dual personalities

What with the World Cup soccer final, attic cleaning, and son #1 moving to Syracuse we’re going to be busy this weekend. My house is a shambles, but that is to be expected.

Although it’s difficult to tell from the weirdly blurry photos, the DH’s herculean efforts in the attic are beginning to pay off. There’s now one nearly empty corner.

The rest still looks like this.

I am thoroughly enjoying the attic clean-out. We’re finding all sorts of forgotten treasures. I’ve always loved attics and used to dream about them a lot as a child. I guess our house just felt big to me then. When I first read Mervyn Peake’s attic description in Gormenghast it was if I were reading about one of my own dreams.

This room was the darkest. In the summer the light seemed to penetrate through the fissures in the warped wood and through the dislodged portions of stone slating in a less direct way than was the case in the larger room or gallery to its right. The third, the smallest attic, with its steps leading upwards from the gallery with the banistered verandah was the best lit, for it boasted a window with shutters which, when opened, gave upon a panorama of roof-tops, towers and battlements that lay in a great half-circle below, a portion of the quadrangle where-in, were a figure to move across, he would appear no taller than a thimble.

Fuchsia took three paces forward in the first of the attics and then paused a moment to re-tie a string above her knee. Over her head vague rafters loomed and while she straightened her-self she noticed them and unconsciously loved them. This was the lumber room. Though very long and lofty it looked relatively smaller than it was, for the fantastic piles of every imaginable kind of thing, from the great organ to the lost and painted head of a broken toy lion that must one day have been the plaything of one of Fuchsia’s ancestors, spread from every wall until only an avenue was left to the adjacent room. This high, narrow avenue wound down the centre of the first attic before suddenly turning at a sharp angle to the right. The fact that this room was filled with lumber did not mean that she ignored it and used it only as a place of transit. Oh no, for it was here that many long afternoons had been spent as she crawled deep into the recesses and found for herself many a strange cavern among the incongruous relics of the past. She knew of ways through the centre of what appeared to be hills of furniture, boxes, musical instruments and toys, kites, pictures, bamboo armour and helmets, flags and relics of every kind, as an Indian knows his green and secret trail. Within reach of her hand the hide and head of a skinned baboon hung dustily over a broken drum that rose above the dim ranges of this attic medley. Huge and impregnable they looked in the warm still half-light, but Fuchsia, had she wished to, could have disappeared awkwardly but very suddenly into these fantastic mountains, reached their centre and lain down upon an ancient couch with a picture book at her elbow and been entirely lost to view within a few moments… She descended the steps. There was a ripping away of clouds; a sky, a desert, a forsaken shore spread through her.

That’s why I love both attics and Mervyn Peake! You can read more here.

Well, I’ve got to run — not to the attic but to watch England play Belgium for third place in the World Cup. If you follow such things, you will know that England lost to Croatia in the semis, so Croatia will play France in the final. I hope Croatia wins, but I don’t really care at this point. They’re definitely the underdog. I also hope that England’s captain, Harry Kane, scores today and wins the coveted Golden Boot (did I just jinx him?).

So far, he has 6 goals — more than anyone else in the tournament. Still, you never know how things will turn out. Better just watch and see…

*Mervyn Peake Gormenghast

The temperatures cooled off this weekend, so it was much more pleasant to be out and about.

The wee babes were out and about all weekend, doing their thing.

Daughter #1 and I were champion estate salers on Saturday–she bought a vintage small chest of drawers (originally from Lammerts, a longtime local furniture store) for a very reasonable price. She got it downstairs (I carried a drawer) and we loaded it into the Mini. Huzzah!

When we got home later that day, we transferred it to her car. Easy-peasy!

We also bought balloons and visited the boy at his store, which celebrated its first anniversary last weekend!

That silver balloon is a “1”!

We went to the Saint Louis Art Museum to see the “Sunken Cities: Egypt’s Lost World” exhibit, which was pretty cool (and very crowded).

We had driven my nephew and Abbie around Forest Park on the 4th of July and had taken a picture in front of the museum, so it was funny to be back in Forest Park so soon. It is a great place, indeed, but very crowded in the summer–which is a good thing.

Daughter #1 left early on Sunday and I attended to all my household duties and got ready for the wee babes to come over on Sunday night for our usual family dinner. The OM went to Target to get more baby gates. We now have three!

I did manage to do some reading over the weekend. I finished Mohawk by Richard Russo and recommend it. Good story, well written and, unlike a lot of current fiction, most of the characters–barring the villain–are likable and relatable.

I also delved into some Thoreau whom I enjoy. He is such a good observer of the world around him and a mentor for us all in that department.

July, 1845. Here I know I am in good company; here is the world, its centre and metropolis, and all the palms of Asia and the laurels of Greece and the firs of the Arctic Zone incline thither. Here I can read Homer, if I would have books, as well as in Ionia, and not wish myself in Boston, or New York, or London, or Rome, or Greece. In such place as this he wrote or sang. Who should come to my lodge just now but a true Homeric boor, one of the Paphlagonian  men. Alek Therien, he calls himself; a Canadian now, a woodchopper, a post-maker; makes fifty posts–holes them, i.e.–in a day; and who made his supper on a woodchuck which his dog caught. And he too has heard of Homer, and if it were not for books, would not know what to do rainy days…

He has a neat bundle of white oak bark under his arm for a sick man, gathered this Sunday morning. ‘I suppose there’s no harm in going after such a thing today.’ The simple man. May the gods send him many woodchucks.

This will be a very busy week at work and so will most of July and August! The calendar for the rest of the year is filling up. It will be Christmas before we know it.

*Bob Dylan’s Blues

Our North Country heat-wave has finally broken (glory, hallelujah!), and I am actually wearing a sweater this morning, though it will warm up into the upper 80s later today. There’s nothing like a spell of real hot weather to remind us of how hard our ancestors had it. The true pioneer had to face all sorts of difficulties: inclement weather; lack of food, and wild animals — even BEARS.

Speaking of our ursine friends, son #2 and his lovely lady will soon be leaving for six weeks in bear country. They are going to Kodiak Island, home to the world’s largest bears. No kidding, on all four feet Kodiak bears stand up to 5 feet at the shoulder, and when they stand upright they can reach 10 feet tall.

Just a friendly bear hug! Look at those claws!

Fortunately, they are also shy and mostly keep to themselves, but one should exercise caution when hiking near salmon streams.

I will worry about my intrepid hikers the whole time they are gone! Still, this job-related trip offers a great opportunity for adventure on the side, especially since there are fewer and fewer wild places.

Not so long ago the wilderness started in Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, where “Indian trails still ran crooked through the woods, and the timber was thick and untrodden enough to hide miraculous things. There were catamounts still claiming this new country — or painters, as some folks described them — and bear marks still showed upon trees where the animals scratched them.”  Most of those early pioneers could have said, “the family ways had always been the ways of the man who cuts a deadfall and sets it up, and not the man who cradles grain. They were more at home with fishing poles than they were with hop-vine poles, and there was memory of ancestors on both sides of the family who had come out of the Kentucky mountains during the Indian days.” None of them “ever made a sock of money. But one of them did kill a bear with his knife.”*

Let’s hope no one needs to do that on Kodiak Island!

If you’re not feeling up to a face-to-face encounter, you might want to tackle one of these grisly grizzly movies, though they are about smaller bears.

Night of the Grizzly traumatized me as small child and I don’t think I’ve seen it since. Equally traumatizing, though for different reasons, is Werner Herzog’s documentary,

If you want something more family friendly, you might try

but don’t be misled, bears are more Grizzly man than Grizzly Adams. They’re wild animals. All of this makes me think the young travelers ought to concentrate on whale-watching!

*The first quote is from MacKinlay Kantor’s short story “The Witch Doctor of Rosey Ridge” and the second from the same author’s story, “The Comforter Returneth”. You can read them both here.

All photos were recovered from Google image.

This was kind of a wild week with July 4th on Wednesday!

So much excitement in the middle of the week and then we went right back to work. So I am taking Friday off because daughter #1 is working in town. We are going to try to go to the Art Museum and see the new exhibit, “Sunken Cities: Egypt’s Lost Treasures.”

I am also going to continue reading Mohawk, the debut novel of Richard Russo, which was published in 1986. The reviews back then were pretty bad, but I am enjoying it.

And I liked this remembrance of the Gettysburg anniversary and the flag of the Union a lot. I love that old Lawrence quotes St. Paul on the double nature of man.

And on the Episcopal liturgical calendar we remember Jan Hus, prophetic witness and martyr, who was burned at the stake in 1415.

Faithful God, who didst give Jan Hus the courage to confess thy truth and recall thy Church to the image of Christ: Enable us, inspired by his example, to bear witness against corruption and never cease to pray for our enemies, that we may prove faithful followers of our Savior Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

[Hus is also commemorated as a martyr on the Calendar of Saints in the Lutheran Church and the date of his martyrdom is a public holiday in the Czech Republic.]

Have a good and peaceful weekend. Keep praying for your enemies.

*Toby Mac