The dual personalities circa 1964
Here’s wishing a very happy birthday to the elder (thinner, more glamorous, and beautiful…) dual personality. I hope your presents make you as happy as that troll did!
In a pre-emptive strike on this day in 1585, Francis Drake “singed the beard of the King of Spain” by sailing a fleet into Cadiz and also Corunna, two of Spain’s main ports, and occupying the harbors. He destroyed 37 naval and merchant ships. The attack delayed the Spanish invasion by a year. Over the next month, Drake patrolled the Iberian coasts between Lisbon and Cape St. Vincent, intercepting and destroying ships on the Spanish supply lines.
They sure don’t make ’em like Sir Francis Drake anymore. Or TV shows like “Sir Francis Drake”. Remember that one back in 1962? I do, although I probably saw it in syndication a few years later.
“Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves,
when our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little,
when we arrive safely because we sailed too close to the shore.Disturb us, Lord, when with the abundance of things we possess,
we have lost our thirst for the waters of life, having fallen in love with life, we have ceased to dream of eternity, and in our efforts to build a new earth, we have allowed our vision of the new heaven to dim.Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, to venture on wider seas, where storms will show your mastery, where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars. We ask you to push back the horizon of our hopes, and to push us into the future in strength, courage, hope, and love. This we ask in the name of our Captain, who is Jesus Christ. ”
― Francis Drake
“Please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism; for the record it’s my least favorite quality. It doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.”
A wise man and he wrote the “Marge vs. the Monorail” episode.
The Gospel is bad news before it is good news. It is the news that man is a sinner, to use the old word, that he is evil in the imagination of his heart, that when he looks in the mirror all in a lather what he sees is at least eight parts chicken, phony, slob. That is the tragedy. But it is also the news that he is loved anyway, cherished, forgiven, bleeding to be sure, but also bled for. That is the comedy. And yet, so what? So what if even in his sin the slob is loved and forgiven when the very mark and substance of his sin and of his slobbery is that he keeps turning down the love and forgiveness because he either doesn’t believe them or doesn’t want them or just doesn’t give a damn? In answer, the news of the Gospel is that extraordinary things happen to him just as in fairy tales extraordinary things happen. Henry Ward Beecher cheats on his wife, his God, himself, but manages to keep on bringing the Gospel to life for people anyway, maybe even for himself. Lear goes beserk on a heath but comes out of it for a few brief hours every inch a king. Zaccheus climbs up a sycamore tree a crook and climbs down a saint. Paul sets out a hatchet man for the Pharisees and comes back a fool for Christ. It is impossible for anybody to leave behind the darkness of the world he carries on his back like a snail, but for God all things are possible. That is the fairy tale. All together they are the truth.
Frederick Buechner, “Telling the Truth”
“Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
It has been 22 years since the belle, daughter #2, was born (almost three weeks early!) on Holy Saturday. Happy Birthday, darling girl (one day early)!
Here’s hoping we can meet at Ted Drewe’s for a birthday mini mocha!
A new album by Lyle Lovett
This CD is a fresh selection of traditional folk and country songs, plus ones by Townes Van Zandt, Frank Loesser, Miller and Yount, Chuck Berry and others. I love how Lyle always ends his albums with a hymn. This time it’s Keep Us Steadfast by Martin Luther. I am really enjoying this CD on my ride to and from work!
…flowers from my assistant’s garden in my office!
St. Louis broke a longstanding record, according to the National Weather Service, “enjoying” its warmest March since record-keeping started in 1874. The average temperature in St. Louis in March was 61.1 degrees, soaring past the former record of 57.7, set in 1910. We actually had several days over 90 degrees and others in the high 80s. Zut alors. I’m enjoying the flowers now, since I’m afraid they’ll be gone soon.
…a new Anne Tyler book
Just starting to read this, but what a joy to crack open a new novel by one of my favorite authors!
…estate sale finds!
Look what I found last Saturday! A nice antique dresser. And the boy was home and could carry it upstairs. Score.
(Happiness makes me use exclamation points.)
Well, it’s baseball season again. The Cardinals are off to a good start, managing somehow without Albert Pujols. Growing up in Cardinal-town, I have been a fan for many a year. My first baseball memory is in 1964 watching the final game of the World Series on a little black and white TV in my third grade classroom. I hardly knew what baseball was then, but I knew we were doing something special. I hit my peak in 1967 when we won the World Series with the help of my hero Tim McCarver. I even had a scrapbook. I have fond memories of 1982 and 2006 as well.
My grandfather, Daniel Herbert Hilton Cameron III, was a big baseball fan as well–of the Boston Red Sox! I forgave him for that. He loved the game and played it as a boy.
Bunker Cameron at Camp Abnaki in Vermont around 1911. He's the one on the far right with his elbow out.
"The baseball crowd" at the Feller Institute in Quebec 1916--Bunker is in the middle with the x written on his chest.
The Feller Institute was the French-speaking Baptist boarding school in Saint Blaise Sur Richelieu, Quebec that his father sent Bunker to after he was asked to leave Tilton Academy. I suppose he thought it would be strict enough to handle Bunker, but he was asked to leave that school too. Apparently it didn’t take much to get thrown out of a prep school in those days. (Bunker was thrown out of three.)
Ultimately, Bunker ended up at the University of Vermont back in Burlington without having actually graduated from high school. He would have played baseball there, I’m sure, but he left with a friend to go to Boston to enlist in the army during WWI. The war ended before they could sort out their options.
But we were talking baseball. Go Cards!
I’m not sure what made me think of elephants. Perhaps it was the boy’s recent visit to the flyover zoo and his reacquaintance with Raja and his newest progeny, Kenzi. Raja was the first elephant ever born at our zoo. Now, at age 18, he has started his own dynasty, with daughter #1, Maliha, and daughter #2, Jade. Anyway, I have always loved elephants.
I am a big fan of this elephant:
Babar, a French elephant
And an elephant in a movie is always a plus:
Doris Day and Jumbo
Cary Grant has an elephant for a friend in Gunga Din, and she comes in handy once or twice, although not in this scene. (Yes, you guessed it. She wants to follow Cary onto the rickety bridge and hilarity ensues.)
Tarzan always had cool pachyderm friends. Elephants are something you definitely want on your side, because they can do this:
Cecil B. DeMille's The Sign of the Cross (1932)
One movie with an elephant I am not fond of is Disney’s Dumbo (1941) where in typical Disney fashion the child is torn from his mother’s loving embrace. When the elephant-mother is enraged, she is summarily punished. Boo.
It is very disturbing, and who needs that from a children’s movie?
I have blogged about my needlepoint elephants here, and I have a few other elephants at home:
Daughter #1's first needlepoint effort
I have elephants in my office:
I have actually touched an elephant. Flora, for whom the one-ring Circus was named, came to visit our church once long ago, when one of the Church Service ladies was on the board of directors of Circus Flora. Flora was still a baby then and came right into the Great Hall. She had long wiry black hair which was a surprise. Pretty neat.
Who doesn’t love elephants?
Over the weekend while doing some research I came across Isaiah’s poetic warning to the Philistines about an impending Assyrian attack and it was so perfect it gave me chills:
“Wail, O gate; cry, O city; melt in fear, O Philistia, all of you! For smoke comes out of the north, and there is no straggler in his ranks.” Isaiah 14.31-32.
Assyrian soldiers from the palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh -- 7th century BC
I’d run away, wouldn’t you? It’s better than Byron’s “The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, and his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold”, don’t you think? Byron’s too flowery and no Assyrian army ever wore purple and gold. Isaiah gets it just right. I can see why he was an effective prophet!
