Uncategorized | dual personalities

The whole armor of God

by chuckofish

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.¹¹Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. ¹²For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. ¹³Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. ¹⁴Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, ¹⁵and having shod your feet with the equipment of the gospel of peace; ¹⁶besides all these, taking the shield of faith, with which you can quench all the flaming darts of the evil one.¹⁷And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. ¹⁸Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, ¹⁹and also for me, that utterance may be given me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, ²⁰for which I am an ambassador in chains; that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.

–Ephesians 6:10-20

Yesterday, I was the first lector and read the Old Testament lesson. It was a good one from Joshua which included the verse about “as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” I also got to read the verse “Far be it from us that we should forsake the LORD…” which was amusing to me because “far be it from me” was a favorite way our put-upon father liked to start a sentence. It was right up there with “Be that as it may…” Have you noticed that we do not hear these expressions much anymore?

The second lesson was the above reading from Ephesians which is a really great one–We all need to remember it every morning before going out into the world.

On Saturday the OM and I loaded up the car with old computers and headed to the recycling event in O’Fallon, only to be caught in a terrible thunderstorm–the kind where most sane people on the highway have their emergency flashers on and are creeping along at 35 miles an hour. Zut alors! We got there and deposited our stuff, but we wisely decided against going to Clarksville and headed home instead.

Crazy kids that we are, we stopped and had brunch at Schneithorst’s.

Well, one more small step in my basement clean-up/organization project. Mission accomplished.

I also emptied the tall bookcases in my bedroom, carrying the many, many heavy books into another bedroom, and vacuumed behind them (!) in anticipation of having the room painted and wallpapered. This was quite a job.

I had been trying to read this book, but gave up.

It was a clever idea, but the main character did not engage me and ultimately she was annoying. She did not seem true to the mid-19th century and I can’t help thinking that she would have irritated the hell out of old Captain Ahab. Well-written, but…myeh.

I watched Ride With the Devil, did you? It was so good! These characters seemed very authentic and true to their time. I loved it.

And have you seen this video? There are bears in the pool! A mom and 5 cubs! In New Jersey! “What’s the mudder going to do?!”

The little girl reminds me of daughter #1–“They’re eating my floatie!”

Have a good week and don’t forget to put on your breastplate of righteousness.

4 Comments

August 22, 2015

Mystery solved?

by chuckofish

My father’s family has always posed something of a mystery. So far, we can trace the line back to 1744 when John Chamberlin married Mary Wood on March 14th. Their son, John, married Abigail Nichols on November 23, 1768 and their son, Rufus, married Lydia Atherton in 1793. Their son, Asa Leander married Nancy Stiles in 1835 and their son, Arthur Newell (named after Newell, brother of Nancy Stiles), was my great grandfather. I have the birth and death dates and siblings of all these generations, but until this summer, we were a bit confused about my great grandfather’s marriages. We knew that he married Anna Hendren, but family lore had it that she was his second wife, his first wife being Anna’s sister. It turns out that was true. Earlier this summer I sent off to NYC for both marriage certificates. Eventually, the city responded and this is what I received:

and The first wife, mother of Ethel Chamberlin, was named May (it looks like Mary in one place but she clearly signs May), daughter of John Hendren and Margaret Russell (which explains Guy’s middle name). So far, I have not been able to find John and Margaret anywhere, but I’ll keep looking. Here’s Ethel in about 1916.

When May died (of what I do not know), her sister, Anna, came to help with young Ethel. Soon after, in 1891, Arthur married Anna.

Arthur and Anna had three children: Arthur Newell (II), shown here at 11 months,

Caroline (named after Arthur’s sister),

Leander, who died of meningitis at the age of 1,

and Guy Russell, who was killed in WWI. So there you have it. Next on the list of mysteries to solve is, of all things, the exact date and place of my grandparents’ (ANC II and Mira Sargent) marriage.

As a non-family-related aside, I went to see “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” last night and thoroughly enjoyed it.

It was stylish, well paced, suitably PG-13 and frequently made me laugh out loud. I managed to capture something of the original show and I thought Armie Hammer and Henry Cavill worked well together. If you’re in for fun entertainment, it’s well worth it.

Have a wonderful weekend!

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August 21, 2015

“I am a border ruffian from the State of Missouri.”*

by chuckofish

Today is the 152nd anniversary of the massacre in Lawrence, Kansas perpetrated by Colonel Quantrill and his Confederate Raiders. I won’t go into all that dark history, but I will suggest that we watch Ang Lee’s very good movie Ride With the Devil (1999).

Considered to be a box-office bomb, it is, I would assert, a very good movie. Why people didn’t line up to see it, I have no idea. There are lots of very good actors in it. It is an exciting, romantic and historically accurate movie filmed beautifully on location in Missouri. Furthermore, it is based on a very good book (Woe to Live On) by Daniel Woodrell, who is from right here in the Missouri Ozarks and knows whereof he writes.

“Our mode of war was an irregular one. We were as likely to be guided by an aged farmer’s breathless recounting of a definite rumor, or by the moods of our horses, as we were by logic. It was a situation where logic made no sense. So we slouched about in wooded areas, our eyes on main roads and cow paths, watching for our foe to pass in reasonable numbers. They often did.”

As the screenwriter prefaces the film, “On the western frontier of Missouri, the American Civil War was fought not by armies, but by neighbors. Informal gangs of local southern Bushwhackers fought a bloody and desperate guerrilla war against the occupying Union Army and pro-Union Jayhawkers. Allegiance to either side was dangerous. But it was more dangerous still to find oneself caught in the middle.”

Indeed, Louis Vogel, the 17-year old half-brother of my great-great-grandmother Mary Prowers Hough, was beaten to death in Westport in 1863 by Jayhawkers or Bushwackers (nobody seems to know which) who wanted his horse.

This movie is a good reminder of how rough it was back then.

As usual, I have no Big Plans for the weekend, but the OM and I are planning to take a pile of old computers to a recycling event in O’Fallon, MO. As you know, old computers are not so easy to dispose of, so when there is one of these free drop-off events, it is good to take advantage of it. Since we’ll be out and about, we may venture up to Clarksville (population 442) in Pike County.

This little city on the Mississippi River was platted in 1819 and named for the then governor of the territory, William Clark. Maybe we will drive up there and have lunch and look at old man river.

I can’t think of anything better to do, can you?

*”I am a border ruffian from the State of Missouri. I am a Connecticut Yankee by adoption. In me you have Missouri morals, Connecticut culture; this, gentlemen, is the combination which makes the perfect man.”
-Mark Twain (“Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrims”) on December 22, 1881

9 Comments

August 20, 2015

“I sometimes have my doubts about the accuracy of the word ‘laptop’.”

by chuckofish

Sandra Boynton is my kind of gal.

I have been a fan ever since she started writing and illustrating greeting cards back in the 1970s for Recycled Paper Greetings. I mean who can forget the genius “Don’t let the turkeys get you down” card?

Not to mention all those wonderful children’s books we read over and over and over in the 1980s and 90s.

It might surprise you to learn that she is grew up in Philadelphia. Her parents were Quakers. She attended a Quaker school (Germantown Friends School) and then went to Yale, entering in 1970 in the college’s second year of coeducation. She readily admits “joyfully squandering an expensive education on producing works of no apparent significance”.

Well, I just kind of love her.

She even has a website.

Enjoy your Thursday–the weekend is almost here!

3 Comments

August 19, 2015

“Yes, ma’am, just as hard as I could.”*

by chuckofish

John Wayne and some old coots in “Tall in the Saddle”

Well, the films of John Wayne are featured on TCM all day today, so set your DVR!

I am especially looking forward to Tall in the Saddle (1944) which I have not seen in quite a while.

My mother always liked Tall in the Saddle, because she liked Ella Raines who plays the female lead. I think she thought she was more “normal” looking than a lot of the stars of the 1940s–i.e. pretty without the need for elaborate hair, extensive makeup and penciled on eyebrows.

She also has a good part to play in this western–a tomboy who gets to ride around on horseback and kick symbolic dust at the goody-two-shoes who is competition for John Wayne’s affection, Audrey Long.

The reviewer for the New York Times called the film “a regulation rough-and-tumble Western”, complete with a thundering stage coach ride through sagebrush country, fist fights, shootings, and “the customary romantic clinch”. The reviewer acknowledged that Wayne saves the film from its predictability:

Mr. Wayne has to fight his way through every inch of this film, against toughies like Ward Bond, a crooked judge; Harry Woods, a no-account rustler, and Russell Wade, a weakling gun-happy young rancher. Even Ella Raines sends some bullets whizzing perilously close to our hero’s head … Mr. Wayne walks into a mess of trouble in Red Rock, but in eighty-seven noisy minutes he bowls over the opposition, turns up the murderer of his cousin and has Miss Raines purring in his arms. Just take Tall in the Saddle for what it is, a rousing old-fashioned Western, and you won’t go wrong.

Yes, Mr. Wayne saves the day and the movie.

All the movies showing today are worth viewing for their star. That cannot be said for a lot of the movies shown this month on TCM’s Summer Under the Stars.

Anyway, The Quiet Man (1955) is on tonight, followed by The Searchers (1956) and Rio Bravo (1959). So enjoy!

Here is the schedule.

*John Wayne in response to the statement, “I saw you hit that poor man!”

5 Comments

August 18, 2015

“No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.”*

by chuckofish

Today is the birthday of Meriwether Lewis (August 18, 1774 – October 11, 1809).

You probably know that he was an American explorer, soldier, politician, and is best known as the leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

He was the one played by Fred MacMurray in the movie The Far Horizons (1955). Charlton Heston played Clark. All very impressive. But did you know that he had a near-death experience with a grizzly bear? Well, he did.

On their famous expedition, Lewis and Clark and their men had several hair-raising encounters with bears. After awhile Lewis began referring to the bears respectfully as “gentlemen.” On June 14, 1905 Lewis had his own encounter with a grizzly on the Yellowstone River.

He had just shot a buffalo and was watching it die when he realized that a grizzly had crept up on him “within 20 steps.” He described the encounter: “I drew up my gun to shoot, but at the same instant recolected that she was not loaded…it was an open level plain, not a bush within miles…I had no sooner terned myself about but he pitched at me, open mouthed and full speed, I ran about 80 yards and found he gained on me fast, I then ran into the water…about waist deep, and faced about and presented the point of my espontoon, at this instant…he sudonly wheeled about as if frightened, declined the combat on such unequal grounds, and retreated.” Shaken, Lewis waded out of the river, speculating on the bear’s motivation for sparing him. He concluded that its reasons were “misterious and unaccountable.”**

I say old Meriwether Lewis deserves a birthday toast tonight. At the very least. But while I’m at it, I think he deserves a better monument.

This “national monument” in Hohenwald, TN (where he died/was murdered/committed suicide) does not seem to be quite enough somehow. What is the cylinder thing anyway? It looks like a smokestack.

I should think they could have done better in 1848.

*Isaac Newton

**Lewis and Clark Across the Divide by Carolyn Gillman

5 Comments

August 17, 2015

“Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn her seven pillars.”*

by chuckofish

Well, this lady is still hauling things out of her basement.

I mean really. But as they say, sure and steady, gets the job done.

Meanwhile daughter #1 was Instagramming from New Hampshire this weekend

while daughter # 2 did so from atop the ferris wheel at the the Montgomery County Fair.

Good times. I have no idea what the boy was up to this weekend.

On Sunday after church I exhausted myself working in the yard. I went a little crazy with the electric trimmer, and then I had to clean up the mess. There are usually consequences to having too much fun.

Then I watched part of the Cardinals game. And I fell asleep.

I also watched The Apostle and thoroughly enjoyed it. I think Episcopalians could use a little more Holy Ghost Power. Make that a lot more.

Have a good week!

*Proverbs 9:1

5 Comments

August 15, 2015

Sturdy and staunch he stands

by chuckofish

Whew! What a week. Suffice it to say, it was busy, stressful, and now my refrigerator is broken and my kitchen full of coolers. But never mind, a dear friend gave me this little guy:

Isn’t he the best? He’s actually a ‘washing up sponge’, but I can’t bring myself to use him so he stands on the windowsill overlooking the sink. I’ll take pictures of him in situ should I ever get my kitchen back in order. In his new position, he reminds me of Eugene Fields’ heart-breaking poem, “Little Boy Blue”. It’s so sad that when I was in third grade and recited it in front of my whole class, my voice broke. It still makes me teary. Here, in honor of my little kitchen guard and my little-girl self, is the poem. Be sure to have kleenex at the ready when you read it.

The little toy dog is covered with dust,
But sturdy and staunch he stands;
And the little toy soldier is red with rust,
And his musket molds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new
And the soldier was passing fair,
And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue
Kissed them and put them there.”Now, don’t you go till I come,” he said,
“And don’t you make any noise!”
So toddling off to his trundle-bed
He dreamed of the pretty toys.
And as he was dreaming, an angel song
Awakened our Little Boy Blue,–
Oh, the years are many, the years are long,
But the little toy friends are true.Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand,
Each in the same old place,
Awaiting the touch of a little hand,
The smile of a little face.
And they wonder, as waiting these long years through,
In the dust of that little chair,
What has become of our Little Boy Blue
Since he kissed them and put them there.

I remember visiting the Eugene Field house and Toy Museum with my mother many, many years ago. It’s a lovely place

— all that’s left of a block of row houses that used to occupy this area of South Broadway in St. Louis.

I guess you could say his house, like the little tin soldier in his lovely poem, stands sturdy and staunch. Long may it be so.

Have a good weekend! If you need a laugh after this melancholy post, watch any episode of QI on Youtube.

3 Comments

August 14, 2015

Soul on fire

by chuckofish

Okay, I admit it. Sometimes I listen to Christian radio in the morning. Yesterday they played one of my favorites, “Soul on Fire” by Third Day, as I was driving into work.

Did you listen? Not a bad way to rev your engine for the day ahead.

Anyway, this song put me in mind of the great movie The Apostle (1997) starring Robert Duvall in the role for which he should have won the Academy Award.

He also wrote the screenplay, directed the movie and financed it with 5 million dollars of his own money. It is pretty awesome as I recall. I saw it at the movies back when it was released and then when it came out on DVD, but not since.

The Apostle is an unflattering but realistic portrayal of Pentecostal minister Euless “Sonny” Dewey who is searching for redemption amidst personal torment and anger issues. I was impressed with Duvall and indeed everyone in the film–Farrah Fawsett, Billy Bob Thornton, June Carter Cash et al. I was impressed that he made this film with its Christian theme and that it was actually reviewed favorably by the mainstream media. Duvall’s minister is not perfect but he is not a fake. He is the real deal.

So it is my Friday movie pick. “I’m a genuine, Holy Ghost, Jesus-filled preachin’ machine this mornin’!”

4 Comments

August 13, 2015

“I said the mountains looked like white elephants. Wasn’t that bright?”*

by chuckofish

Did you know that yesterday was World Elephant Day? Well, it was. Did you know that elephant numbers have dropped by 62% over the last decade, and they could be mostly extinct by the end of the next decade?

This is shocking. China seems to be the main market for illegal ivory, where a single tusk can fetch $100,000–200,000.

Ugh. You can read more about it here.

Elephants at Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage in Sri Lanka, on April 16, 2015. (Getty Image)

Elephants at Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage in Sri Lanka, on April 16, 2015. (Huffington Post)

You know how I feel about elephants. I have blogged about this and the evidence is all over my house.

Between hedgehog populations in freefall and elephants going extinct, I am pretty depressed.

Well, let’s look at some great elephants.

Linen canvas embroidered with gold, silver & silk, one of the ‘Oxburgh Hangings’, made by Mary Queen of Scots, Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury & members of her household, probably at Sheffield Manor Lodge, Yorkshire, England, UK, 1570-85.