I don’t know about you, but I really want to try one of these donut, egg and bacon combos.
We had our annual meeting yesterday and I think I deserve one.
The meeting went well, so it would be a celebratory egg sandwich, not a drown-my-sorrows one. All the better I say.
What do you think?
“Donuts. Is there anything they can’t do?” –Homer Simpson
“I’ve been around, well – all right, I might not have been around, but, I’ve been nearby.”
–Mary Richards
It was quite a weekend. I took part in more socializing than in the first 5 months of the year combined.
A very dear friend and her husband were visiting from Virginia and we had dinner with them at a friend’s house with other members of our high school class–a mini reunion of sorts. There were tornado sirens and we turned on the TV during dinner to make sure we weren’t in the path of disaster. Luckily the tornadic activity passed by us to the north, but you can never be too sure. Unbenownst to us, there was a lot of local damage and power outages galore.
Oh my goodness.
On Saturday we went to my old man’s 40th high school reunion which was held at his bff’s house up on a bluff above the Mississippi River.
BFFs
Such a view!
There was a pig roast (sorry, no pictures) and lots of nostalgic ’70s music. Hello, Neil Young.
Martin and Cap check out those newfangled phone devices.
The boys shot off a cannon and there were fireworks.
On Sunday I went to church because I was reading the second lesson. It was one of those “as we have said before, so now I repeat…” exhortations that ol’ St. Paul is known for. Great stuff. My favorite to read. While we were passing the peace, the first lector said, “Good job,” to me. “As usual. We had the A-team today.” I chuckled, but I was pleased. I’ve never been on the A-team before. Boo yah.
I had brunch with my BFFs from Virginia and then went home to work in the yard a little before it rained. A lovely end to an exhausting but wonderful weekend.
#Oldfriends
Oh, this old world
Keeps spinning round
It’s a wonder tall trees
Ain’t layin’ down
There comes a time.
My eldest turned 23 this week and for the first time was not home for the event. We sent presents, but he had no cake and no brothers around with whom to celebrate. It was kind of sad and naturally got me reminiscing about how quickly time flies and how truly wonderful and hilarious raising three boys has been. Of course, we have pictures of many epic adventures — everything from daring the diabolical
to hanging out with debonaire friends
Here’s looking at you, kid
and hair-raising hikes.
a windy, windy day on Dartmoor
But with a video camera there was no stopping them. As a special treat, I share with you their first ever movie, “The Yeti”, filmed by three intrepid boys and a hand-held camera in the wilds of the North Country a long time ago.
Happy (belated) birthday, dear boy!!! And watch out for Yetis and all manner of beasties out there in the real world.
June is bustin’ out all over!
Look around! Look around! Look around!
The feelin’ is gettin’ so intense,
That the young Virginia creepers
Hev been huggin’ the bejeepers
Outa all the mornin’ glories on the fence!
This may be true in New England, where Carousel takes place, but sadly, things have been bustin’ out all over our flyover state for a month already. Indeed, everything starts to droop here in June. The peonies have gone by as have the irises. They were lovely.
We put off as long as we can turning on the old AC, but finally the heat gets to be too much for us, and we seal off the house. Sigh. It won’t be long now.
Oh well. I have a new calendar page for the new month–with sparkly fishes!
I have roses inside.
And roses outside.
Plus…
It was June, and the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside. (Maud Hart Lovelace, Betsy-Tacy and Tib, 1941)
Have a good weekend! A dear friend is visiting our flyover town from the east coast this weekend and my old man is celebrating his 40th high school reunion, so this introvert will be working overtime.
Happy Birthday to Clint Eastwood who turns 83 today! I do not think I own one of his movies (except a VHS copy of Paint Your Wagon!), but if I did, I’d watch one! Here he is singing “I Talk to the Trees”. I spent a good deal of 8th grade daydreaming about him. Can you blame me?
“Life can’t be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years.”
–William F. Buckley
I have gushed previously about Willa Cather on this blog here. I am about to do so again.
My dual personality gave me the newly published Selected Letters of Willa Cather for my birthday last month. Cather had left adamant instructions to her executors that her private correspondence not be published or quoted. “The editors of the new collection, Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout, acknowledge in the introduction that this publication flies in the face of Cather’s instructions, as set forth by a will that partially expired in 2011. Still, they believe that publication of her letters will prove invaluable for her legacy, arguing that ‘these lively, illuminating letters will do nothing to damage her reputation.'” (Melville House)
Oh well, I have been enthusiastically reading them. (Personally I think she was very depressed at the end of her life, and that is why she put those particular orders into effect.) I already knew from her fiction, that she was wonderfully talented and deep, but from her letters we get a real sense of Willa as a person. We see what gets her excited and the things that annoy her. We see her feelings hurt by mean-spirited reviewers and her confidence boosted by the encouraging words of worthy people.
“Weeks ago I got such a heart-warming letter from a former president of the Missouri Pacific, Edwin Winter, who as a young man helped to carry the U.P. across Nebraska, and who built the bridge over Dale Creek canyon–the first bridge, which was of timber! He asked if he could come to see me, and on Friday he came. Such a man! all that one’s proudest of in one’s country. He picked the book [My Antonia] up in his club and sat right down and wrote me the most beautiful of letters. I would rather have the admiration of one man like that than sell a thousand books…”
–from a letter to her brother Roscoe Cather, 1919
She loved her family and friends. She never married, and despite what some people who look at everything through the “queer lens” imagine, I think she would have liked to. But she was a passionate artist first and foremost. Had she married and had children, we might not have the wonderful books which are her legacy.
I also read Death Comes for the Archbishop, which she considered to be her best work. It is awesome. It tells the story of two well-meaning and devout French priests who encounter an entrenched Spanish-Mexican clergy whom they are sent to supplant after the United States acquired New Mexico in the Mexican-American War. She is very respectful of the Catholic Church (more so probably than a Catholic would be), and I am happy to say, she is a big fan of our old family friend Kit Carson, who plays a minor role in the novel.
“This Missourian, whose eye was so quick to read a landscape or a human face, could not read a printed page. He could at that time barely write his own name. Yet one felt in him a quick and discriminating intelligence. That he was illiterate was an accident; he had got ahead of books, gone where the printing-press could not follow him. Out of the hardships of his boyhood–from fourteen to twenty picking up a bare living as cook or mule-driver for wagon trains, often in the service of brutal and desperate characters–he had preserved a clean sense of honour and a compassionate heart.”
Through the 1910s and 1920s, Cather was firmly established as a major American writer, receiving the Pulitzer Prize in 1922 for her novel One of Ours. By the 1930s, however, critics began to dismiss her as a “romantic, nostalgic writer who could not cope with the present.” Critics such as Granville Hicks accused Cather of failing to confront “contemporary life as it is.” The same thing happened to Thornton Wilder, you may recall, and many other writers who are still read today (whereas Granville Hicks is long forgotten). It is good to see Willa Cather appreciated again. I agree with Wallace Stevens who wrote toward the end of her life: “We have nothing better than she is. She takes so much pains to conceal her sophistication that it is easy to miss her quality.” I am so grateful to have finally discovered her!
On a personal note, I was interested to read that one of her favorite nieces graduated from Smith College. I was gratified to learn that the college bestowed an honorary degree on Willa, the year her niece graduated.
Someday I would like to visit her grave in Jaffrey, New Hampshire.
WILLA CATHER
December 7, 1873-April 24, 1947
THE TRUTH AND CHARITY OF HER GREAT
SPIRIT WILL LIVE ON IN THE WORK
WHICH IS HER ENDURING GIFT TO HER
COUNTRY AND ALL ITS PEOPLE.
“…that is happiness; to be dissolved
into something complete and great.”
From My Antonia
We did not wish Bob Dylan a happy birthday last Friday, because we were all caught up celebrating John Wayne’s birthday.
So happy belated birthday, Bob! (This is a two-minute song he sang on the Johnny Cash Show in 1969. He looks so clean-cut.)
At his Post — so reads the monument dedicated to Waldo Farrar, a native of Moretown, Vermont who served in the 1st Minnesota Regiment and was killed on July 2nd, 1863 at Gettysburg.
Photo courtesy of findagrave.com
My father always said that one of our ancestors died at Gettysburg, repulsing Picket’s charge, so when I had the chance to research this family legend, I did. Although it turned out that Waldo was neither a blood relative nor involved in Picket’s charge, it is easy to see how his story worked itself into ours. Moretown, whose cemetery I’ve blogged about earlier, was (and is) a very tiny town; everyone knew everyone else. Clearly Waldo’s death had a big impact.
Born in 1836, Waldo grew up in Moretown but left when he was old enough to join his brother in Minnesota. When the war broke out the brothers volunteered for the 1st Minnesota regiment. Waldo served as a Sergeant and was promoted to 2nd Lieutenant on September 17th, 1862 at Antietam, the bloodiest day of battle in American history. The regiment also served at 1st and 2nd Fredericksburg. Worn out, perhaps, from so much carnage, or maybe troubled by a premonition, Waldo requested and was granted a 15 day leave of absence on May 17, 1863. He went home to Moretown to take care of “important private business which requires my personal attention” (findagrave.com). At least he got to go home before his luck ran out.
Waldo was among the 262 Minnesotans who attacked Wilcox’s 1,600 Alabamians on July 2 (Wikipedia). Twenty-six year old Waldo fell in the charge.
Painting by Don Troiani. Courtesy of The National Guard
He is buried along with his brothers-in-arms at the Gettysburg National Cemetery.
The fact that the people of Moretown raised a monument to Waldo shows how greatly his death and the battle resonated. Quite simply, it was a big deal. I’m glad I learned the truth about Waldo Farrar (who had a great name!) — it’s even better than family legend. And although we aren’t directly related, I remember him on this Memorial Day right along with family members who made the ultimate sacrifice: Daniel Herbert Cameron (senior), Arthur Newell Chamberlin (senior)and Guy Russell Chamberlin.
I leave you with the 1940 version of the great hymn “Eternal Father, Strong to Save”
Mighty Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep:
O hear us when we cry to thee
For those in peril on the sea.O Christ, the Lord of hill and plain
O’er which our traffic runs amain
By mountain pass or valley low;
Wherever, Lord, thy brethren go,
Protect them by thy guarding hand
From every peril on the land.O Spirit, whom the Father sent
To spread abroad the firmament;
O Wind of heaven, by thy might
Save all who dare the eagle’s flight,
And keep them by thy watchful care
From every peril in the air.O Trinity of love and power,
Our brethren shield in danger’s hour;
From rock and tempest, fire and foe,
Protect them whereso’er they go,
Thus evermore shall rise to thee
Glad praise from air and land and sea.
Remember to remember this Memorial Day!
This week I’ve been reading Nicholas Monsarrat’s The Cruel Sea. First published in 1951 it’s a semi-autobiographical novel about a British Corvette crew escorting convoys during the Battle of the Atlantic in WWII.
Corvettes were the smallest escorts and they suffered as much from the “cruel sea” as from the German U-boats. As Monsarrat tells it,
For us the Battle of the Atlantic was becoming a private war. If you were in it, you knew all about it. You knew how to keep watch on filthy nights, and how to go without sleep, how to bury the dead, and how to die without wasting anyone’s time.
It’s a very English book from a very different time and well worth reading, not just for the action, but to remind us how much our respective societies have changed. Terrible, terrible things happened and most people — soldiers, sailors, and civilians — kept their feelings to themselves and just got on with it. We could do with more of that kind of restraint these days, don’t you think?
keep that stiff upper lip
If you can’t find a copy of the book, the 1953 film version is quite good, too. It stars Jack Hawkins, Donald Sinden, Denholm Elliot, and a young Stanley Baker (as the crass, cruel officer). If I remember correctly the above film still shows Donald Sinden and Jack Hawkins trying to decide whether to pick up drowning sailors or drop depth charges to catch a U-boat and thus kill their own guys — horrible dilemma but no one cried about it.
Since we’re on the Sea theme and to tie in to the title of today’s post, I leave you with Gregory Alan Isakov favorite, That Sea, The Gambler:
Aren’t you happy to be a land lubber?
