Lucky Faye
by chuckofish
Steve, Faye and Paul on the set of The Towering Inferno. Back in the day when even a bad movie could be bearable because of the awesome cast! Do I sound enough like an old lady? I know. But, gee, some fun was being had.
dual personalities
Category: Uncategorized
May 2, 2012
Happy 401st birthday
by chuckofish
…to the King James Version of the Bible. Time flies, doesn’t it? In 1611 the King James Bible was published for the first time in London, England, by printer Robert Barker. It molded the English language, “buttressed by ‘the powers that be’–one of its famous phrases–and yet enshrined a gospel of individual freedom. No other book has given more to the English-speaking world.”
Phrases that originated in the KJV:
From time to time
The root of the matter
As a lamb to the slaughter
Stand in awe
Turned the world upside down
To every thing there is a season
Unto the pure all things are pure
A thorn in the flesh
A still small voice
Suffer the little children
Pour out your heart
No small stir
Know for a certainty
The skin of my teeth
Fell flat on his face
Set thine house in order
(Thank you to the National Geographic, December 2011, for this information)
Let’s all take a break today and read a chapter from the KJV. Here’s one to start with (I Corinthians 13):
1Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
2And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
3And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
4Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
5Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
6Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
7Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
8Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
9For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
10But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
11When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
12For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
13And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
And while we’re at it, Happy birthday, David Beckham!
David Robert Joseph Beckham, OBE (born 2 May 1975) is an English association footballer who plays for the Los Angeles Galaxy. He has played for Manchester United, Preston North End, Real Madrid, Milan, and the England national team for which he holds the appearance record for an outfield player. And, for the record, he is perfect.
May 1, 2012
Among the dust and cobwebs
by chuckofish
True to my routine, on Saturday I went to a couple of estate sales. One was in a lovely home on a street down by my old church, a neighborhood I am very familiar with and which is one of my favorites. It was the home of a former professor and his wife, the home they raised their three children in. The children are my age and went to the other private school (the co-educational one) in this flyover town.
(Not the house I visited, but similar)
It was a beautiful three-story house, probably built in the 1920s, with a wide front-to-back front hall, a lovely staircase, and back stairs from the basement to the third floor. The kitchen looked virtually untouched with an old-fashioned pantry. The basement, although not “finished” to today’s standard, had terrazzo floors and a fireplace. Such a wide and airy house, full of lovely things, and books, and evocative testaments to lives well lived–canoe paddles, skates, skiis, pictures taken out west. All I could think, however, was how the next family to buy this house would undoubtedly feel the need to gut-rehab it, ripping out walls to make a huge kitchen with granite counters, and all the rest. Sigh.
I also could not help wondering why the three children did not want all their parents’ stuff! No room for their childhood twin beds? Trunks from dad’s days at summer camp? Their mother’s St. John suits? Her sewing baskets? There were even some family pictures and engraved teaching awards! I suppose things are never what they seem.
I bought a couple of books. Mostly this outing made me very sad. It was a little too personal I guess. Much as I love estate sales, I hope my own children do not have one. The idea of people pawing through my things! Just give it away! Or throw it away! Have a big bonfire and burn it (probably not legal, but somehow preferable)!
Time marches on; obviously some people have a much easier time moving with it than I do. The past is prelude and all that. So true, Will Shakespeare, but for some of us, the past is always with us.
April 30, 2012
Absent-Minded Professor
by chuckofish
This lonely figure of not much fun
Strayed out of folklore fifteen years ago
Forever. Now on an autumn afternoon,
While the leaves drift past the office window,
His bright replacement, present-minded, stays
At the desk correcting papers, nor ever grieves
For the silly scholar of the bad old days,
Who’d burn the papers and correct the leaves.–Howard Nemerov
Howard Nemerov (29 February 1920 – 5 July 1991) was an American poet who was twice Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, from 1963 to 1964 and again from 1988 to 1990. He was for many years a professor at our flyover university and as such used to walk to work past our parent’s house. He wrote a poem called “Walking Down Westgate in the Fall.” It ends with the lines: “Hearing the acorns bang on the roofs of cars/ And bounce and roll along the rainy street.”
I remember that. (The sound of acorns banging on cars.)
April 28, 2012
Dining room redux
by chuckofish
Not long ago I blogged about my dining room and its newly painted blue walls, which look like this:
I also mentioned that I wanted to buy a new rug and that it should be mostly red so that the room would not be so overwhelmingly blue. I’ve been looking for months for a rug and last week I finally found a reasonably good quality hand made rug that I thought would be just the thing. I bought it online from a rug dealer in Lexington Kentucky. The transaction was easy and the company efficient, but the rug turned out to be more rust than the red it looked online. Oh well. It’s growing on me; It does really brighten up the room.
What do you think? I welcome your feedback, but be nice because I’m feeling sensitive.
Note: the funny shading on the front edge of the rug is just the light on the nap and not staining.
April 27, 2012
The simple things
by chuckofish
I am a morning person. My favorite time of day is early in the morning, after I have done my NordicTrack time and my husband has left for work. I have the house to myself to putter to my hearts content before (and while) I get ready to return to the salt mines.
I clean up the kitchen. I water my plants. I stack the magazines.
Today I swiffered the ceiling fan blades in my bedroom (and, boy, did they need it!).
I looked at my birthday cards from last week.
I went outside and cut some flowers.
There are buds on the peonies (and ants).
There is coffee.
“I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson (Self-Reliance)
April 26, 2012
Far be it from me
by chuckofish
The birthday on April 4 of our pater familias caught me off guard and I only had time to throw together a short post. I have been giving it (and him) some more thought.
My father was very old school. He carried a Dunhill lighter and wore a fedora and a Burberry Balmacan raincoat. He wore Brooks Brothers suits; two for summer (one khaki and one olive green–a color they no longer seem to carry) and two for winter (gray). He wore Brooks Brothers button-down shirts (14 1/2/32) and shoes. Even in our hot, muggy flyover summers, he never wore sportshirts. (Sometimes he rolled his sleeves.) Jazzy for him meant madras. He wore boxers. He never changed the style of eyewear he wore. Ever. (See above in 1952 with my brother Chris in our grandparents backyard.)
He loved small leather goods. And the Georg Jensen store in NYC.
He was a proud veteran of WWII and Korea. He was the first man in his family not to serve as an officer.
He loved bookstores and books. He read mysteries. As my dual personality noted earlier, no one read Winnie the Pooh aloud like my father. He liked war movies and John Wayne. He met Charlton Heston once in London. (They both collected lead soldiers.)
He never lifted so much as a finger to help in the yard or the house. Ever. He did not barbeque.
When we had a dog, he never walked it. I think he liked small animals. He would have liked a cat. I remember he hit a rabbit once on Ladue Road and it was the only time I ever heard him use a four-letter word (sober). I think it really bothered him. (This is not to say that he didn’t blaspheme regularly–“God damn it!” being a favorite exclamation.)
He could get sunburned driving a car with the window open.
He liked cities, especially Boston and San Francisco. Nature was not his thing. Exercise? Please. He did once ride his bike as a teenager from Worcester, MA up to Montpelier, VT to visit his cousins, but I think that was probably because he was desperate to get out of his house (and away from his mother?) His cousin told me years later that when he arrived, he was terribly sunburned.
He always bought me a candy bar when we stopped for gas on the way home from school, even if dinner was in half an hour and he knew my mother would accuse him of “ruining my appetite”. I blame him for my candy addiction.
He cut the fat off his meat and hated butter. He liked Jordan Almonds.
He was a collector and hobbyist. Lead soldiers (Britains), model trains, medals, military prints and Dresden soldiers, Napoleana.
He was kind and quiet and gentlemanly. He was not a snob. He treated everyone the same. People of lower social orders always respected and admired him. He was ill-at-ease around business executives. He had a few friends, but like the rest of our family, he was an introvert who enjoyed his own company.
April 25, 2012
The party ain’t over yet
by chuckofish
Lately I’ve been listening to the lovely Miss Patty Loveless on my rides to and from work. I have been a fan of her eastern Kentucky twang and ladylike demeanor for many years. She was born in Pikeville, the hometown of another favorite of mine, Dwight Yoakam. (Patty and Dwight are contemporaries of mine and I’m sure we would be fast friends if we ever met.) She is also a distant cousin of Loretta Lyn and Crystal Gale.
We have seen Patty at the Grand Ole Opry and once at the Ryman Theater where the boy famously yelled, “We love you Patty!” in that quiet moment after the thunderous applause suddenly dies down. I remember she turned and looked up at the balcony where we sat.
“How Can I Help You to Say Goodbye” always makes me cry, but my favorite Patty song is this. Listen and enjoy! (They played this song once on Justified, but it was the Brad Paisley version, which though good, cannot hold a candle to Patty’s.)
April 24, 2012
“I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china.”—Oscar Wilde
by chuckofish
But I do keep trying! I always wonder about all those people out there with their plain white china–such low expectations!
