Uncategorized | dual personalities

June 5, 2017

And then we were all in one place

by chuckofish

Didn’t do much this weekend. Stopped by a couple of estate sales, went deeper into the Longmire oeuvre, read the first lesson in the Pentecost service on Sunday (“The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and notable day of the Lord come.”), and went to Washington, MO with the OM to eat some lunch by the mighty Missouri River.

I also watched the movie Hacksaw Ridge (2016), directed by Mel Gibson, which tells the true story of Desmond Doss, the first conscientious objector to win the Congressional Medal of Honor.

(“Doss single-handedly entered enemy line of fire to retrieve approximately 75 casualties, carrying them one-by-one down a 400-foot escarpment. “*)

Doss, a Seventh Day Adventist, who refused to carry a gun on religious grounds, although he served in a fighting unit as a medic, was ostracized at first by fellow soldiers for his pacifist stance. However, he went on to earn their respect and adoration for his bravery, selflessness and compassion after he risked his life — without firing a shot — to save 75 wounded men in the Battle of Okinawa. It is a pretty inspiring story and well told, and a throwback to heroic war stories of the Golden Age of Hollywood. The cast is good with Andrew Garfield excellent as Doss, playing it very straight, and the likable Vince Vaughan channeling John Wayne in the Sgt. Stryker role.

But (and this is a big but) the computer-generated violence is over-the-top. Just because you can now show people having their legs blown off, doesn’t mean you should. The battle sequences are too much and obscene in their detail. It would have been possible to cut 20 minutes out of this movie and still gotten across the horror of the battle (and it was truly horrible, no doubt about it). Whatever happened to restraint and suggestion?

Mel Gibson, as we know, is a single-minded Roman Catholic, who, as we have seen in past movie outings, tends to wallow, literally and figuratively, in the blood of Christ. What was his childhood trauma anyway?

Well, it is a good movie nonetheless and well worth watching for the story of the modern Christian hero Desmond Doss. Nowhere in this movie is anyone invited to laugh at or even smirk at Pvt. Doss and I liked that.

And now it is Monday. I have several hard things to do this week, but none of them is climbing Hacksaw Ridge. Onward and upward.

*Read more here.

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June 3, 2017

Seventy-six trombones led the big parade*

by chuckofish

Except here, a tractor or county emergency vehicle usually leads the way. But I get ahead of myself. Today is the Dairy Princess parade and festival in my North Country town. Downtown the Green is buzzing with activity. There’s a bouncy castle, a petting zoo, a cake walk, chicken barbecue and loads of vendors selling unnecessary plastic items or colorful tutus. My church is selling bottled water and salt potatoes (whatever they are).

The parade starts at 1:00. In a good year, bagpipers lead the way and there are floats, but lately it has been mostly emergency vehicles, farm machinery belching exhaust, and random people throwing penny candy at the crowd. C’est la vie.

I plan to go anyway. Who’d want to miss this guy?

While I’m off bonding with my community, the DH and son #1, who is home for his 5th college reunion, will be on campus enjoying various alumni weekend activities. The alumni keep away from the village hoi polloi and have their own parade.

When I’ve become exhausted by my dizzying small town social life, I’ll take up my needle and do more embroidery. See how I’ve progressed? I’ve done the outline, except for the flowers and leaves which I’m adding now. The little leaves are kind of blobby, but I’m still mastering my stitches.

My progress has been made possible by the brilliant gift of a needle-threader from my very sweet niece, Mary. Thank you!

What will they think of next?

Have a wonderful weekend!

*”The Music Man”. Dairy Princess photos from the blog, “Windswept Adventure,” and NCPR (north country public radio) via Google. SLU photo from http://www.stlawu.edu.

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June 2, 2017

A landslide in the mind

by chuckofish

“Perhaps there can be too much making of cups of tea, I thought, as I watched Miss Statham filling the heavy teapot. Did we really need a cup of tea? I even said as much to Miss Statham and she looked at me with a hurt, almost angry look, ‘Do we need tea? she echoed. ‘But Miss Lathbury…’ She sounded puzzled and distressed and I began to realise that my question had struck at something deep and fundamental. It was the kind of question that starts a landslide in the mind. I mumbled something about making a joke and that of course one needed tea always, at every hour of the day or night.”

–Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

Happy birthday to Barbara Pym, the English novelist, born in 1913. I am re-reading A Glass of Blessings and enjoying it very much. Just the thing to calm the mind after a short but stressful week at work. (At least until the next Walt Longmire mystery arrives in the mail.) I recommend her to you.

And this is funny.

Have a good weekend.

What have you got planned? Sunday is The Day of Pentecost:

Almighty God, on this day you opened the way of eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit: Shed abroad this gift throughout the world by the preaching of the Gospel, that it may reach to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

(The first painting is The Red Table (1919) by Leon de Smet (1881-1966); the second is by Mary Cassatt, Lady at the Tea Table (1883-85).)

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June 1, 2017

Time flies

by chuckofish

Can you believe it is JUNE already?!

Daffodils Contre Jour, Bruce Yardley (b. 1962)

She wore her yellow sun-bonnet,
She wore her greenest gown;
She turned to the south wind
And curtsied up and down.
She turned to the sunlight
And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbor:
“Winter is dead.”

–A.A. Milne

3 Comments

May 31, 2017

What are you reading?

by chuckofish

Someone at work has been cleaning out his bookshelves recently and I have been the recipient of several good mystery novels. First I read an Easy Rawlins mystery by Walter Moseley which was well written and held my interest.

Then I started the first Longmire mystery with low expectations and was rewarded with a real prize.

I am enjoying this book so much! It is well-written and character-driven and the characters are all fascinating individuals. It is slightly humorous, and by that I mean, it does not take itself too seriously, as I think the television version tends to. Plus, bonus: Walt is a lawman with a literary bent. He is always making literary references, but not in a pretentious, stuffy way. Rather, he is always kind of kidding when he does so.

“I took a sip of my coffee, sat the folder on the counter, and began reading the newspaper. “In the cold, gray dawn of September the twenty-eighth . . .” Dickens. “. . . The slippery bank where the life of Cody Pritchard came to an ignominious end . . .” Faulkner. “Questioning society with the simple query, why?” Steinbeck. “Dead.” Hemingway.”

“You know, Balzac once described bureaucracy as a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.”

“What’d your buddy Balzac have to say about inadmissible evidence?”

“Not a lot. I think he considered the subject beneath him.”

“I wandered past Vic’s office and looked in at the explosion of legal pads. The display was daunting, and I would be cursed at if I messed up any of what I’m sure was a carefully detailed arrangement. We were little but we were mighty. I thought of Don Quixote, being far too powerful to war with mere mortals and pleading for giants.”

That is just how his mind works.

I am happy to note that as of May 2017, Craig Johnson has written 12 novels, 2 novellas and a collection of short stories featuring Sheriff Walt Longmire of Absaroka County, Wyoming.

My kind of guy.

One of these days I am going to quit my job and move to Wyoming and get a job as the admin to an overworked sheriff. You think I’m kidding?

(The painting at the top is by Mary Cassatt.)

6 Comments

May 30, 2017

Weekend update

by chuckofish

I love three day weekends, don’t you? Sundays are great when you don’t have to go to work the next day.

As I promised myself, I watched Stagecoach (1939) and Hatari (1962) and also Furious Six (2013) with Vin Diesel et al and enjoyed all three. I also watched The Lady in the Van (2015) based on the memoir by Alan Bennett. Maggie Smith plays an eccentric homeless woman whom Bennett befriended in the 1970s, allowing her temporarily to park her van in the driveway of his Camden home. She stays there for 15 years. MV5BOTY0MjM3NTQyOF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMzcwNjUxNzE@._V1_SY1000_CR0,0,674,1000_AL_

It didn’t really grab me. I guess I didn’t find her character at all appealing. Nope.

I also went to the spring auction at our local Link Auction house.

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It was fun. I rescued a 19th century mirror that no one wanted

and a 19th century table which I will probably give to one of my girls.

I had fun with my paddle.

I also got a lot of work done in my basement, going through (more) bins and throwing some stuff away and consolidating other stuff.

Plus the weather was mostly nice and I got to do a lot of this:

And, of course, the wee babes came over for a Memorial Day bar-b-que. Good times. IMG_2630 (1).jpg

And now it’s a four-day week! Huzzah.

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May 29, 2017

We thank you kindly

by chuckofish

Happy Memorial Day. Here’s one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1948)–the funeral of Brigadier General Brougham Clay, lately of the Confederate Army and now known as trooper John Smith.

Join me in a toast to all the Americans who have died for our country, and yes, even the Confederates who died, however misguidedly. Remember what Herman Melville wrote about Stonewall Jackson:

Dead is the Man whose Cause is dead,
Vainly he died and set his seal –
Stonewall!
Earnest in error, as we feel;
True to the thing he deemed was due,
True as John Brown or steel.

And here’s a great prayer from A Prayer Book for Soldiers and Sailors (1941):

Grant, O Lord, that I may not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under his banner against sin, the world, and the devil, and to continue Christ‘s faithful soldier and servant unto my life‘s end. Amen.

(Published for the Army and Navy Commission of the Protestant Episcopal Church)

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May 27, 2017

The eye of the needle

by chuckofish

It has been a busy week. On Wednesday the DH and I went to Vermont (again!) to pack our son’s belongings into a UHaul and move him back home. I wish I could say it all went off without a hitch (no pun intended), but no, it was more like a bad sitcom. The ‘needs service’ light went off in my car, sending me into a “should I keep driving?” panic; the boy had not finished packing when we arrived (not even close); the apartment hadn’t been cleaned within historical memory, and it rained. To top it off, Tim and I got a half an hour out of Johnson only to discover that he had left his backpack (with two laptops and sundry other valuables) back in the apartment. We went back for it, thereby adding an hour to our already four-hour drive back. Other than that, the return trip went fine, and the DH, who drove the UHaul, didn’t even notice that we were late arriving back. After unpacking everything and returning the van, we finally got our pizza dinner at 9:00 pm. Not bad for a day’s work. Despite our many “adventures”, I never lost my joie de vivre. In fact, I had fun.

I spent the rest of the week helping Tim unpack in the vain hope that I might see the floor in my back hall and family room again. When not puttering, I read and did some work, but best of all I started my summer project. I’m taking up the needle and attempting to complete a crewel pillow.

Having done no embroidery in ages, I find even the simplest stitch a challenge. Thank heaven for Youtube, where I have discovered helpful instructional videos that demonstrate how to do every conceivable embroidery stitch. Now if I can only learn how to thread the needle in under fifteen minutes, I’ll be set.

It’s really coming along, don’t you think?

Okay, so I’ve barely started, but I am having fun, and needlework is extremely relaxing once you get the thread through the needle. So, go on, do something creative this summer. What will your summer project be?

4 Comments

May 26, 2017

At the bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow

by chuckofish

Today is John Wayne’s birthday. It has been a long, stressful week at work and I plan to hunker down and watch some classic JW movies this weekend. This is a favorite way to chillax.

I think I will start with Stagecoach (1939), the movie that made Wayne an “overnight” star. I like to think of my mother going to see it for the first time at the age of 13. She was a fan for the rest of her life. People always think of John Wayne as a man’s actor, an action star, and he was to be sure. But people tend to forget how handsome and sexy he was and how women loved him for his whole long career.

Think of Joan Didion, who wrote in John Wayne, a Love Song:

We went three and four afternoons a week, sat on folding chairs in the darkened hut which served as a theatre, and it was there, that summer of 1943 while the hot wind blew outside, that I first saw John Wayne. Saw the walk, heard the voice. Heard him tell the girl in a picture called War of the Wildcats that he would build her a house, ‘at the bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow’. As it happened I did not grow up to be the kind of woman who is the heroine in a Western, and although the men I have known have had many virtues and have taken me to live in many places I have come to love, they have never been John Wayne, and they have never taken me to that bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow. Deep in that part of my heart where the artificial rain forever falls, that is still the line I wait to hear.

Anyway, a toast to the Duke on his 110th birthday.

BTW, where is my copy of The Searchers?

7 Comments

May 25, 2017

“So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”*

by chuckofish

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Yesterday was Bob Dylan’s 76th birthday. I hope you celebrated appropriately.

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’

© 1963, 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991, 1992 by Special Rider Music

Yesterday was also Aldersgate Day which is a commemorative day celebrated by Methodists. It recalls the day in 1738 when Anglican priest John Wesley attended a group meeting in Aldersgate, London, where he received an experience of assurance of his salvation.

This was the pivotal event in Wesley’s life that ultimately led to the development of the Methodist movement in Britain and America. According to his journal, Wesley found that his enthusiastic gospel message had been rejected by his Anglican brothers. Heavy-hearted, he reluctantly attended a group meeting that evening in a Moravian chapel. It was there, while someone was reading from Martin Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans, that he felt that his heart was “strangely warmed”.

I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

The following hymn was written by Shirley Murray to commemorate the event on the 250th anniversary in 1988.

How small a spark has lit a living fire!
       how small a flame has warmed a bitter world!
how great a heart was moved to hope, to dare
       and bring the faith out in the open air!

No boundary sign will stand against this faith,
       no wall restrain this preaching of the Word:
the Good News travels on, it rides the road
       and draws to unity the realm of God.

The single note becomes a song of praise,
       the single voice grows to a swelling choir
and born in song, new stories now are sung
       of freedom, chains unbound and loosened tongue.

Thank God for all who listened and believed,
       who still are by the Spirit set on fire --
our hearts be warmed again, for Christ will wait
       on beach, in upper room, or Aldersgate.

The Good News travels on…

*Matthew 20:16

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