dual personalities

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February 8, 2012

Class of ’48

by chuckofish

I think that one of the main reasons my mother chose to attend Middlebury College in Vermont was because it had its own mountain and ski area, the Middlebury Snow Bowl:

Middelbury has quite a skiing tradition. “Since the first trails were cut in 1934, the Middlebury College Snow Bowl has witnessed one of the richest skiing traditions in the country. From early snowshoe and obstacle races, Middlebury’s winter sports teams evolved into bona fide skiing powers, until the outbreak of World War II brought the program to a virtual halt.”

But after the war ended several skiers from the famed 10th Mountain Division “descended on the Bowl, along with a young fighter pilot from the Pacific theater…who coached the women’s team in 1946 and, thanks to the strength of the 10th Mountain Division recruits, led the Middlebury men in 1948 to their first of two consecutive national championship titles. In the same year Becky Fraser ’46, captain of the 1944 and 1945 women’s teams, became the first Middlebury skier to compete for the U.S. Olympic Team in the Winter Games at St. Moritz, Switzerland.”

What I did not realize is that my mother was a member of the Middlebury ski team for 4 years and skied with Ms. Fraser. She may not have been Olympic material, but she was there too. I knew she was on the Ski Patrol, but she’s there in the 1948 yearbook: “SKIING With veteran skiers Polly Hodder, Peg Curtis and Nat Benson ably assisted by the skills of Rose Hull, Pete Salmon, Mary Cameron, Lee Robbins, Jean Smith and Bobbie Merriman, the women’s ski team showed promise of a good season this winter. The team traveled with Coach “Joe” Jones to numerous intercollegiate competitions.”

I knew that she was very active in the Mountain Club, but had forgotten that she was on the governing board, Skyline. She was also the Vice President of her junior class. Here she is in the front row (left).

She really did love Middlebury and her 4 years there. Despite a disastrous sorority rush freshman year, she gave college her all. Here is a page from her junior yearbook which she illustrated:

She designed the Middlebury Winter Carnival posters for several years and also did the posters for all the big theater productions–back in the day before colored markers (and computers), when everything was painted by hand. And she managed to earn good enough grades to get into graduate school at McGill University.

For many years as a child I wanted to follow in my mother’s footsteps and go to Middlebury. I even had a dream once (in the 5th grade!) that I gave Steve McQueen a tour of the college. It was a big presence in the back of my brain. In the 6th grade, for some reason, I got it into my head that I wanted to go to Smith and I held on tight to that idea. I’m not sure why.

19 Comments
February 7, 2012

Mississippi River tsunami

by chuckofish

On this day in 1812 the mighty Mississippi River actually flowed backward for several hours. A series of tremors that had begun in December 1811 culminated on February 7 when the strongest quake hit. In the Mississippi River “water turned brown and waterpools developed suddenly from the depressions created in the riverbed.” My question: Before this, was the river some other color?

Today voters in Missouri head to the polls in a primary that is meaningless, because no delegates will be assigned as a result. And it’s costing us nearly $7 million. Booyah. No political tsunami expected here.

7 Comments
February 6, 2012

It’s embarrassing picture Monday!

by chuckofish

How politically incorrect is this photo? What would Betty Friedan (who spoke at one dual personality’s graduation) think? Well, this dual personality never ironed her husband’s shirts, but then, neither did her mother. But circa 1961, she enjoyed ironing handkerchiefs and doll paraphernalia.

7 Comments
February 5, 2012

East of the Sun and West of the Moon, Indeed

by chuckofish

Kay Nielsen, "East of the Sun and West of the Moon"

When I was a kid I liked to read and I liked to look at pictures. Somewhere along the way I began to pay attention to the illustrations — probably thanks to my mother, who would have noticed how good they were and commented on it. And the best books, the great adventures and classics, had the most marvelous illustrations. In the 70s these became rather popular and a wonderful business called the Green Tiger Press produced beautiful postcards, calendars, and note cards of this under-appreciated art form. The press still exists (you can visit them here) but is not the same as it was in its heyday. My room was full of posters and framed prints like this one by Maxfield Parrish:

Yes, I had this framed. Mother painted the frame gold for me and I put it over the radiator in my room. Everyone thought it was a little weird, but for some reason, I just loved love this picture. It’s sad — you can’t help but wonder why the king of the Black Isles is so upset. And you want to help him. It makes you hope that someone in the story will. The colors are so beautiful, too. I found it fascinating.

N.C. Wyeth, Kidnapped

I loved to read classic tales like Kidnapped, but Robert Louis Stevenson could sometimes be hard going — N.C. Wyeth’s beautiful pictures brought the story to life. I was with David Balfour as he fled the enemy in the Highlands of Scotland. Books like this helped me connect with my own family history and appreciate the past. Okay, maybe in a romanticized way, but so what? At least I knew who Bonny Prince Charlie was.

Edmund DuLac "Scheherazade"

Books and pictures introduced the exotic, too. And believe me, there wasn’t much exotic about the Midwest in the 1970s. Harems, Haroun Al-Rashid, magic carpets…they were all fascinating. It might sound trite to say that these pictures introduced me to beautiful and extraordinary things with magical possibilities, but they did. The great illustrators — Wyeth, Parrish, DuLac and Rackham among others — transformed a mundane world into a place of wonder. I still love them.

Arthur Rackham, "Siegfried"

What were your childhood favorites?

3 Comments
February 3, 2012

Friday movie pick: some men with guns

by chuckofish

The four professionals in their iconic pose

My Friday movie pick is The Professionals (1966), written, directed and produced by Richard Brooks. In it a group of mercenaries (Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, and the awesome Woody Strode) accept a lucrative assignment to recover a Texas millionaire’s wife (Claudia Cardinale) from a Mexican bandit (Jack Palance). But the mission doesn’t go as expected, and little about the setup is as it initially seems.

As with a lot of movies that came out in the 1960s, my first introduction to it was hearing about it after my big brother had gone to the movie theater to see it. (I was too young for the first go-round, so I had to wait to see these movies when they finally came on TV.) My brother had gone with his best friend Randy to see The Professionals. He was probably in the 9th grade. He loved it and re-told the entire story with relish to us little dual personalities. We didn’t get all the great lines he repeated, but we got the gist of what he was describing. And the gist was that this was one humdinger of a western! I couldn’t wait to see it!

In Bless the Beasts and the Children, Glendon Swartout writes about a group of misfit boys who steal out of summer camp on horseback to see The Professionals. They love it too, for “this is the marrowbone of every American adventure story: some men with guns, going somewhere, to do something dangerous. Whether it be to scout a continent in a covered wagon, to weld the Union in a screaming Wilderness, to save the world for democracy, to vault seas and rip up jungles by the roots and sow our seed and flag and spirit, this has ever been the essence of our melodrama: some men with guns, going somewhere, to do something dangerous.”

The heroes of this movie are also misfits, and maybe that is one of the reasons they are so appealing. They also frequently express existential thoughts in between skirmishes:

J.W. Grant: Your hair was darker then.
Rico: My heart was lighter then.

and

Bill Dolworth: Maybe there’s only one revolution, since the beginning, the good guys against the bad guys. Question is, who are the good guys?

and

Bill Dolworth: The cemetery of nameless men. We buried some fine friends there.
Rico: And some fine enemies.
Bill Dolworth: That was one hell of a fine battle. Out-numbered and out-gunned and still we held that pass.
Rico: Yeah, but who cares now… or even remembers?

and

Jesus Raza: Without love, without a cause, we are… *nothing*! We stay because we believe. We leave because we are disillusioned. We come back because we are lost. We die because we are committed.

A superbly written story of honor and adventure, the film features some of Richard Brooks’ best dialogue. (He was actually nominated for an Oscar for this movie!) Here are a few of the classic lines from The Professionals:

Maria Grant: Yes?
Bill Dolworth: Just wondering… what makes you worth a hundred thousand dollars.
Maria Grant: Go to hell.
Bill Dolworth: Yes ma’am. I’m on my way.

J.W. Grant: You bastard.
Rico: Yes, Sir. In my case an accident of birth. But you, Sir, you’re a self-made man.

To me, though, this movie is much more than some clever and witty repartee. It’s about four great characters (and a terrific woman) with guns, going somewhere, to do something dangerous.

8 Comments
February 2, 2012

Virtue and Honor

by chuckofish

“However fashionable despair about the world and about people may be at present, and however powerful despair may become in the future, not everybody, or even most people, thinks and lives fashionably; virtue and honor will not be banished from the world however many popular moralists and panicky journalists say so. Sacrifice will not cease to be because psychiatrists have popularized the idea that there is often some concealed self-serving element in it; theologians always knew that. Nor do I think love as a high condition of honor will be lost; it is a pattern in the spirit, and people long to make the pattern a reality in their own lives, whatever means they take to do so.”

–Robertson Davies

6 Comments
February 1, 2012

Tout va bien

by chuckofish

Saint Paul by Burne-Jones

The First Lesson appointed for use on the Feast of Brigid (today) is one of my favorites:

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”
1 Corinthians 1:26-31

Frederick Buechner writes that when he first met St. Paul and these lines, he “had the feeling that I knew something of what he was talking about. Something of the divine comedy we are all of us involved in. Something of grace.”

God turns everything upside down.

And god forbid that we should take ourselves too seriously.

6 Comments
January 31, 2012

Words of wisdom from Ben Folds

by chuckofish

I have been listening to old mixes that I unearthed while putting away CDs and DVDs one day. They are wonderful and always set one to remembering what was going on when such and such a song was popular. You know. Anyway, I was playing a mix that daughter #1 made when she was preparing to drive to Indianapolis for a January internship her senior year at DePauw back in 2007. Remember Shania Twain? Rascal Flats? And then ol’ Ben Folds came on and his song Cooler Than You, which was always a favorite of mine. You remember the chorus:

Make me feel tiny if it makes you feel tall
‘Cause there’s always someone cooler than you
Yeah, you’re the s**t
But you won’t be it for long
Because there’s always someone cooler than you

I do appreciate my children introducing me to all kinds of new music. I shudder to think that I could be one of those people who is still listening exclusively to Beatles tunes or Motown medleys.

It is fun to go to estate sales and see the LP collections that people who must be the same generation as my parents leave behind and that clearly their children do not want. They all have the same records that my parents had!

Harry Belafonte!

Tijuana Brass!

Show Tunes!

The Kingston Trio!

I’m sure they thought they were pretty cool back in the day, forward-thinking and not shackled to ol’ Blue Eyes and those other crooners. Then their children started bringing home Bob Dylan and the Kinks and Joni Mitchell…Sometimes it’s hard to keep an open mind, but my parents tried, and I try, and I’m sure my kids will too when the time comes. But you know, there’s always someone cooler than you.

P.S. I still have all my parents’ old records. Will my children want them? Will they even have a record player?

7 Comments
January 30, 2012

It’s embarrassing picture Monday!

by chuckofish

How better to start the week than with a little chuckle at the expense of one’s dual personality! What a cutie-pie.

5 Comments
January 27, 2012

Hello to the imagery

by chuckofish

Buffy: If you have information worth hearing, then I am grateful for it. If you’re gonna crack jokes, then I’m gonna pull out your rib cage and wear it as a hat.

Whistler: Hello to the imagery. Very nice.

Thank God it’s Friday.

3 Comments