Katie has been on the move, nonstop. It is an entirely different endeavor chasing her around the apartment between meals and naps. Remember when she used to sit in front of her book basket, emptying it slowly? That is no longer our m.o. Check out this wild leg kick and ring toss:
It is a good idea to keep an eye out for flying objects around here. Even as this new stage is exhausting, Katie has also been extra sweet lately and I cannot complain.
“Precious angel? Who, me?”“My bonnet brings me joy”We like selfies
Of note: when we are in the nursery, Katie’s favorite toy is the Aveeno Baby bottle (not to be confused with the Aquaphor tub in the living room). Someone knows that moisturizing is key!
The only other news to report is that Katie seems to enjoy the small little outings we’ve managed lately. She is a pro at patio sitting in her stroller (pouch in hand). She keeps her cool around all the other neighborhood babies and toddlers!
“All these other kids wish they had a leopard print jumpsuit like me.”
My mother and I were recently talking (this is my new intro sentence for blog topics because she is the only person with whom I discuss anything of substance) about how we might start re-reading books we read as children. When I went to the book sale at the Jefferson City Library, they were only selling children’s books (and then records and DVDs where I made out like a bandit), but flipping through the old library chapter books really took me back. And it reminded me of some series I had totally forgotten about.
I have a very specific feeling I associate with those old chapter books–the make believe, the imagination, the old library at Flynn Park Elementary School. The other reason to re-read chapter books is that they are easier to read. Seriously, my brain is such mush these days, that I swear I need something lighter.
Here are some books I’d re-read:
The Chronicles of Narnia–for obvious reasons. But also because I read them haphazardly over many years (and I’m even sure I read the last one).
Rumer Godden’s books about dolls–The Doll’s House, Miss Happiness & Miss Flower etc. I just loved these stories and I enjoyed the perspective of the dolls. Very Toy Story before Pixar.
Swallows and Amazons–This series about English children being allowed to sail around on a small boat and camp on an island all alone is amusing in this day and age, but it is nice to read about capable people who are nice and smart, too. Capability is highly underrated these days.
Anyway, of course I can’t find my copy of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe right now but I found this quote online when trying to find another one and it is rather apt:
“I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand a word you say, but I shall still be your affectionate Godfather, C. S. Lewis.”
I had a busy day at work on Monday–four Zoom meetings! So I don’t have a whole lot to share today. Meanwhile the grass is getting greener and the leaf blowers and lawn mowers are back with a vengeance.
Yesterday was Nebraska Day and this article was very interesting about classic movie stars who were born in Nebraska. It is a very impressive list–especially compared to Missouri. But, hey, we have Scott Bakula.
This article makes some good points. “Remote, virtual, disembodied fellowship simply isn’t enough.” We are all getting too comfortable with not seeing people.
We’ll “tip our hats an’ raise our glass of cold, cold beer” to the late, great Merle Haggard (1937–2016) on his the birthday today. (April 6 is also the day he died.) And I like this rendition of one of my favorites, Mama Tried, by Reina del Cid and Toni Lindgren:
When the California State University, Bakersfield, awarded Haggard the honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts in 2013, Haggard stepped to the podium and said, “Thank you. It’s nice to be noticed.” Classic Hag.
So enjoy your Tuesday and channel some positive Walt Whitman attitude.
Why, who makes much of a miracle? As to me I know of nothing else but miracles, Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water, Or stand under trees in the woods, Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love, Or sit at table at dinner with the rest, Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon, Or animals feeding in the fields, Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright, Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring; These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.
To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, Every cubic inch of space is a miracle, Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.
To me the sea is a continual miracle, The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the ships with men in them, What stranger miracles are there?
I hope everyone had a lovely Easter weekend. Mine was exhausting! SO much social activity after weeks, months, a year of not much going on.
I was busy on Friday getting ready for Saturday.
Mimosas are a good start to any party.
Liz got emotional opening daughter #1’s handmade baby blankets. After a yummy lunch (chicken salad, of course) we sat outside in the sun and watched the wee babes frolic on the driveway. After her husband picked Liz up and daughter #3 went home with the babes, we went to pick up margaritas at Club Taco. We finished Ben Hur, which we had started the night before.
On Easter morning we got up early and went to the 8:00 am service at an actual church. It felt great to sit in a pew again and sing hymns. God-honoring worship with the Word of God faithfully preached and the Lord’s Supper celebrated was much appreciated. It will take awhile to get used to not kneeling and to drinking grape juice at communion, but I think I can manage.
When we got home, I made Episcopal Souffle (ironic, yes) and then the boy and his family came over. The babes opened their Easter baskets.
Daughter #1 gave the wee laddie a book on Porsches (estate sale find), which he opened to squeals of joy. He carried it around for the rest of the day.
Note the book in back of the Cooper (ingenious)
We had a super fun egg hunt.
Once again we sat on the driveway in the glorious sun and watched the world bicycle/drive/stroll by. Two days of beautiful spring weather and a little social interaction can do wonders for one’s spirits.
And now it’s Monday. What the…
“Make no mistake: if he rose at all It was as His body; If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit, The amino acids rekindle, The Church will fall.
It was not as the flowers, Each soft spring recurrent; It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the Eleven apostles; It was as His flesh; ours.
The same hinged thumbs and toes The same valved heart That—pierced—died, withered, paused, and then regathered Out of enduring Might New strength to enclose.
Let us not mock God with metaphor, Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence, Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded Credulity of earlier ages: Let us walk through the door.”
Well, Good Friday is here. Let’s all take a moment.
Am I a stone, and not a sheep, That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross, To number drop by drop Thy blood’s slow loss, And yet not weep?
Not so those women loved Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee; Not so fallen Peter, weeping bitterly; Not so the thief was moved;
Not so the Sun and Moon Which hid their faces in a starless sky, A horror of great darkness at broad noon – I, only I.
Yet give not o’er, But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock; Greater than Moses, turn and look once more And smite a rock.
Christina Rosetti
Tonight we will watch Ben Hur (1959) up to the intermission, finishing tomorrow. It’s a good tradition.
On Saturday we are having a wee luncheon for one of daughter #1’s friends from college who has moved to our flyover city. She is expecting twins, so we thought we would introduce her to our twins– a glimpse of Things To Come.
Remember?
Daughter #1 and I are going to church on Sunday–for the first time in a year I am somewhat ashamed to say. I have been worshipping–if you can rightly call it that–by visiting churches online for the past year and by listening to online sermons. It is far from the same thing, however, and we all need to get back on track. We will be visiting a new church, a Presbyterian Church. We’ll see how it goes.
Sunday is also our pater’s birthday. He would be 99! To have been born in 1922 doesn’t seem that long ago, but it is!
ANC III was a lifelong Episcopalian with a Monica-like mother who I’m sure prayed mightily for his salvation. Whether her prayers were answered, I have no idea. But I will lift a toast to him on Sunday and sigh deeply. I hardly knew ye.
In other news, our neighbors across the street were TP’d overnight. (I never heard a thing.) Kind of a lame attempt, really, and such a shocking waste of toilet paper!
And on a week night! Zut alors. I am reminded again that some things never change.
Have a blessed weekend.
Almighty God, who through your only‑begotten Son Jesus Christ overcame death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life: Grant that we, who celebrate with joy the day of the Lord’s resurrection, may be raised from the death of sin by your life‑giving Spirit; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
BCP
*He is risen from the grave
(The window is in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Key West, FL.)
April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers.
T. S. Eliot, “The Waste Land”
I am an annoying person who says “April is the cruellest month” about basically anything regarding the academic calendar (fellowship rejections in graduate school, budget season in administrative life) but outside of work we are certainly enjoying spring — even the rain, which is causing all of the trees to burst into bloom and that unreal shade of green to pop up everywhere.
Katie is close to 10 months old, and I am excited to be in the midst of birthday season in our family. We have some big ones coming up!
The news around here is that Katie has been to a playground and sat in the swing a couple of times. There may have been squealing!
“It’s cool, I’m cool.”
In addition to keeping very good balance in a bucket seat while swinging through the air, Katie also shows her strength while practicing standing. She is getting quite close to pulling herself up, though for now she mostly just pulls into a little kickstand position.
I am confident that before we know it, she’ll be climbing up the walls of her “pen” —
Cue the Great Escape whistle theme…
and really getting into trouble.
Speaking of trouble, I had to go to the doctor on Monday about some eye pain — turns out Katie scratched my cornea! You could probably say it’s my own fault for not tending to her nails well enough. She has quite a mean swipe! It isn’t too bad — just a week of eyeball ointment and Zoom meetings with no makeup. Lovely for my vanity, but I forgive her!
“I love my mommy. And the Aquaphor lid.”
*my preferred poem about lilacs, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooyard Bloom’d”
Well, you know I think it has been a little over a year since “two weeks to stop the spread” began and I started quarantining (except for my daily constitutional and weekly trips to Hy-Vee). I’ve been back in the office since this summer, but I thought I’d take a little time for some self-reflection on the ways the past year has changed me.
Number 1) I’m now a person with daytime sweatshirts and nighttime sweatshirts. Not only that, I have sweatshirts that I purchased to wear in public and didn’t receive as a gift or as a souvenir from a trip to a college.
Number 2) I keep my office door closed because “germs” and not because I want to be catty on the phone about a co-worker and definitely not so Brad the mailman doesn’t bother me.
Number 3) I buy my wine by the case. For the discount.
Number 4) This line doesn’t amuse me as much as it used to.
Number 5) You all know that my foray into “making” has kept me going. I owe most of it to YouTube. When I gave up social media (can’t recommend it enough for your mental well-being), I promptly switched to watching videos on YouTube. The algorithm sure is interesting. Sometimes I get clips from Wayne’s World. Other times, I find things like this:
I hope you can gather together this weekend–have a Happy Easter!
Readers of this blog may remember that How the West Was Won (1962) is one of my favorite movies, and that, indeed, it was one of the first movies I ever saw at the movies. I was six and I went to see it at the Cinerama movie theater with my friend Trudy Glick. (It was her birthday party.)
It had quite an effect on me. Anyway, Paul Zahl mentioned it in his list of movies to watch on TCM in April, and he specifically referenced the John Ford section of the film, and this got me thinking about George Peppard, who has a big, pivotal part in the movie.
He is actually in two of my favorite movies of all time. This is kind of weird since he is not really a favorite of mine.
GP as Paul Varjak in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)
He’s very handsome in a blue eyed/blonde kind of way, but he’s also kind of wooden. He reminds me of a taller Alan Ladd. He says his lines and doesn’t give much more. He almost seems a little embarrassed, like he’s wondering how did I get into this line of work anyway? You know, they pay me a lot of money, so okay, I’ll do it. But I think I’d prefer to sell insurance. When you think about it, there are actually quite a few famous actors that fall into that category. They got into acting and success came pretty easy and then they had to keep it up and they were expected to emote a lot. They had to pay the bills. Sheesh.
Once in awhile actors like Alan Ladd and George Peppard can really stand out when they land in the right role with the right director. We remember them for those parts. Other actors can make a mediocre movie watchable just by being in them. (I’m thinking John Wayne, Steve McQueen, Audrey Hepburn–you make your own list.) Those are the real stars.
Well, old George has re-entered my life recently for another reason. Before going to sleep at night, I have started watching old episodes of the TV show Banacek, that aired originally from 1972 to 1974. Banacek was a freelance investigator based in Boston, who solved seemingly impossible thefts. He then collected from the insurance companies 10% of the insured value of the recovered property. (What a concept!) He was debonair and had a chauffeur, who was a real character (wink wink). He smoked cigars and was irresistible to women.
Guaranteed to send you to sleep in a jiffy! (Even better than Murder She Wrote!)
And guess what? There is a Simpson’s episode based on Banacek in season 29–voila! George Peppard again in all his Sansabelt ’70s glory!
We took the train, as planned, to Jeff City on Thursday and got our 2nd vaccine shots on Friday morning at the HY-VEE. Everything was blooming in JC…
…and the river was high.
After saying ‘hey’ to old friends,
…and rewarding ourselves with a Chick-fil-A breakfast, daughter #1 drove us home. I took a nap.
We took it easy for the rest of the weekend, but the wee babes came over on Sunday. We blew bubbles on the driveway…
…and read the liner notes on some cool LPs we got at an estate sale…
and played with some more vintage wooden toys we unearthed in the basement…
…and only one boo-boo resulted.
Good times.
Here’s Paul Zahl’s list of movies to watch on TCM in April. Once again he hits the nail on the head.
Sir Laurence Oliver’s Henry V was produced in England in 1943 with morale in mind. Somehow it has never dated. (I prefer it to the Kenneth Branagh version for all kinds of reasons.). And the music, by Sir William Walton — well, one can remember almost every note.
He is my soul brother.
Have a good Monday! And here’s something from Josh Turner and Carson McKee who always make me smile.
This week, in between doing the things I always do, I started reading a book that my DP and I once gave our mother about C.S. Lewis and his world. Full of lovely photos of the countryside and thoughtful quotes, it makes soothing bedtime reading. Lewis was a lifelong, avid walker who covered a great deal of ground in Britain and Northern Ireland. He went out in all types of weather and noticed everything.
I love this passage from Lewis’s book Surprised by Joy (quoted in the book we gave our mother) in which he discusses what a friend has taught him:
But Jenkin seemed able to enjoy everything; even ugliness. I learned from him that we should attempt a total surrender to whatever atmosphere was offering itself at the moment; in a squalid town to seek out those very places where its squalor rose to grimness and almost grandeur, on a dismal day to find the most dismal and dripping wood, on a windy day to seek the windiest ridge. There was no Betjemannic irony about it; only a serious, yet gleeful, determination to rub one’s nose in the very quiddity of each thing, to rejoice in its being (so magnificently) what it was.”
At a time when our culture encourages us to seek novelty and worry about what we don’t have rather than appreciate what we do have, that passage is a good reminder to live in the here and now. It is not just a matter of ‘seizing the day’; it is a matter of gratitude and wonder. This life is short and we don’t want to squander it.
Well, as is often the case, one book sent me to another, and I started reading the first volume of C.S. Lewis’s letters. I was curious to find out about his experience in WWI, during which he served as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Somerset Light Infantry. Here’s a photo of the regimental aid and post staff (not Lewis’s section but the only photo I could find of Somersets).
It seems that Lewis spent much of his war in the hospital, first with a nasty bout of trench fever and then again after being wounded at the 2nd Battle of Arras. Although I knew he had been wounded, my grasp of the details was hazy to say the least. For some reason, I thought that he had been left for dead on the battlefield at the Somme, but it turns out he wasn’t even in the army in 1916. Lewis was wounded at Arras on April 15, 1918, when a shell hit, killing the Sergeant standing next to him and knocking Lewis out. In a letter to his father dated May 4th, he described his wounds:
As a matter of fact I was really hit in the back of the left hand, on the left leg from behind and just above the knee, and in the left side just under the arm pit. All three were only flesh wounds. The myth about being hit in the face arose, I imagine, from the fact that I got a lot of dirt in the left eye which was closed up for a few days, but is now alright. I still can’t lie on my side (neither the bad one nor the other one) but otherwise I lead the life of an ordinary mortal and my temperature is alright. So there is no need for any anxiety at all.
With typical humor, he wrote in another letter home:
I expect to be sent across in a few days time, of course as a stretcher case: indeed whatever my condition they would have to send me in that way, because I have no clothes. This is a standing joke out here–the mania which people at the dressing stations have for cutting off a wounded man’s clothes whether there is any need for it or not. In my case the tunic was probably beyond hope, but I admit that I mourn the undeserved fate of my breeches. Unfortunately I was unconscious when the sacrilege took place and could not very well argue the point.
It turned out that his wounds were more severe than he initially described, since two pieces of shrapnel had penetrated his chest and could not be removed. Indeed, if we pay attention to the letter dates and read between the lines, his near-death becomes apparent. Eventually, he was transferred back to England, and though soon ambulatory, he was still in the hospital in mid-June.
One can’t help thinking how different our world would have been if Lewis had not survived. Yet survive he did, and by 1929 he could deny his belief in God no longer. The rest of the story you know well, but I highly recommend that you revisit Lewis’s Christian writings; they’re next on my list.
Have a blessed Palm Sunday!
Letter quotes from Lewis, C. S.. The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 1: Family Letters, 1905-1931. HarperOne. Kindle Edition.
dual personalities 