dual personalities

Category: Uncategorized

January 16, 2012

I remember nothing

by chuckofish

I am living in the Google years, no question of that. And there are advantages to it. When you forget something, you can whip out your iPhone and go to Google. The Senior Moment has become the Google moment, and it has a much nicer, hipper, younger, more contemporary sound doesn’t it? By handling the obligations of the search mechanism, you almost prove you can keep up.”

–Nora Ephron, I Remember Nothing

Almost. And I don’t have an iPhone. I have to be content to look things up on my laptop, so I can’t do it in restaurants or on the subway etc.

Actually the search engine I love and use the most is IMDB.com–the internet movie database. My brain used to be its own movie database, but, sadly, it is no more. I have to look things up. But thankfully there is IMDB, just in the nick of time. Sigh.

I used to be a whiz at Trivial Pursuit (the original version) and could always answer the movie questions. It was almost embarrassing at times how much I knew. But fun facts about old movies just took hold in my brain like French vocabulary or chemistry equations did not. I have no doubt that some of my friends growing up thought my interest in the movies was a tad tacky, bien sur, but that’s the way it was/is. I loved the movies themselves–it wasn’t some screaming-Beatlesmania-kind of thing. I will admit I was probably the only tenth grader in 1972 who loved Leslie Howard, who had been dead for nearly 30 years at the time. I even stayed home from school once to watch It’s Love I’m After (1937) on television. There were no DVDs back then and no telling when the chance might come again to see it, so I had to take such action! (My mother approved.)

So anyway, I had to check on IMDB to find out the name of that movie I stayed home from school to watch. Thank goodness I can handle the obligations of that particular search mechanism!

3 Comments
January 13, 2012

Kent Brockman reporting

by chuckofish

Kang: It does not matter which way you vote. Either way your planet is doomed. Doomed. Doomed.

4 Comments
January 12, 2012

Winter Wonderland? I think not

by chuckofish

photo by Chris Fraser of Ogdensburg

Today’s local headline: Ice storm warning issued; roads getting slipperier as ice accumulates; sleet, freezing rain to continue…

Oh, joy. And on the first day of classes too. I’ve been here at work since 7:20 am and now I’m going home. But first I get to spend a half hour or so trying to chip my car out of the ice. Then the slippery ride home. On the way here this morning I had to pull over and scrape the windshield even though the inside of my car was tropical. I’m not looking forward to this. On the bright side — it is pretty!

6 Comments
January 12, 2012

Easter in your soul

by chuckofish

“She had long accepted the fact that happiness is like swallows in spring. It may come and nest under your eaves or it may not. You cannot command it. When you expect to be happy, you are not, and when you don’t expect to be happy, there is suddenly Easter in your soul, though it be midwinter.”

–Elizabeth Goudge

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January 11, 2012

Let’s get this show on the road

by chuckofish

Everyone is making resolutions, even the staff at Kate Spade New York. They even have a new bangle: This is the year to play your cards right.

Play your cards right. That got me thinking. Now there’s a saying that was used in our home growing up. I have had this conversation with my children numerous times…about how no one uses idioms anymore (except apparently Kate Spade). Through the years they have been met by many a blank stare when they used a colorful expression commonly used at home. No one (except my family) says:

Hold the fort.
Hold your horses.
Back to the salt mines.
I have a bone to pick with you.
(and an ax to grind.)
Let’s rustle up some dinner!

There are, of course, many more examples that I can not think of at the moment. Can you think of any?

10 Comments
January 10, 2012

Tout va bien

by chuckofish

“My child, the troubles and temptations of your life are beginning, and may be many; but you can overcome and outlive them all if you learn to feel the strength and tenderness of your Heavenly Father as you do that of your earthly one. The more you love and trust Him, the nearer you will feel to Him, and the less you will depend on human power and wisdom. His love and care never tire or change, can never be taken from you, but may become the source of lifelong peace, happiness, and strength. Believe this heartily, and go to God with all your little cares, and hopes, and sins, and sorrows, as freely and confidingly as you come to your mother.”

Louisa May Alcott (from Little Women)

(I found this quote on the wonderful blog Hay Quaker. Check it out!)

2 Comments
January 9, 2012

Why I love Raymond Chandler

by chuckofish

“Yes. I can imagine. Out. I don’t know you. I don’t want to know you. And if I did, this wouldn’t be either the day or the hour.”

“Never the time and place and the loved one all together,” I said.

“What’s that?” She tried to throw me out with the point of her chin, but even she wasn’t that good.

“Browning. The poet, not the automatic. I feel sure you’d prefer the automatic.”

–-The Little Sister

5 Comments
January 7, 2012

Westward leading, still proceeding

by chuckofish

Thursday night I went to the Feast of the Epiphany of Our Lord Jesus Christ Evensong at Grace Church. It was a lovely respite during a busy and stressful week. The church was still decorated with white poinsettias and trees with white twinkly lights. The three wise men had joined the rest of the creche figurines before the altar. And we got to sing “We Three Kings”–always a favorite. I remember learning it for my first Christmas Pageant, which was held actually at my school (back in the good old days). The Junior Kindergartners made up the “choir”. We wore freshly-ironed white cottas with big red bows and carried these neat flash-light candles. We sang in the near-dark. It was very mysterious and cool. And “We Three Kings” was a very mysterious and cool hymn. All that traversing afar, over field and fountain, moor and mountain, following yonder star. Not to mention that dramatic ohhhhh-ohhhh-ing into the refrain! Then there is that fourth verse:

Myrrh is mine; its bitter perfume
breathes a life of gathering gloom;
sorrowing, sighing,
bleeding, dying,
sealed in the stone-cold tomb.

Awesomely descriptive and creepy. I can honestly say that was the best pageant I was ever in. The next year, as a Senior Kindergartner, I was given a part (with a solo) so it was much more stressful. I was Joseph. (Yes, I went to an all-girls’ school.) My best friend, Trudy Glick, played the Innkeeper, and we could barely contain our hilarity during our important conversational exchange concerning the lack of room at the inn. Oh well. At least I didn’t faint, like my good friend Harriet who played an angel. And I made it (tremulously I’m sure) through my solo.

Good times. Were you ever in a Christmas pageant?

3 Comments
January 6, 2012

We’re gonna howl at the moon

by chuckofish

I have a 20-minute drive to work (17 when I hit the lights right) and so I listen to a lot of music while I drive. I listen to everything from Gilbert & Sullivan and classical music to soundtracks and country, with the occasional Eminem thrown in for good measure. Today I happened to be listening to an old favorite from country’s glory days in the 1990s, Hal Ketchum.

The boy had borrowed this CD (and scratched it up some) recently and had returned it, not to its jewel case, but to my car for some reason, and so I was listening to it. It is so good! He has a great country vibrato that I am always partial to.

With 15 top 10 singles to his credit, Hal is not a super-star by any means. He is no Garth Brooks or Alan Jackson, no Kenny Chesney. But he has been a member of the Grand Ole Opry since 1994 and, according to his website, he often hosts the “Opry Live” show on GAC. He’s had a good career and is still, despite health problems, making music. And that’s the thing, right? Here is a little Hal to brighten your day. (And you’ve got to love those woolly caterpillars over his eyes!)

3 Comments
January 5, 2012

Small but mighty

by chuckofish

Daughter #1 has moved to New York City…and not under the best of circumstances. Her purse was stolen the night before she was scheduled to take a train from Washington D.C. to NYC on New Year’s Day(!), and with it her credit cards, driver’s license, money, and her phone. But per usual she soldiered on and got to NYC and into her apartment and managed to start her new job the next day. Phew. I couldn’t be prouder of her. But, then, that’s always been the case. She never allowed circumstances to get the better of her–

Though she be but little, she is fierce! (Thank you, Will Shakespeare.)

2 Comments