dual personalities

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March 13, 2012

A trip to the Butterfly House

by chuckofish

The Butterfly House is a “butterfly zoo” operated by the Missouri Botanical Garden in far West County. Its mission is to “increase awareness of the natural habitat in which butterflies thrive.” It is full of butterflies and orchids and other exotic flora, not to mention people looking at all this.

March is Blue Morpho month at the Butterfly House, and if you like BIG blue butterflies, the Butterfly House is the place to be. Truth be told, I am not that into butterflies, but last Saturday, my best Grace girlfriends took another birthday field trip–this time to the Butterfly House. Here’s what we saw:

And the best for last (our birthday girl):

One last word: “Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.” ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

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March 12, 2012

A Mary picture for Monday

by chuckofish

Here is a picture of daughter #1 when she was about 7 months old. She is pictured with her grandmother and namesake, along with the daughter of my friend Harriet and my friend’s mother–all four named Mary. How great is that?

Even if my mother had been named Ethel or Gertrude or Bernice, I would have named my daughter after her. And I would have learned to love the name Ethel or Gertrude or Bernice. As it is, I love the name Mary and have never regretted naming my daughter #1 after my mother. I was named after my grandmother who was  named after her grandmother. My  mother was named after her great-grandmother. Her older sister was named after her 2 grandmothers, Susie and Anna, i.e. Susanne.  It is a tradition of which I heartily approve. Ahem.

9 Comments
March 10, 2012

Enjoying Rilke

by chuckofish

I went through a Rilke phase in my youth and recently rediscovered him. He was a thoughtful kind of guy and a fine poet. I like his lyrical poems, especially “Ich lese es Heraus aus deinem Wort” (translated):

I read it here in your very word,
in the story of the gestures
with which your hands cupped themselves
around our becoming – limiting, warm.

You said live out loud, and die you said lightly,
and over and over again you said be.

But before the first death came murder.
A fracture broke across the rings you’d ripened,
A screaming shattered the voices

that had just come together to speak you,
to make of you a bridge
over the chasm of everything.

And what they have stammered ever since
are fragments
of your ancient name.

But I also like his prose. Rilke was a writer who was prepared to suffer for his art (perhaps a little self-indulgently) — someone who would not let mundane matters such as fame intrude in his inner life. In this passage from The Notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge Rilke perfectly captures what writers go through as their work gets misinterpreted (as it so often does) or they let other people define them.

There I sat with your books, obstinate man, trying to understand them as the others do, who don’t leave you in one piece but chip off their little portion and go away satisfied. For I still didn’t understand fame, that public demolition of someone who is in the process of becoming, whose building-site the mob breaks into, knocking down his stones…Don’t ask anyone to speak about you, not even contemptuously. And when time passes and you notice that your name is circulating among men, don’t take this more seriously than anything else you might find in their mouths. Think rather that it has become cheapened and throw it away. Take another name, any other, so that God can call you in the night. And hide it from everyone.

I always think of poor old J.D. Salinger when I read that passage. Salinger was quite right to retire from the crass attention of the public and I guess Rilke felt the same way. Here’s to both of them!

7 Comments
March 9, 2012

More signs of spring

by chuckofish

Look what I saw blooming the other day in front of the chapel on my flyover campus!

Unbelievable. The red bud in my yard is nowhere near blooming.

(Thank you to daughter #2 who took these pictures for me yesterday. I was without a camera and she is never without her phone!)

2 Comments
March 8, 2012

Back to Buechner

by chuckofish

“What’s prayer? It’s shooting shafts into the dark. What mark they strike, if any, who’s to say? It’s reaching for a hand you cannot touch. The silence is so fathomless that prayers like plummets vanish into the sea. You beg. You whimper. You load God down with empty praise. You tell him sins that he already knows full well. You seek to change his changeless will. Yet Godric prays the way he breathes, for else his heart would wither in his breast. Prayer is the wind that fills his sail. Else drift with witless tides. And sometimes, by God’s grace, a prayer is heard.”
― Frederick Buechner, Godric

3 Comments
March 7, 2012

Making progress

by chuckofish

Last month I blogged about getting back to my unfinished needlepoint project, “Naxos Cat” by Ehrman Tapestry’s Elian McCready. I am determined to finish it and I have made progress recently. Let’s hear it for me!

I also bought this pillow at a recent estate sale. It is a large needlepoint picture of Edinburgh Castle. Isn’t it great? It needs to be made into a new pillow, losing its black polyester frame and backing, but I really love it.

I am looking forward to a trip to the world-famous needlepoint store in this flyover state, The Sign of the Arrow. Daughter #1 worked there when she was in high school and once took a call from Kate Spade New York asking about finishing costs. But then, Kate Spade is a flyover girl herself, so she would be in the know.

3 Comments
March 6, 2012

A Lenten movie pic

by chuckofish

When my children were younger, I made an effort during Lent to program our movie watching accordingly. We had a list of movies which we watched every Lent. Some were blatantly “religious” films, like Ben Hur. Some just had a spiritual message or undercurrent. Today’s pic was in the former category.


The Robe (1953) is based on the bestseller by Lloyd C. Douglas. I have read the book and it is a good read. It posits the question and earnestly tries to answer what might have happened to the robe which belonged to Christ and over which lots were cast by the Roman soldiers who crucified him:

And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots. (Mathhew 27:35)

Oscar-nominated for Best Picture, the movie, which stars a young Richard Burton and Jean Simmons, is a very enjoyable adaption, mostly because it has such attractive stars. It won Oscars for set design and costumes and should have won for its lushly poignant score. It also features Victor Mature in his 2nd greatest role (his best performance being that of Doc Holliday in My Darling Clementine) as Demetrious, the Greek slave. There is a lot of scenery chewing in this movie, but no scene-stealing compares to Mature’s, especially when he accuses his master, the Roman tribune Marcellus (Burton), of being a “jungle animal” shortly after Jesus has been crucified. Richard Burton also has some great scenes, and it is early enough in his career and he is not yet so jaded that we believe him as he undergoes his spiritual transformation. I would be remiss if I did not also mention Jay Robinson as Caligula whose over-the-top depiction of the crazed emperor is truly wonderful.

The movie successfully conveys the idea that being a Christian under Caligula’s rule was seriously dangerous and there is enough daring-do and sword-fighting to keep the action moving. These early Christians are real action heroes–brave, faithful and, to use the current vernacular, extremely hot. No one looked better in a toga and armour than Richard Burton as Marcellus.

No one, that is, until Stephen Boyd.

10 Comments
March 5, 2012

Embarrassing picture Monday

by chuckofish

Because I received some complaints that there was no Embarrassing Picture Monday post last week, I have bowed to the wishes of my readers with this embarrassing photo:

No, this is not the mug shot of a member of Motley Crue. Nor is it Alexander Godunov who played the crazy guy in Die Hard. It is the freshman year ID photo of the father of my children. I always did like those Viking types.

6 Comments
March 3, 2012

A place of quiet contemplation

by chuckofish

I like cemeteries, especially old ones full of interesting monuments and/or family members. Cemeteries are usually quiet and pretty; they encourage us to think and they remind us of our roots.

Take this one in Clarence, Ontario, which we visited when our eldest son, now 21, was an adorable 1 1/2 year old:

Newly arrived in the North Country, we made the pilgrimage to Clarence out of curiosity. There actually is no real town there, just an old church and a few houses. Serendipity and a complete stranger led us to the cemetery one town over where most of our British/Canadian family members are buried. James is peeking out from behind the tombstone of his great, great, (many greats)…grandfather, Isaac Whitney Taylor (1791-1861), whose daughter, Louisa Taylor, after marrying a wild Frenchman, Fabian Blais, had 9 children including our great grandmother on our mother’s side, Susie Louise. She in turn married the hard-working Scottish lumberman, Daniel Cameron, who moved the family from the backwoods to bustling Burlington VT. Imagine Susie’s relief.

Our father’s father’s family also lived in VT and proximity has made it possible to visit the small cemetery in Moretown (between Burlington and Montpelier), where lots of them are buried. Moretown is another non-town which now has only the cemetery and a few houses. When our great, great grandfather’s family lived there, they ran an Inn for a while so it must have been a little busier. Here’s a picture of yours truly and her three little goofballs visiting the ancestors. Whatever would they have thought of the tie-dyed shirt and backwards fanny-packs? One dare not imagine.

One can visit a cemetery without indulging in the beautiful melancholy of Baudelaire, who wrote, “To the solemn graves, near a lonely cemetery, my heart like a muffled drum is beating funeral marches.” But it is nice to pay our respects to those who came before us, whether we knew them personally or not. I highly recommend a visit to your local cemetery.

7 Comments
March 2, 2012

Take it easy on yourself

by chuckofish

(because)…the world will keep turning without any help…

This is a good thing to “meditate on” during Lent. We really have control over so little. So don’t sweat the small stuff. All you really need is love! At least that’s what Don Williams says.

You remember Don Williams. He’s “The Gentle Giant” of country music, singer of popular ballads with 17 Number 1 records to his credit. But then, maybe you don’t. Even with all those hits, Don was never a super star (except, oddly enough, in England and Africa). In the U.S. he hit his peak in the 1970s and 80s. I remember seeing ads for his records on Channel 11 and laughing, confident in my own sophisticated taste. (I must add that where I went to school we laughed at everything and everyone. Forced gaiety was our way of life. This is not to say, that I did not take some things seriously–but these things were guarded dearly and only talked about at home.) Anyway, somewhere along the way I heard old Don. I was hooked. And I tell you, if you are ever stressed out and in need of a chill pill, Don Williams is for you. Listen to him on the way to work or on the way home, and you will find yourself newly calm, cool and collected–even smiling.

Here’s a link to my favorite Don Williams song “Good Ole Boys Like Me” which has wonderful literary references to the “Williams boys–Hank and Tennessee” and Thomas Wolfe, not to mention the great line about “When I was a kid Uncle Remus he put me to bed with a picture of Stonewall Jackson above my head”. You ask, how could we resist putting a picture of U.S. Grant over the boy’s bed? Well, we couldn’t, and, yes, we did. And it was really cool.

You may wonder if there is going to be a country music Lenten theme on this blog. Well, probably not, but if the shoe fits…

4 Comments