“You wake up on a winter morning and pull up the shade, and what lay there the evening before is no longer there–the sodden gray yard, the dog droppings, the tire tracks in the frozen mud, the broken lawn chair you forgot to take in last fall. All this has disappeared overnight, and what you look out on is not the snow of Narnia but the snow of home, which is no less shimmering and white as it falls. The earth is covered with it, and it is falling still in silence so deep that you can hear its silence. It is snow to be shoveled, to make driving even worse than usual, snow to be joked about and cursed at, but unless the child in you is entirely dead, it is snow, too, that can make the heart beat faster when it catches you by surprise that way, before your defenses are up. It is snow that can awaken memories of things more wonderful than anything you ever knew or dreamed.”
As I write this, it is Susan B. Anthony Day, recognized on her birthday. Susan Brownell Anthony was one of the most visible leaders of the women’s suffrage movement. She traveled around the country with Elizabeth Cady Standon delivering speeches in favor of women’s suffrage and other social issues like temperance and the abolition of slavery. It amazes me to think of her traveling all over the country–from Masschusetts, her home, all the way to the west coast–in the 19th century!
I’ve gathered some speech excerpts below, but I’d recommend reading the whole thing (which I’ve conveniently hyperlinked for you). You’ll be struck by the way some women today act like nothing has changed–and maybe things can still be difficult, but at least we can vote, work, and own property. Thanks to the hearty women of yesteryear!
“Woman must now assume her God-given responsibilities, and make herself what she is clearly designed to be, the educator of the race. Let her no longer be the mere reflector, the echo of the worldly pride and ambition of man. (Applause). Had the women of the North studied to know and to teach their sons the law of justice to the black man, regardless of the frown or the smile of pro-slavery priest and politician, they would not now be called upon to offer the loved of their households to the bloody Moloch of war. And now, women of the North, I ask you to rise up with earnest, honest purpose, and go forward in the way of right, fearlessly, as independent human beings, responsible to God alone for the discharge of every duty, for the faithful use of every gift, the good Father has given you. Forget conventionalisms; forget what the world will say, whether you are in your place or out of your place; think your best thoughts, speak your best words, do your best works, looking to your own conscience for approval.”
“Thus, wherever you go, you find the best women, in and out of the churches, all absorbed in establishing or maintaining benevolent or reform institutions; charitable societies, soup-houses, ragged schools, industrial schools, mite societies, mission schools—at home and abroad—homes and hospitals for the sick, the aged, the friendless, the foundling, the fallen; asylums for the orphans, the blind, the deaf and dumb, the insane, the inebriate, the idiot. The women of this century are neither idle nor indifferent. They are working with might and main to mitigate the evils which stare them in the face on every side, but much their work is without knowledge. It is aimed at the effects, not the cause; it is plucking the spoiled fruit; it is lopping off the poisonous branches of the deadly upas tree, which but makes the root more vigorous in sending out new shoots ion every direction. A right understanding of physiological law teaches us that the cause must be removed; the tree must be girdled; the tap-root must be severed. The tap-root of our social upas ties deep down at the very foundations of society. It is woman’s dependence. It is woman’s subjection. Hence, the first and only efficient work must be to emancipate woman from her enslavement. The wife must no longer echo the poet Milton’s ideal Eve, when she adoringly said to Adam, “God, thy law; thou, mine!” She must feel herself accountable to God alone for every act, fearing and obeying no man, save where his will is in line with her own highest idea of divine law.”
“My purpose tonight is to demonstrate the great historical fact that disfranchisement is not only political degradation, but also moral, social, educational and industrial degradation; and that it does not matter whether the disfranchised class live under a monarchial or a republican form of government, or whether it be white working men of England, negroes on our southern plantations, serfs of Russia, Chinamen on our Pacific coast, or native born, tax-paying women of this republic. Wherever, on the face of the globe or on the page of history, you show me a disfranchised class, I will show you a degraded class of labor. Disfranchisement means inability to make, shape or control one’s own circumstances. The disfranchised must always do the work, accept the wages, occupy the position the enfranchised assign to them. The disfranchised are in the position of the pauper. You remember the old adage, “Beggars must not be choosers;” they must take what they can get or nothing! That is exactly the position of women in the world of work today; they cannot choose. If they could, do you for a moment believe they would take the subordinate places and the inferior pay? Nor is it a “new thing under the sun” for the disfranchised, the inferior classes weighed down with wrongs, to declare they “do not want to vote.” The rank and file are not philosophers, they are not educated to think for themselves, but simply to accept, unquestioned, whatever comes.”
Daughter #2 drove home for the weekend, so we had fun doing what we normally do: happy hour on Friday followed by the CD shuffle at home, estate sales and lunch out on Saturday, church on Sunday followed by brunch with the boy and his family. We also celebrated Valentine’s Day on Sunday as did daughter #2 (see yesterday’s post) by having a little party after church, complete with favors. However, no one took any pictures, so I have nothing to show for my efforts. Tant pis. You’ll just have to take my word for it that the table looked pretty and the wee twins did not throw their presents aside in disgust.
I was pleased to receive a new puzzle and also a special mat on which to put it together.
(This Peanuts puzzle is harder than it looks!)
The OM and I watched Bullitt (1968) which has become our traditional Valentine movie of choice, because it is a movie we both can love for obvious reasons. I remember when my parents went to see it at the movies back in the day. They enjoyed it as well, especially as it was shot in San Francisco, a favorite town of our father.
Last week we watched Lonesome Dove (1989)–old-fashioned style, one part each night over a four night period, the way it was originally intended to be viewed. I enjoyed it as always–Augustus McCrae and Captain Call are two of my favorite characters in fiction. The book, of course, is even better. It is full of interesting characters, all fully realized. There are no stereotypes, no cardboard cutouts. And there is no political agenda.
Well, a good dose of Gus and Woodrow is good for the soul. You might want to dust off the DVD or the book. I recommend both.
Fun fact: Robert Duvall is in both Bullitt and Lonesome Dove. Also, he went to college across the river in Elsah, Illinois. I had a friend (who has passed away) at my flyover institute who went to The Principia with him and was best friends with “Bobby’s” younger brother. He had quite a few good stories.
If you haven’t already read this article, maybe you should.
And, you know, this was really special. “His motives are still unknown but the administration believes it was some kind of a lapse in sanity,” she said.
And let us not forget this:
Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 31 Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”
Do you have a hard time agreeing on what to watch with your co-viewer(s)? DN and I often do, though we’ve found that a solid overlap in our respective interests and attention spans is the detective and/or heist genre. When Valentine’s Day approached, I thought, let’s watch Bullitt, a Steve McQueen film that my mother and father often watch on this holiday. “A 1968 American neo-noir action thriller film” is about as good as it gets for us.
I will admit that I could not follow the plot of this movie in the slightest, but you can bet I enjoyed watching Steve McQueen look annoyed in a turtleneck sweater. DN thoroughly appreciated the long shots of effortless driving and parallel parking in San Francisco, as well as the stunt under a moving jet on a runway. (For my part, that scene just kept making me think “I walked across a f-ing runway…”)
Side note: did you know that DN drove us from San Francisco to Seattle in a Dodge Charger? I’m aware that it was the bad guys driving the Charger in Bullitt, but it still sparked a positive memory of our own coastal drive. DN did plenty of his own accelerating like a madman, emphasis on the “man.”
We were inspired to watch Bullitt in part because we have been watching the Netflix documentary series Formula 1: Drive to Survive. (Yes, I associate Bullitt solely with the driving scenes. I had completely forgotten any actual plot.) We have finished the first season, following the 2018 Grand Prix championship, and I found it oddly engrossing.
I hate competition no matter what, but Formula 1 racing involves everything I hate most about competing. It’s accepted that even the best drivers can be thwarted by a bad car, so you can lose even when it isn’t your fault. Each driver has a teammate but that teammate is also their competition. And, of course, it can actually kill you. I don’t even like driving on the capital beltway, so these races are just a little mind-boggling. In every interview with a driver, they’re like “Yes, I could die. I just… don’t think about it.” And truly, they must not, because the entire point is going as fast as you can toward sharp turns and burning your tires as close to the brink as possible. And yet I am impressed enough to be writing about it. There is something appealingly earnest about all of these drivers, who have typically been racing since they were in go-karts.
Well, men driving fast is clearly an age-old appeal that isn’t going anywhere, and appropriate enough for Valentine’s Day.
This year, we went for family-friendly treats and fun to celebrate l-o-v-e. My mother always threw little parties for us growing up, and I’ve been looking forward to doing the same for Katie.
“All I need is this sheet mask I’ve been repeatedly stealing from my mother’s beauty stash”Party favors!“A cellophane wrapper was a bit much, mother”“Target-brand paper? Really?”
My sarcastic captions are really not appropriate, as Katie was genuinely thrilled to unwrap Play-Doh and a new set of bath toys. And I got to enjoy seeing her in a vintage cherry dress from my childhood, which she wore happily, along with cherry bloomers from her mamu and tights from her aunt Mary. What else do you need in a Valentine?
How about a “HUG!” — a recent exclamation Katie added to her lexicon
*Quoting from the romantic plot line of Bullitt in honor of Valentine’s Day
It’s Friday again! The best thing about this week was a diverting couple of hours I spent watching the 2008 Chinese movie, Red Cliff, an epic retelling of a war that took place in 208 AD, during the waning years of the Han Dynasty. Cao Cao, the power-hungry and cruel prime minister, browbeats his weak young lord into allowing him to attack the last independent warlords, Sun Quan and Liu Bai. Upon discovery of Cao Cao’s impending invasion, the two leaders unite, though the odds are definitely against them. What makes the movie stand out are the brilliant tactics that the warlords’ strategists, Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang, use against the invaders. (Apologies if I’ve gotten any of the names/characters mixed up. There are a lot and Chinese can be confusing.) Here is the great warrior tactician Zhou Yu.
And here is the master strategist Zhuge Liang. Although representing different components of the tenuous alliance, they become fast friends.
In the initial confrontation Zhou Yu and Liu Bai overcome their opponent’s numerical superiority with a tortoise formation, a maze of narrow, shifting shield wall passages in which to trap and kill the enemy cavalry. It’s a very cool scene and one of many clever stratagems that the two sides use. I won’t ruin the movie by revealing any more of them.
Meanwhile, Cao Cao sails a massive fleet of ships down the Yangtze to blockade the allied stronghold, Red Cliffs. The fleet of large, oddly chunky Chinese warships is impressive to say the least.
One of the things I particularly like about the film is that the two lead women act with great courage and equal cunning to the men, all while remaining feminine. The women’s roles feel natural and not, as in so many of today’s movies, inserted to demonstrate that women are equal to or better than men.
Another positive is that although Cao Cao is definitely a bad guy, he has some depth and he is intelligent. If anything, he is a tragic character, someone who had once been noble but who gave in to his base ambition and traded his honor for power.
This film is epic in the true sense of the word, and for a war movie, the violence is restrained; it is neither the focus, nor meant to titilate viewers. The point is to take real events and turn them into something extraordinary and heroic. As my middle son pointed out to me, the film is similar to The Iliad in that heroes engage in single combat while nameless foot soldiers fight around them, women both motivate and participate in events, and the advantage veers wildly between the two sides as each tries desperately to neutralize the enemy. Above all, the film reminds us to use our brains to even the odds and that sometimes “we must fight even if we cannot win”. With an attitude like that you never know what might happen.
I do not like surprises. And I had one this week that threw me into a minor tizzy. It had to do with my old job and something the university wanted me to do, which ultimately I had to say no to. I am retired, so I am sticking with my life of not caring about meaningful and measurable outcomes for all of our endeavors.
In other news, I recently watched Cry Macho (2021) because, as you recall, it received quite a lot of buzz when it came out last year and I was curious to see Clint Eastwood at age ninety-two. Unfortunately, it is a pretty thin story to begin with and Clint is thirty years too old for the part. Additionally, it was really kind of disturbing to watch.
When he made Gran Torino back in 2008, he was a mere 78 and still a badass. Now he is truly a doddering old man in ill-fitting jeans who looks like a child could push him over. Watching him get in and out of a truck or car is painful. He could barely rasp out his lines. Good grief.
C’est la vie. I think of Cary Grant who made his last movie at age 61, because he wanted to go out on top still looking fit as a fiddle and ready for love. I commend him. You had an exceptionally long and great run, Clint, but enough already. That goes for all you octogenarians in Washington too.
I’ve re-watched four episodes of Only Murders in the Building and I have blog titles for like the next three months.
When I was little, with regards to Peanuts characters, I used to think of myself as such a Lucy. One summer when I was away at camp, my mom even got me this super cool shirt I saw in a catalog with Lucy’s giant face on it. I thought it was tres cool. Now, I feel like I end up relating much more to Linus. See below.
Looking at the internet this week, I’ve wanted to exclaim, “PEACE!” like Linus several times. But, I have to remind myself to just let go. I’m not in control and that’s okay.
I had a very productive weekend. After staking out my window on Friday, anxiously waiting for the UPS man, I managed to actually see him arrive and ran down to hold open the door for him. He was carrying a large bookshelf I’d ordered and after I asked him to pleeeease carry it upstairs for me, he obliged. I think it nearly killed him, but I appreciated it.
On Saturday, I put it together all by myself. I’d paid a little more to order one that was made in the USA and thus had the holes drilled in the proper place and the manual wasn’t just pictures. It even had jokes.
It wasn’t lying! I got it finished and moved into my craft room. I then spent Sunday “styling” the shelf which actually just meant trying to make everything fit and then rearranging a closet to hide the things that wouldn’t fit. I’m almost there. But doesn’t it look nice?
Trust me, it’s a major improvement. I think a craft room is an ever-evolving space but I know I’m lucky to have one and I am grateful everyday.
Last week, while running errands, I was feeling a little irritated as happens when I’m driving on Missouri Boulevard. The radio was playing bad country music, the sun was in my eyes, everyone kept turning out of parking lots in front of me, and I’d had enough. I switched to my phone via bluetooth and was like, maybe my phone will play something better. For some reason it started playing this Crowder song where he’s doing his best impression of Mumford & Sons. I instantly felt better.
After four months at the finisher, my elephant pillow is back! Pretty fab, if I don’t say so myself.
Reminded by a reference to it in Sunday’s sermon, we watched Apollo 13 (1995) on Sunday night. Directed by Ron Howard, it dramatizes the aborted 1970 lunar mission, Apollo 13, which was America’s fifth crewed mission to the Moon and was intended to be the third to land. It is a good movie. It avoids politics and sticks to the story–a story which is exciting enough without embellishment. Indeed, it is an amazing story of the heroic actions of a large group of NASA scientists and the astronauts themselves in order to bring them and their disabled lunar module home. It is a story of smart people using their god-given brains and not giving up in the face of terrible odds. Ron Howard plays it straight and it is a good movie, certainly his best.
I remember the events portrayed in the movie vividly. I was in the eighth grade and I remember how terribly anxious everyone was. We actually watched the re-entry of the module on television at school. It could have ended in disaster on national television, but thankfully, it did not. It ended in triumph.
President Nixon awarding the three Apollo 13 astronauts the Presidential Medal of Freedom
Yesterday I attended a live-streamed funeral service for another old friend from my flyover institute. Leonard was 95 and a veteran of both WWII and Korea. When he was 90 he published a memoir of his harrowing experiences as a medic in Korea. He wrote the memoir over several years in a creative writing class he took at LLI (a class he later facilitated.) He was a very interesting guy. He was half Episcopalian and half Jewish, but when he married the daughter of a prominent Jewish family, he became a full-time Jew. We chuckled about that and about a lot of things. It was a blessing and a privilege to be able to spend time with him and to know him.
He who makes peace in his high holy places, may he bring peace upon us, and upon all Israel; and say Amen.
Here’s Leonard’s favorite song by that other Leonard:
Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in.
Well, we got about 6-7 inches of snow last week in our neck of the woods. It took us awhile to dig out–we had to get our driveway plowed–and so I was home until Saturday.
In the meantime I managed to shovel the front walk and felt pretty darn good about it.
No one lost their electricity and we had plenty of food and the house wine, so I kind of enjoyed it. Here’s a couple of pictures my friend Don took of the Frank Lloyd Wright house in his neighborhood in our flyover town.
Look at that unbroken stretch of white–just some deer tracks. So beautiful.
On Sunday the OM and I officially joined our new church along with fifteen or so other new members. We attended both morning services so people could get a look at us as we said our “I do’s” in response to the five vows in front of the church body (Do you acknowledge yourselves to be sinners in the sight of God, justly deserving His displeasure, and without hope save in His sovereign mercy?…). I like this old hymn by Martin Luther we sang (even with piano, guitar and drums), but the boy was offended that someone had turned it into a “praise song” with a new tune.
Well, you can’t please all the people all the time. Anyway, we are Presbyterians now! Our Scottish ancestors were all non-conforming Baptists, but our Irish ancestors were Presbyterians (until one married my namesake Catherine Rand, an Episcopalian.) We are back in the fold.
Recently I was reading something written by James Muilenburg, who taught at Union Theological Seminary back when Frederick Buechner was a student there in the 1950s (and back when it was a seminary worth going to.) It seems rather apropos to today and the misdirection of so many to the self.
This is a good interview with the Very Rev. Dr. Paul Zahl about the last third of life. “Where it becomes deeply Christian is, you get to a point when you realize that engagement with the world is sort of a joke, in that the world really is passing away. You can’t tell someone who’s in the midst of life at 35 years old, or 45 years old, that that’s true, because at that time it doesn’t feel like it is. This is why I’m speaking empirically, not prescriptively. But then they’ll get to a stage when they’ll see that a tremendous amount of what felt important simply is passing away.” Amen, brother.
I also liked this article, especially because I, too, am reading Job. “The thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me.” (Job 3:25) We all deal with this one. “If atomic bombs or Chaldeans or tornados or illness or accidents or injury or our worst-case scenario finds us, let it find us living — not curled up in a ball in the corner.”
This week whizzed by as they are wont to do. A snow storm arrived more or less on cue, but the university did not deal with the storm as it has for the last 25+ years, by assuming everyone is capable of deciding on their own whether they can make it to campus for class. Instead, we received almost hourly “campus alerts” telling us that we could arrive by 10am or by 1pm, or go home at 3pm or 4pm, but that classes weren’t canceled. Yesterday morning, when the storm had just started and we had only gotten about 1″, I got an email from two young men telling me that they couldn’t come to class because they lived off campus and their driveway had been “plowed in”. They asked to attend class via Zoom. I’m sorry to say that I mocked them openly (though I did let them Zoom). I told my students that I was old enough to be their grandmother, and if I could make it to class, so could they. They seemed a little shocked by my attitude.
Here’s a shot I took out the dining room window this morning. It’s pretty typical of winter here and looks like any number of other pics I’ve posted. In other words, this snowstorm was nothing special.
Yet something has changed. Perhaps we’re so used to canceling things due to Covid that we have become hypersensitized to threat. What if I slip? What if I fall? What if my car crashes when I’m going 25 miles an hour due to the snow? What if I hurt myself shoveling or have a heart attack? (Those last two are good questions for the over 40 crowd but 20-year-olds?) I’m not a big risk taker myself, but this is getting ridiculous. We are creating a generation that is either afraid of everything or happy to seize potential disasters as an excuse to get out of obligations. I think Rousseau had the right idea (and if my DP has already quoted this, well, it’s worth reading again):
“The child raised for his station, never leaving it, could not be exposed to the disadvantages of another. But given the mobility of human things, given the unsettled and restless spirit of this age which upsets everything in each generation, can one conceive of a method more senseless than raising a child as though he never had to leave his room, as though he were going to be constantly surrounded by his servants? If the unfortunate makes a single step on the earth, if he goes down a single degree, he is lost. This is not teaching him to bear suffering; it is training him to feel it. One thinks only of preserving one’s child. That is not enough. One ought to teach him to preserve himself as a man. to bear the blows of fate, to brave opulence and poverty, to live, if he has to. in freezing Iceland or on Malta’s burning rocks. You may very well take precautions against his dying. He will nevertheless have to die. And though his death were not the product of your efforts, still these efforts would be ill conceived. It is less a question of keeping him from dying than of making him live. To live is not to breathe; it is to act; it is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, of all the parts of ourselves which give us the sentiment of our existence.” ― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education
I promised myself that I would only post positive things, but sometimes I think it’s important to notice negative trends. I’m noticing.
Last night I rewarded myself by watching Little Kidnappers (1953) that my DP recommended yesterday. It was delightful! Those little boys were great (especially the youngest one). Although I knew I hadn’t seen the movie, as I watched I had a sense of déjà vu. Finally, I figured out that I had seen the made-for-TV 1990 remake starring Charlton Heston and Bruce Greenwood. It’s not a bad movie, but it doesn’t compare well with the 1953 one. Although shot on location somewhere in Canada, the family was much too well-to-do and the period costumes overdone.
In 1904, when the story takes place, most of those people living in the Nova Scotia hinterland were barely eking out a living. They didn’t dress like this:
Oh well. I suppose they simply wanted to update a beloved movie that teaches tolerance and kindness. We can forgive them their overblown production values, though I do wonder how they fit in the idea of the grandfather going barefoot and saving his boots for special occasions.
It’s time for me to gear up and go start shoveling. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful. Our next door neighbor and his snow blower do most of the work anyway. He’s a wonderful neighbor and a real blessing! I may gripe about the state of the world, but there are still plenty of good, kind people out there and I am grateful!
dual personalities 