dual personalities

January 18, 2019

“My only regret in life is that I didn’t drink enough champagne.”*

by chuckofish

It’s finally Friday! It was a long, busy week at my flyover Institute and I am really ready for the three-day weekend. Daughter #1 is driving in to town from mid-MO, if she can figure out when to do so in between the weird weather they are forecasting for the weekend.

We will celebrate our mother’s/grandmother’s birthday (along with Dolly Parton’s and Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s) on Saturday–this calls for champagne–and, of course, Martin Luther King’s birthday on Monday.

Tonight we will toast Daniel Webster (1782-1852),

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along with Oliver Hardy (1892-1957), Cary Grant (1904-1986), Danny Kaye (1911-1987), and Kevin Costner (b. 1955)–all born on January 18. Just think of the movie viewing possibilities!

Screen Shot 2019-01-17 at 10.26.56 AM.png Screen Shot 2019-01-17 at 10.38.25 AM.png Personally I am leaning toward a Cary Grant marathon, which could include any of these favorites: Gunga Din (1939), The Awful Truth (1937), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Houseboat (1958), North By Northwest (1959), Charade (1963), or Father Goose (1964) or The Bishop’s Wife (1947) if you missed it at Christmas.

Screen Shot 2019-01-17 at 10.24.00 AM.png It might also be time to revisit Silverado (1985)–completely derivative, but entertaining nonetheless.

Screen Shot 2019-01-17 at 10.15.57 AM.png We should also mention that today on the Episcopal Church calendar is the feast day of Amy Carmichael (1867-1951), Protestant missionary in India, who was the real deal. She opened an orphanage and founded a mission in Dohnavur. She served in India for fifty-five years without furlough and authored many books about the missionary work there. Her most notable work was with girls and young women, some of whom were saved from customs that amounted to forced prostitution. You can read about her here. Why don’t they make a movie about this remarkable woman?

Lots of choices to make this weekend–make good ones!

And stay safe in the winter weather.

*John Maynard Keynes

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January 17, 2019

The scattering winds

by chuckofish

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For to the snow he says, ‘Fall on the earth’;
and to the shower and the rain, ‘Be strong.’
He seals up the hand of every man,
that all men may know his work.
Then the beasts go into their lairs,
and remain in their dens.
From its chamber comes the whirlwind,
and cold from the scattering winds.
By the breath of God ice is given,
and the broad waters are frozen fast.

–Job 37:6-10

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I am grateful that I work inside. And have an attached garage. And seat heaters in my car. I am grateful for a warm coat and gloves.

What are you grateful for?

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January 16, 2019

Just saying

by chuckofish

Screen Shot 2019-01-15 at 7.45.02 AM.png (Instragam @vegaslady42 who reposted it from somewhere else)

Meanwhile the amaryllis, given to us by my brother and his wife before Christmas, continues to grow. Hopefully it will bloom sometime in mid-February, just when we need it the most! The wee laddie was quite fascinated with it the other night and thus we have it staked now…as usual, he heeded his mother’s pleas for a “gentle touch!” only after some damage was already done. The Christmas cactus is also a favorite place for the wee babes to deposit their Playskool chicken and rooster…

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…which is quite brilliant if you ask me. Birds in the foliage, right? It is great to see them recognize things and make connections.

Lottie has been terrific at pointing out horses (“neigh!”) on fabric and in pictures for awhile. The first time she did this, it blew me away. She is one observant child.

Now she can find elephants everywhere.

She called the clock a “house” which I thought was brilliant as well.Our house is like a treasure hunt for them anyway. It is their job to “find” their toys that have been put away and drag them out. Books in particular.

They also like to move the little chairs around, because, you know, they can.

I have bought nothing new for them except the shopping cart, which, of course, the wee laddie thinks is a Sherman Tank. What was I thinking?

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Well, nothing is too precious in our house not to be “antiqued” further by the demonstrative hands of our two-year old, twenty-pound twin tornadoes.

The old manse can take it.

By the way, yesterday the wee babes had their final NICU follow-up appointment. According to daughter #3, the doctors were very pleased with how they both are doing. Both are basically caught up developmentally to their same-aged peers…and they told us not to expect this until they were 3! Love and attention go a long, long way.

Thanks be to God.

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January 15, 2019

A thrill of delight

by chuckofish

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Books of natural history make the most cheerful winter reading. I read in Audubon with a thrill of delight, when the snow covers the ground, of the magnolia, and the Florida keys, and their warm sea breezes; of the fence-rail, and the cotton-tree, and the migrations of the rice-bird; of the breaking up of winter in Labrador, and the melting of the snow on the forks of the Missouri; and owe an accession of health to these reminiscences of luxuriant nature.

—Henry David Thoreau, “Natural History of Massachusetts”

Here’s to some cheerful winter reading!

The painting is “Vermont Valley Farm – Winter” by Aldro Thompson Hibbard (American, 1886-1972)

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January 14, 2019

“See, what you have to ask yourself is: what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, that sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky?”

by chuckofish

Well, we did, indeed, have a little snow on Friday night.

I did a little shoveling, but the boy brought his snow blower over and did most of our driveway…

He made short work of what would have been a major effort/pain for me to do. I did some more shoveling on Sunday…by then the snow was heavy and icey. But it felt good to get out in the cold and do some physical work.

I spent the weekend reading M Train by Patti Smith, “an unforgettable odyssey of a legendary artist, told through the prism of the cafés and haunts she has worked in around the world. It is a book Patti Smith has described as ‘a roadmap to my life.’”

Like me, she is a person who sees signs and miracles in the world. She rescues objects and keeps talismans that are full of meaning for her.

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She wears vintage clothes and watches detective shows and visits cemeteries to pay homage to specific graves, usually of literary figures or artists. If I ever go to Tokyo I will, like Patti, want to have dinner at the restaurant Mifune. In other words, we are on the same page.

–Reading Ibsen?

–Yes, The Master Builder.

–Hmmmm, lovely play but fraught with symbolism.

–I hadn’t noticed, I said.

He stood before the fire for a moment then shook his head and left. Personally, I’m not much for symbolism. I never get it. Why can’t things be just as they are? I never thought to psychoanalyze Seymour Glass or sought to break down “Desolation Row.” I just wanted to get lost, become one with somewhere else, slip a wreath on a steeple top because I wished it. (M Train)

I also delved into Sam Anderson’s Boom Town, “The fantastical saga of Oklahoma City, its chaotic founding, its apocalyptic weather, its purloined basketball team, and the dream of becoming a world-class metropolis,” which DN gave me for Christmas, because he knows that OC is on my top-five list of places I want to visit. Isn’t it great to have a son-in-law who picks out books for me? I mean really.

The wee babes frolicked in the snow…

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…and they came over for Episcopal souffle on Sunday night. Can you believe how grown up they look?

Can you say, “chip and dip”?

And now it’s back to the rat race…have a good week!

Here is Patti Smith’s lovely elegy for her friend Sam Shepard.

*Graham Hess in Signs (2002)

7 Comments

January 12, 2019

Everything’s a rerun

by chuckofish

Last night, after scrolling through Amazon Prime in a fruitless attempt to find something to watch, I discovered the early 1960s TV show My Favorite Martian, starring Ray Walston as the titular Martian and Bill Bixby as his terrestrial host.

I watched a couple of episodes and was not disappointed — it was pretty entertaining in a 1963 sort of way, and it had reasonably good special effects. You can read all about the show here. My Favorite Martian got me thinking about what else I watched as a child. Most of my very early TV watching consisted of reruns like Father Knows Best (1954-1960) and the Donna Reed Show (1958-1966) that I watched during the day while my siblings were at school, and Leave it to Beaver reruns (1957-1963) after they got home.

Years later and still watching reruns, my dual personality and I yucked it up over F-Troop (1965-67),

a very silly sitcom that would never get made today. After all, they named the local Indian tribe the Hekawi because, “Tribe travel west, over country and mountains and wild streams, then come big day… tribe fall over cliff, that when Hekawi get name. Medicine man say to my ancestor, “I think we lost. Where the heck are we?” — how culturally insensitive is that?

I also went through a long phase of watching Hogan’s Heroes reruns (1965-71) every afternoon with my best friend. The show was on just before dinner, and it used to drive my DP crazy when I would run home just in time to eat but too late to set the table.

Hogan’s Heroes was charming and funny and we thought Richard Dawson, the wise-cracking British prisoner, was very cool. Back in those days it was okay to make fun of your enemies. In fact, some people probably thought it was wrong to make light of WWII or make the Nazis look like buffoons instead of unmitigated evil. They had a point.

As if to make up for the comic version of WWII, we watched Combat! (1962-67) starring Vic Morrow and Rick Jason. My brother was a big fan of the show, so naturally his two little sisters wanted to watch. We were even recruited to play army with him.

Sal Mineo as special guest victim with Vic Morrow in Combat!

Years and years later, after I graduated from college, when I worked at the library of our flyover university, reruns aired at 10pm every night. I’d get off work, grab a snack, and watch. My DP and her OM would watch at their house, too. Pretty soon we started a betting pool to guess how Vic Morrow would suffer in each episode: a wound to the shoulder, the leg, the head; temporary blindness; madness, or memory loss. We also played spot the ‘special guest victim’ – everyone from Sal Mineo to Telly Savalas appeared on the show (see the full list on Wikipedia).

I’ve left out too many shows to list, but you get the idea. Many of them are available to watch on Amazon or Youtube, and while I am not suggesting that you try to recapture your youth by watching them, it is fun to look back. Imagine that! At the very least you’ll chuckle over hair styles, clothes, and terrible laugh tracks. What TV shows did you enjoy as a child?

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January 11, 2019

“Snow’s all right on a fine morning, but I like to be in bed when it’s falling”*

by chuckofish

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Well, they are saying we will get 5-7 inches of snow starting later this afternoon.

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We’ll see.

I plan to head home a little early and settle in for a quiet weekend. Hopefully I will get some reading done. I have a lot of new books.

And there are always movies to watch, right?

In the meantime, try to focus on the little joys encountered every day. For instance, yesterday morning on my way to work, I passed the boy in his big ol’ truck driving the wee babes to their nursery school. We waved to each other.

Have a good weekend!

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*Samwise-gamgee (J.R.R. Tolkien)

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January 10, 2019

Walking the walk

by chuckofish

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Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. ¹⁴For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. (Matthew 7:13-14)

It has been a very busy week at work, so I only have a few things to share today:

News from the Duh Department. Science-approved!

She makes a good point.

I was so happy about this–not because Alabama lost, but because Coach Dabo Swinney won. He stood firm when The FFRF demanded that Clemson — a public university — not only require Swinney to “cease” his allegedly unconstitutional religious activities but also that it “train” the coaching staff and “monitor their conduct going forwards.” As it turned out, Clemson backed their coach, and at the end of the College Football Playoff National Championship game he was able to say (as reported to me by the boy), “all the credit, alllll the glory goes to the good Lord number one, and number two to this great group of guys.”

Have a good Thursday. Tomorrow is Friday and then on to the weekend! It is supposed to snow here in flyover country. Do I have enough milk, eggs and bread, peanut butter and guitar strings?

6 Comments

January 9, 2019

A psalm for the day

by chuckofish

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Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.

²Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

³Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.

⁴For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.

⁵Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.

⁶In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.

⁷For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled.

⁸Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.

⁹For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told.

¹⁰The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

¹¹Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.

¹²So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

¹³Return, O Lord, how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants.

¹⁴O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

¹⁵Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil.

¹⁶Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children.

¹⁷And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.

–Psalm 90 (KJV)

(The painting is by Albert Bierstadt.)

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January 8, 2019

From the mail department

by chuckofish

screen shot 2019-01-07 at 10.32.14 am I received an email, of which the following is a tidbit, from one of my oldest BFFs to whom I had sent Alleghany Uprising (1939) for Christmas.

Allegheny Uprising was GREAT!! You would think after reading your blog for years that I would have seen more John Wayne movies, but we had only seen a few classics (Stagecoach, The Quiet Man). That is definitely going to change and “watch more John Wayne movies” may actually qualify as one of my resolutions this year!!

I ask, what could be a better new year’s resolution than that?

As the poet Fernando Pessoa lamented, “One of my life’s tragedies is to have already read Pickwick Papers–I can’t go back and read it for the first time.” Alas, there are practically no John Wayne movies I can watch for the first time, but, readers, you can!

My son-in-law (DN) is woefully behind in his old movie watching, so I gave him The Great Escape (1963), The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Thomas Crown Affair (1967) for Christmas–all of which he has not seen. Think of watching them for the first time!

[I must say there are some real spoilers in this trailer!]

Also from the mailbag: One of the books I bought at an estate sale last Saturday was a copy of Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, a favorite of mine. In it he recommends two books that “are always among my things…

…the Bible and the books of the great Danish writer, Jens Peter Jacobsen. I wonder whether you know his works…Get yourself the little volume of Six Stories of J.P. Jacobsen and his novel Niels Lyhne…A world will open up to you, the happiness, the abundance, the incomprehensible immensity of a world. Live a while in these books, learn from them what seems to you worth learning, but above all love them. This love will be repaid to you a thousand and a thousand times…

Sold!

I had never heard of J.P. Jacobsen before, but I will “live a while in these books.”

It’s January–try something new!

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