Uncategorized | dual personalities

July 5, 2018

“You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free.”*

by chuckofish

Well, the 4th of July went by in a rush of activity and an overload of fun. Phew.

It was hot, hot, hot in flyover country, but we braved the asphalt of the high school parking lot in our folding chairs and watched the fireworks which were “the best ever!” The wee babes by that time were pretty subdued and exhausted–after a Shania Twain dance party–and watched without complaint.

Cousin Tim and Abbie, who were a big hit with the wee babes (especially Lottie),

are heading back to Indiana this morning and it is back to the salt mine pour moi. I hope it is a quiet day!

*”You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.”– Galatians 5:13 (NIV)

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July 4, 2018

“O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave”

by chuckofish

However you want to spend the 4th of July, I’ll take my cue from those three American flyers in the German prisoner of war camp (surrounded by British officers) in The Great Escape (1962)…waving the flag, playing loud music and sipping some moonshine. (“WOW!”)

Oh, thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust”:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

(Francis Scott Key)

A little flag-waving once a year is a good thing! You can bet that we’ll be waving away and bar-b-que-ing and then heading over to our local high school to watch the local fireworks.

We’ll also be thinking of our handsome big brother and thinking of those 4th of July birthdays of yesteryear. We were a rather quiet and restrained family (some might say uptight) but on the 4th of July we liked to let loose and bang pots and pans. We would put the stereo speakers in the open window and blast Souza marches to unsuspecting, left-wing neighbors. We set off fire crackers and bottle rockets!

Well, here’s hoping our bro has a happy, happy birthday and that it isn’t too staid and dignified!

We hope this is a “big year” for him, at least in the birding sense. Come see a Pied-billed grebe or a Marbled godwit sometime! We have them in Missouri, you know. After all, we live on the Mississippi flyway.

July 3, 2018

Yankee doodle, do or die

by chuckofish

Screen Shot 2018-07-02 at 12.29.29 PM.png Today we toast John Singleton Copley (July 3, 1738 – September 9, 1815) on his birthday. Copley was was an American painter, active in both colonial America and England. He was famous for his portraits, but the above painting–Watson and the Shark (1778)–traumatized me as a child. It is still scary!

It is also the birthday of George M. Cohan (July 3, 1878 – November 5, 1942)–although I always think of him having a July 4th birthday–you know, “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy, born on the 4th of July”! Poetic license, I guess. Anyway, Cohan was the quintessential Irish-American song-and-dance man and everything I know about him I learned from the James Cagney movie Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) which is a good movie, although probably only half true.

Screen Shot 2018-07-02 at 1.31.19 PM.png I also saw George M! with Joel Grey at the Muny Opera back in 1970 when it was touring.

Screen Shot 2018-07-02 at 1.32.25 PM.png I wonder if kids today have ever heard of George M. Cohan or heard any of his songs. I grew up with them. “Over there! Over there!/Send the word, send the word over there/That the Yanks are coming/ The Yanks are coming…” I guess Americans lost their enthusiasm for that sentiment somewhere in the 1960s. Oh well.

And hold the phone, Steve McQueen is star of the month on TCM!

Screen Shot 2018-07-02 at 4.53.22 PM.png June was Leslie Howard and July is Steve McQueen. Have I been a good girl or what? Set your DVRs for Thursdays! By the way, the OM and I watched The Towering Inferno (1974) the other night–possibly one of the worst movies ever–but it was worth the 165-minute investment of time to see Steve McQueen…

Screen Shot 2018-07-02 at 5.03.32 PM.png …and Paul Newman.

Screen Shot 2018-07-02 at 5.02.26 PM.png The horrible 1970s sets and costumes were amusing as well. Egad, 1974 was the pits.

Screen Shot 2018-07-02 at 5.16.29 PM.png Today is also the start of the Dog Days of summer according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac. To the Greeks and Romans, the “dog days” occurred around the day when Sirius appeared to rise just before the sun, in late July. They referred to these days as the hottest time of the year, a period that could bring fever, or even catastrophe.

Dog Days are approaching; you must, therefore, make both hay and haste while the Sun shines, for when old Sirius takes command of the weather, he is such an unsteady, crazy dog, there is no dependence upon him.
–The Old Farmer’s Almanac, 1817

We are mixing a lot of metaphors here, along with myths, so I’ll wrap this up.

Daughter #1 arrives home tonight to celebrate the 4th of July with us, as will my nephew Tim and his girlfriend Abbie, who are driving in from Indiana. We will have a full house. Cross your fingers that the air conditioning holds up!

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The wee babes have come a long way since last July 4th, but Lottie was still stylin’.

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July 2, 2018

“Gave it my best and then I left it alone”*

by chuckofish

The tiger lilies are still blooming at home

How was your weekend? Mine was quite delightful, especially since daughter #1 was in town unexpectedly. She had to be in St. Louis for work on Friday so she stayed over Friday night. On Saturday we estate-saled, lunched out at our favorite lunch place (and my mother’s favorite), the Women’s Exchange, went to the Sign of the Arrow (needlepoint store) and generally did our old-lady thing. It was great. It was too darn hot to do anything outside, so we stayed inside and went through some stuff in the basement, looking for other stuff in the basement, which we never found.

That evening we got the OM to take us out to dinner at our local Mexican restaurant at the old-lady hour of 5:00 pm–the place to our surprise was hoppin’! I guess everyone in town wanted a margarita! In the evening we chilled and listened to 1990s country music.

In the morning, daughter #1 headed back to mid-MO bright and early and I set about doing what I had planned to do, i.e. clean the house, do laundry and change sheets in preparation for visitors during the week.

Daughter #2 called and told me all about her weekend with my friend Harriet in Norfolk, Virginia. She had so much fun visiting in March that she went back with DN!

Screen Shot 2018-07-01 at 10.28.45 AM.png Sunday was the first anniversary of her marriage to DN. We reminisced a little and were grateful that it wasn’t as hot last year as it is this year!

Screen Shot 2017-07-29 at 8.54.30 AM.png The wee babes came over on Sunday night and messed up a lot of what I had put right during the day. But, truly, life is too short to care about that.

Screen Shot 2018-07-01 at 9.51.22 PM.png They weren’t terribly interested in the like-new, handmade Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls I bought at an estate sale on Saturday.

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But that’s okay too.

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Lottie liked her cherry hat and would have worn it all night if the wee laddie hadn’t insisted on trying it on. (He took it right off.) We go with the flow.

So remember, it’s a great day to be alive…Have a good one!

*Travis Tritt

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June 30, 2018

Going once, going twice, sold!

by chuckofish

I went to an auction yesterday — the first one I’ve been to in ages and ages. The auctioneer had collected items from three local estates. It was a fascinating experience and I learned a lot. Namely, people like what they like whether it’s modern trash or a handcrafted antique, and if they want it they will bid on it. I could discern no rhyme nor reason to the prices that items fetched. For example, this antique ogee clock went for under $50 and the nice shaker rockers for about $25 apiece.

By contrast, these rustic wooden carrier boxes inspired fierce competition and eventually brought in over $100 each. After a similar contest, someone bought the tiny milking stool on the upper right for something like $75. Go figure.

I did not intend to bid on anything, but when NO ONE wanted this pair of lamps I couldn’t help myself. I won them for $10. I’ve always wanted one of those blue and white porcelain lamps. The other one is a very heavy art deco style brass desk lamp that is growing on me. Btw, someone got that nice cane-bottom rocker for about $20. I guess no one wants rocking chairs anymore.

With so much stuff to get through the auction was going to last until at least 10pm, and I did not intend to stay. Having bought my lamps, I prepared to leave, but when NO ONE wanted these two lovely cane-bottom maple chairs, I bid again and won them for — you guessed it — $10! Okay, so the seat on one of them is broken, but the other one is in perfect shape.

At that point I thought it best to leave while I was ahead. So, having spent a whopping $20, I loaded up Hobbes (the new car) and drove home. Not a bad way to spend a Friday evening.

Then I welcomed the new items into the home. I put the porcelain lamp and chair in the family room (at least for now).

But I haven’t decided on a location for the other lamp yet. Here’s what it looks like up close.

Finally and belatedly, here’s a photo of the chest I bought in Louisville in April. The fox lamp belongs to son #1, and you will remember that I bought the Edwin Booth print in St. Louis last summer. I still need to hang it on the wall!

The house is coming along! Stay tuned for updates on the kitchen renovation project. In the meantime, please read the transcript of this wonderful speech by biographer and historian David McCullough and have a wonderful weekend!

Note: auction photos borrowed from the auction web site.

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June 29, 2018

“Stick with me baby, I’m the guy that you came in with”*

by chuckofish

Today is the birthday of one of my favorites: Frank Loesser (June 29, 1910 – July 28, 1969) who wrote, among a lot of other things, the lyrics and music to Guys and Dolls. Over his career, he won four Tonys, a Pulitzer Prize for Drama and an Academy Award–all richly deserved.

Loesser, we are told, was one of those guys who, when four years old, could play any tune on the piano by ear (he never had a lesson). In WWII he joined the Air Force and wrote “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.” What a guy.

If I hadn’t just watched Guys and Dolls (1955) recently, I would watch it tonight in his honor. Instead I may watch Destry Rides Again (1939) in which Marlene Dietrich sings the Loesser classic “See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have.”

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Speaking of westerns, Loesser also wrote the classic “Jingle, Jangle, Jingle” as in “I’ve got spurs that jingle, jangle, jingle/ as I go riding merrily along/And they sing, oh, ain’t you glad you’re single?/And that song ain’t so very far from wrong.” I have known the song forever, but never knew who wrote it!

So a toast to Frank Loesser tonight! The weekend is almost here. I have no big plans beyond getting ready for the 4th of July holiday when we have guests arriving. And hopefully those wee babes will toddle over on Sunday night.

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Plus: This is a good one from one of my favorite female (Episcopal) clergypersons.

I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

–Ephesians 3:14–21

*”Luck Be a Lady Tonight” by Frank Loesser

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June 28, 2018

“For love of unforgotten times”*

by chuckofish

chris:mother 1951.jpeg

oh antic God

return to me

my mother in her thirties

leaned across the front porch

the huge pillow of her breasts

pressing against the rail

summoning me in for bed.

I am almost the dead woman’s age times two.

I can barely recall her song

the scent of her hands

though her wild hair scratches my dreams

at night. return to me, oh Lord of then

and now, my mother’s calling,

her young voice humming my name.

–Lucille Clifton

June 26 was the 30th anniversary of our mother’s death. As a day it doesn’t mean that much to me, because I think of her every day.

I see her in me and in my children and in other people. I read her books and wear her jewelry. I sometimes get out her dishes and use them. I watch movies that we watched together. I am reminded of what she said and thought about things.

I went to the memorial service of a 96-year old friend the other day. Her adult granddaughter spoke lovingly about her and related how when she was a child, she would visit her grandparents in the summer. She would go to the grocery store with her grandmother, who would drive with her hand on her granddaughter’s leg. I thought of my mother and of myself, who did the same thing (and still do sometimes!) with our children–that wordless pat of affection saying, I’m so happy you are here with me.

“We ourselves shall be loved for awhile and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

–Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey

*Robert Louis Stevenson, from “To My Mother”

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June 27, 2018

Wednesday round-up

by chuckofish

So did you read about the brouhaha over Laura Ingalls Wilder’s classic Little House on the Prairie series?

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A division of the American Library Association voted unanimously last week to strip Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name from a major children’s literature award over concerns about how the author referred to Native Americans and blacks. Funnily enough, I bought a hardback copy of Little House on the Prairie at an estate sale last Saturday. I started reading it on Sunday and I have to say I was impressed with the beauty and simplicity of the writing.

“In the West the land was level, and there were no trees. The grass grew thick and high. There the wild animals wandered and fed as though they were in a pasture that stretched much farther than a man could see, and there were no settlers. Only Indians lived there.”

Haven’t these PC-obsessed librarians ever heard of context?

I say, “Phooey!” to the American Library Association.

It may be time to road trip down to Mansfield, Missouri to see the “House on Rocky Ridge Farm”–where Laura Ingalls Wilder and her husband Almanzo lived and where she wrote her books.

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There is a museum there as well. Mansfield is located in the Ozarks on the south edge of the Salem Plateau. It is a 3.5 hour drive from St. Louis. Branson–which is not on my bucket list–is a little over an hour from there.

On the movie front the OM and I watched Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) last week when it was on TCM and I thoroughly enjoyed it. That dance sequence at the barn-raising is superb, as is the subsequent fight-dance. It is so appropriately athletic. All that stomping!

Wow. Sure looks like fun.

Anyway, you might want to check it out.

And speaking of drama, thunder storms here lately have been quite theatrical. This was how the sky looked as I drove home yesterday.

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I was reminded of the night of June 28, 1969 when a severe storm with winds of near tornadic force struck the St. Louis riverfront. The riverboat restaurant Becky Thatcher,

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with her barge and a replica of the Santa Maria (not kidding) alongside, broke loose and drifted several miles downstream, safely clearing two bridges, before crashing into the Monsanto dock on the Illinois side. One hundred restaurant patrons were aboard at the time and all were rescued by the towboat Larrayne Andress and taken back to St. Louis, where they were safely landed at the Streckfus wharfboat. The Santa Maria, we are told, sunk like a tub.

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Quelle flyover weather drama.

Well, try to take time to smell the flowers and enjoy the week. Read something controversial–like Little House on the Prairie!

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June 26, 2018

“The singing heart of June”*

by chuckofish

Screen Shot 2018-06-25 at 10.40.00 AM.png

“How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!
Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
River and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside.
Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown–
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!”

– Robert Louis Stevenson, The Swing

You may have noticed that swings are becoming less common on school playgrounds throughout the country for liability reasons and because school officials are “looking for new ways to engage students in activities using safer equipment.” We are told that more than 200,000 children show up in hospital emergency rooms each year due to playground equipment injuries, according to the National Safety Council. Fewer than 20 of those accidents are fatal, but “swing set danger” looms large in the public’s imagination.**

Well.

I was a timid child. Lots of things scared me, but I loved to swing. And I liked to swing high, the higher the better. Sometimes I would swing and sing at the same time! Talk about feeling free! I mean I was never crazy and I held on tight–not like one of our friends who swears he could swing up and over on the swings at his elementary school. I was no dare-devil, but even timid kids like me can feel like they can fly on a swing. And they can flirt with danger in a way that is an important part of growing up.

Indeed, I’m with old RLS.

*Willa Cather; the illustration is by Mary Blair

**Statistics found here.

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June 25, 2018

“Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, and his mercy endures for ever.”*

by chuckofish

How was your weekend? After a raging thunderstorm of a Friday afternoon we had a lovely Saturday with temperatures in the 70s! I had a great visit with my old friend Harriet–such a treat!–and daughter #1 breezed into town as well.

We buzzed around town hitting a couple of estate sales where I rescued a needlepoint pillow (see strawberries) and got a few books and a floor lamp. We dropped in on the boy who was working at his store.

Screen Shot 2018-06-24 at 1.38.25 PM.png We had lunch and walked around our hometown. She got the oil changed in her car and bought some great chinoiserie fabric to recover a chair. Then the wee babes came over on Saturday night and we reconnected with them. It had been awhile!

The wee laddie said hello to the handles on the highboy.

Little Miss Lottie said hello to Aunt Susie and Uncle Nate (in abstentia)…

…and gave Aunt Susie a kiss

The wee laddie wears an eye patch for a few hours a day.

I have 11 teeth!

Busy walking the circuit

After daughter #1 left on Sunday afternoon to go back to mid-MO, I got some laundry and housework done and talked to daughter #2, who is on the home stretch to her oral defense of her PhD thesis. You go, girl! The summer is zooming by.

Now it is back to the salt mine. Have a good week!

*Psalm 107:1

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