for ‘my Cooper,’ so he went in his pickup to fetch it. The babes were on “fall break” so he had them in the morning–life is so complicated!
We had an hour of diverting play while he was gone. We improvised a fun game with the Beanie Babies–sorting them into groups. Which ones live in the ocean, which ones live in the forest, which ones live in Africa. They knew!
Who says I can’t multi-task anymore?Jumping on the trampoline is the best!The bud checked out the plumber’s van before coming inside. Yes, the plumbers were at our house too.
Later in the day when Lottie went to her dance class, the wee laddie came back over.
We counted the dogs–15! The cats–8!
Then we settled in to watch TruckTunes…
Good times
So anyway, I am rearranging my work space. I have been working remotely at home for seven months and any improvement is welcome.
This new desk has a much bigger work surface and looks pretty good for $20.
What a day! I even FaceTimed with daughter #2 and Katiebelle while they were taking a walk. But, boy, I am ready for some downtime and a margarita!
Happy Thursday! The post title is from a song DN has been singing to the wee babe — he sung it once and now it’s her favorite. It’s like a magic trick for soothing and smiles. I’m almost certain it was in a commercial and it’s catchy as heck, so listen at your own risk. It’s liable to get stuck in your head. Then again, idly singing “I really want to go outside” over and over is something you might already be doing after 7 months stuck at home.
Well, we are mostly keeping ourselves entertained with our feet these days. They are pretty adorable feet, to be sure!
And we continue to practice our tummy time with great concentration.
Finally, the latest in gifs: Katie moves Montessori discs from one hand to the other! Brilliant.
Daughter #1 has been crisscrossing the state this week doing exciting things in great weather…
…so I am standing in for her on the blog today!
But as you might have guessed from yesterday’s post, it’s been a busy week for me as well with my usual load of Zoom classes and a virtual national conference added in! Zut alors, it is hard to focus on anything! Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun.
Well, here’s a good list of movies to watch in November from one of my favorite retired priests, Paul Zahl. If he says, “No better movie has ever been made about the real life of a local parish minister,” you better believe it. (He’s talking about Stars in My Crown (1950)
Monday was a very gray, gloomy day with a high of 52 degrees. I had four separate Zoom meetings! Not a good start to the week! Makes you want to wrap yourself in a blanket and binge watch Frasier.
And if that doesn’t get you laughing, maybe this will…
Today is the feast day of Frithuswith, the patron saint of Oxford and of Oxford University. She is credited with establishing a religious site later incorporated into Christ Church in Oxford. Frithuswith (650-727) was the first abbess of this Oxford double monastery. I had never heard of her either. You can read more about her here. Great name, though, right?
It is also the birthday of Sir Thomas Browne (1605 – 1682) about whom I know next to nothing.
I really like this statue of Sir Thomas Browne in Norwich.
However, Herman Melville was a great fan and called him a “crack’d Archangel.” Virginia Woolf said, “Few people love the writings of Sir Thomas Browne, but those that do are the salt of the earth.” And Jorge Luis Borges said, “Sir Thomas Browne — I love him. I translated him into 17th century Spanish and it worked very well.” So I guess I better start reading some Thomas Browne.
I didn’t do much this weekend. I continued to read Death in Holy Orders by P.D. James, which I tried to read years ago. I am enjoying it this time around. I finally gave up on Jack by Marilynne Robinson. Apropos of that disappointment, I had an email exchange with one of my institute’s facilitators, a retired professor, who is also a big Robinson fan and has taught her other books. It went like this:
ME: Are you reading Jack by M. Robinson? I have to say I am disappointed. I guess my expectations were too high.
Prof: I am VERY disappointed with “Jack”. I’m not sure I can bring myself to teach it. I’m considering alternatives.
ME: I’m not sure I can bring myself to FINISH it!
Prof: AGREED! ALAS!
Academic ALL CAPS!
The OM and I celebrated our aforementioned anniversary with a drive to Defiance, MO and a visit to the Sugar Creek Winery. It was very pleasant and the wine wasn’t bad.
Unfortunately, it was rather nippy temperature-wise and I had not worn appropriate gear, so we didn’t spend a leisurely afternoon like last Sunday. We are still learning the ropes of how these winery visits work.
You will recall that Defiance is where frontiersman Daniel Boone ended his long career, arriving around 1800 at the age of 65 with his wife and several of his children. Nathan Boone, his youngest son, built the home which one can visit today. Daniel Boone passed away in this home on Sept. 26, 1820 (200 years ago!) For Missouri, that is a very old house.
I have visited the home, once as a child and once with my own children, but not in at least 25 years and certainly not since 2016, when the Historic Daniel Boone Home and surrounding property in Defiance was given to the people of St. Charles County by Lindenwood University. The nearly 300 acre site includes The Historic Daniel Boone Home, adjoining Village historic site, and surrounding property. We will have to check it out soon.
I also watched Signs (2002)–a favorite of mine. It is a good movie to watch in the Halloween season because it is scary, but it is also a great movie about lost faith and miracles. Swing away, Merrill.
I blink and it’s Saturday again! I feel as if I’m stuck in the Twilight Zone — or maybe an episode of Supernatural.
We’re about to start the third week of October and I don’t even have a pumpkin yet, although I did get the DH to buy a couple of little gourds for the dining room table. Perhaps if I focus on Halloween I’ll recover my sense of time and start to feel human again.
To encourage a return to normality, why not read some spooky stories or poems? For a variety of free, seasonal appropriate literature, click here. The excellent selection includes standards from Poe, Kipling, Hawthorne, and Twain, as well as more macabre stories from the likes of Ambrose Bierce and H.P. Lovecraft. I’ve never been a Lovecraft fan and fail to see the appeal, but Bierce was the real deal — a deeply troubled soul.
Born in 1842, Ambrose Bierce grew up in Warsaw, Indiana, the 10th of 13 children all with names beginning with A: Abigail, Amelia, Ann, Addison, Aurelius, Augustus, Almeda, Andrew, Albert, Arthur, Adelia, and Aurelia. No wonder he was weird.
Intense, handsome and a little crazy-eyed
Bierce served in the Union army during the Civil War and saw plenty of action, until he got shot in the head at Kennesaw Mountain in 1864. (The battle was part of Sherman’s Georgia campaign). Upon returning home to recover, he was devastated to discover that his fickle fiancée loved someone else. War trauma, the blow to the head, romantic failure, and a naturally morose and cynical temperament gave birth to the post-war writer, whose acerbic and extremely macabre stories remain popular — at least at this time of year. The fact that 71 year old Bierce disappeared without trace while on route to join Pancho Villa in Mexico only added to his mystique. In a farewell letter to his niece, Bierce wrote, “Goodbye. If you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs. To be a gringo in Mexico — ah, that is euthanasia. “** Now I (almost) want to see the 1989 film The Old Gringo starring Gregory Peck as Ambrose Bierce (the plot doesn’t look great and it also stars Jane Fonda, of whom I am not a fan).
Jimmy Smits and Gregory Peck
But I digress. Let’s get back to Mr. Bierce and spooky stories. When I was a child someone gave me a book of short stories, one of which was Bierce’s “The Damned Thing”. Yes, some child-hating editor included it in A CHILDREN’S BOOK!! Shocked and intrigued by the appearance of the word ‘damned’, I asked my mother to read me the story. She tried to argue me out of it, but in the end she gave in. Listen to David McCallum’s version and imagine the nightmares of this little DP!
Nowadays I avoid scary stories and movies. I do not need the extra stimulation and do not get a charge out of feeling afraid. But in case you are in the mood to read something Halloween-ish, I would recommend one of the classics (see link above) and if you’re feeling particularly brave, anything by Ambrose Bierce. Somehow, Bierce seems to fit the current zeitgeist.
