dual personalities

This is how my mind works

by chuckofish

So we all have been preoccupied recently with the year 1963, especially with the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy.

So I got to thinking about what would be an appropriate movie to recommend as this Friday’s pick.

So I looked up the top-grossing films of 1963. You would not believe what fun movies are on that list! Indeed, many are favorites of mine. There is hardly a serious drama in the bunch. Here are the top 16, starting with #1:

Cleopatra, How the West Was Won, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Tom Jones, Irma la Douce, The Sword in the Stone, Son of Flubber, The Birds, Dr. No, The V.I.P.s, McClintock!, Charade, Bye Bye Birdie, Move Over, Darling, Come Blow Your Horn, The Thrill of It All,

and #17: The Great Escape.

I’ve missed him, have you?

It is kind of eye-opening. It was a different world back then and the movie stars were different too–Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Doris Day, Debbie Reynolds, Shirley MacLaine, John Wayne and Steve McQueen and this guy:

Albert Finney, you were adorable

Not to put too fine a line on it (or to be disrespectful), but it was all downhill from November 22, 1963. The world became a depressing and chaotic place.

I was just in the second grade that fall, but I have to say I have always gravitated to the early 1960s time period as a favorite era (see above list of movies).

Flyover blondes and me

I guess I was happy then. My parents were still fairly young and seemed happy and not un-hip to me. We had moved into a new (old) house. Things were on an upward trajectory. I suppose that’s why.

ANYWAY, How the West Was Won has always been in my Top Ten list.

I went to see it at the movies with my best friend Trudie Glick (her birthday party) and it was practically the first movie I had ever seen at the movies. My 12 year-old brother, of course, had already seen it and he gave it an enthusiastic thumbs up. He told me about all the really good parts. I was pretty bowled over by it–remember, it was in Cinerama–and especially loved the magnificent musical score by Alfred Newman. It is the soundtrack by which I have judged all soundtracks since.

Charade, starring Audrey and Cary Grant, is another all-time favorite of mine.

This rom-com is bright and light and much-copied. The original is always best! Stanley Donen’s direction is perfect–he made some great movies with Audrey Hepburn. And Cary Grant is on his A-game. Plus there is all that and wonderful European scenery and Henry Mancini music.

Move Over, Darling and The Thrill of It All are both terrific Doris Day vehicles, even with the B-Team James Garner (i.e. not Rock Hudson). The Thrill of It All in particular has been a favorite of our family: Happy Soap saved my life!

So I leave it to you which movie to pick, but I recommend them all (maybe not Son of Flubber). No conspiracy theories for me this weekend.

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November 21, 2013

A sonnet for Thursday

by chuckofish

Well, two hundred years ago they also felt out of tune and forlorn! And check out this pensive portrait of Wordsworth.

“The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.–Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.”

― William Wordsworth, The Major Works
1802

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November 20, 2013

What makes a home beautiful?

by chuckofish

Bloggers are fond of asking themselves this question. The glossy home magazines endlessly try to answer this question.

1. For me, a house has to look lived in. Clearly the home is a reflection of the people who live in it. So if the house doesn’t even looked lived in, how can it be beautiful? Thank goodness, perfection is not the answer.

2. A home needs lots of art on the walls. My mother taught me that you should only have “original” art on the first floor. Prints, posters and the like belong upstairs. I get that. She considered old family photographs as art. But definitely not new photographs, i.e. school pictures. Art is a very personal thing and it always amazes me when people have decorators pick art for them to hang on their walls.

3. I like a mix of antiques and new furniture. My mother abhorred “suites” of furniture, i.e. sets bought all together. She said that if you collect antiques or vintage furniture, nothing will match and you will have different periods and styles represented. And that’s okay.

4. I like plants. I probably have too many, but a punch of green in every room is a necessity. They also clean the air!

5. Books! I know a lot of people think books are dust-attracters and a waste of money when there are libraries and kindles out there, but, gee, a home is neither beautiful nor lived-in without books. You either get that or you don’t. However, using books as a decorating prop is a no-no in my opinion.

6. I love dishes–old, new, whatever. I like to display them. I remember frequently going to the furniture store (which was next door to the grocery store) with my mother to gaze at the china displays. We would say, “Oh, I like that pattern!” and “Oh, isn’t that one pretty?!” This, of course, is how you teach your children to appreciate beautiful things. It’s not about buying things, but learning to look at things and see them and discriminate between the beautiful and the average. It’s like going to art museums to look at the art and saying, “I like that!” You learn to have an opinion.

7. Fresh flowers.

8. Needlework: samplers, needlepoint pillows, lovely bed linens–especially when made by people we love.

This, of course, is my list and I do not mean to imply that someone who loves a match-matchy house with lots of family pictures in the living room and no books is wrong. As daughter #1 says, “It is just not my aesthetic.” People should decorate to suit themselves.

As you can tell, I was much influenced by my mother, who (I think) had great taste. She learned a lot from her mother, but she really had a sense of style that far surpassed anyone else in her family. Where did that come from? I don’t know. She understood what a “tableau” or “vignette” was long before they became decorating watchwords. She never had much money to spend on her home, but she did her best to make it beautiful.

The great Albert Hadley once said: “Decorating is not about making stage sets, it’s not about making pretty pictures for the magazines; it’s really about creating a quality of life, a beauty that nourishes the soul.”

I agree. My mother would have agreed too. Furthermore, I am grateful for my home and for the people who live/have lived in it. A sense of gratitude also adds to the beauty of a home, don’t you think?

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November 19, 2013

O powerful, western, fallen star!

by chuckofish

On this day 150 years ago, President Abraham Lincoln gave this short address at the dedication of the military cemetery ceremony in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He wrote it himself and he did not have a teleprompter. Read the whole thing.

FOUR SCORE AND SEVEN YEARS AGO OUR FATHERS BROUGHT FORTH ON THIS CONTINENT A NEW NATION CONCEIVED IN LIBERTY AND DEDICATED TO THE PROPOSITION THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL •
NOW WE ARE ENGAGED IN A GREAT CIVIL WAR TESTING WHETHER THAT NATION OR ANY NATION SO CONCEIVED AND SO DEDICATED CAN LONG ENDURE • WE ARE MET ON A GREAT BATTLEFIELD OF THAT WAR • WE HAVE COME TO DEDICATE A PORTION OF THAT FIELD AS A FINAL RESTING PLACE FOR THOSE WHO HERE GAVE THEIR LIVES THAT THAT NATION MIGHT LIVE • IT IS ALTOGETHER FITTING AND PROPER THAT WE SHOULD DO THIS • BUT IN A LARGER SENSE WE CAN NOT DEDICATE~WE CAN NOT CONSECRATE~WE CAN NOT HALLOW~THIS GROUND • THE BRAVE MEN LIVING AND DEAD WHO STRUGGLED HERE HAVE CONSECRATED IT FAR ABOVE OUR POOR POWER TO ADD OR DETRACT • THE WORLD WILL LITTLE NOTE NOR LONG REMEMBER WHAT WE SAY HERE BUT IT CAN NEVER FORGET WHAT THEY DID HERE • IT IS FOR US THE LIVING RATHER TO BE DEDICATED HERE TO THE UNFINISHED WORK WHICH THEY WHO FOUGHT HERE HAVE THUS FAR SO NOBLY ADVANCED • IT IS RATHER FOR US TO BE HERE DEDICATED TO THE GREAT TASK REMAINING BEFORE US~THAT FROM THESE HONORED DEAD WE TAKE INCREASED DEVOTION TO THAT CAUSE FOR WHICH THEY GAVE THE LAST FULL MEASURE OF DEVOTION~THAT WE HERE HIGHLY RESOLVE THAT THESE DEAD SHALL NOT HAVE DIED IN VAIN~THAT THIS NATION UNDER GOD SHALL HAVE A NEW BIRTH OF FREEDOM~AND THAT GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE BY THE PEOPLE FOR THE PEOPLE SHALL NOT PERISH FROM THE EARTH •

(This is the version of the text inscribed on the walls at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.)

Awesome.

The Lincoln Address Memorial (top left) at the Gettysburg National Cemetery

Another place for the bucket list.

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November 18, 2013

Between grief and high delight*

by chuckofish

Well, as of Sunday, most of our leaves are off our trees

and on the ground.

Boy oh boy, are they all over the ground. We had quite a storm on Sunday morning. When I came out of church, the sky to the west was awesome.

It was a record-breaking 80-degrees and sunny, but the wind was whipping up. I said to the man next to me, “We better batten down the hatches!” and my friend Carlos, stepping outside, exclaimed, “Auntie Em! Auntie Em!” Indeed.

I hurried to my car and as I drove the 5-minute trip home, the leaves seemed to attack my car. It was bizarre. As I reached my garage, the raindrops started to fall. I rushed inside to get my camera and headed back out the front door. But the rain began in earnest and then the hail, so I quickly retreated back inside. It was an amazing storm with lots of wind and hail, but it was over in about 8 minutes. Then the sun came out and the storm moved on, picking up strength on its way to Illinois where the really bad business hit–including an EF4 tornado.

I spent most of the weekend recovering from last weekend in NYC and a busy week at home. I watched When Harry Met Sally, which as you know, is a classic Nora Ephron romcom shot in and around the city. You gotta love old Billy Crystal, especially in this scene:

I also watched Martin Scorsese’s documentary The Last Waltz (1978) which is a filmed account of the Band’s farewell concert appearance on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976. The Band (Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, and Richard Manuel) were joined by a dozen special guests including Bob Dylan (they were his back-up band in the 1960s), Neil Young, Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell, Neil Diamond, Van Morrison, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton and more. I was not cool enough back in the day to know about it, much less appreciate it, but I can now. It was really great and I highly recommend you watch it…perhaps on Thanksgiving! (I, of course, will be watching Planes, Trains and Automobiles.)

Van, Bob and Robbie

I also watched the new documentary about J.D. Salinger on Netflix Watch Instantly.

I watched the whole thing, but there was nothing new to me. They go into some detail about his horrible war experiences in WWII when he participated in the amphibious landing on D-Day and fought on through the Battle of the Bulge for over 200 days, including the horrendous Hurtgen Forest, and concluding in the liberation of Dachau. This is legit as it had a great effect on him. Who wouldn’t be affected by that? But mostly it is a lot of second and third-rate writers who are jealous and resentful making comments. Awful people like Gore Vidal. Why is it so hard to understand that a writer who is largely misunderstood wants to be left alone? It makes perfect sense to me. People have always had such ridiculous expectations of him. I guess it is all that unrequited love.

He was not crazy. (And neither was Holden!) Personally I think it speaks volumes that the local people of Cornish, New Hampshire closed ranks around him and protected him for all those years. They liked him. He went to the bean suppers at the Congregational Church. Also his friends, like Maxwell Perkins’ sister, protected him. It’s all the rest–the ones he wouldn’t talk to–who are so resentful. Who suggest he was pretty weird. I don’t think so.

*Franny and Zooey

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November 16, 2013

Writing in English is like throwing mud at a wall*

by chuckofish

I have a feeling that my students, agreeing wholeheartedly, would prefer to sling mud than attempt coherent communication. But never mind, it is November and I am determined to be grateful for everything, including the 40 papers that await my judgment. Without further ado, here are this week’s five things that make me thankful.

1. Procrastination by computer. Who among us has not avoided an unpleasant task by surfing the web? And look what I found this week:

this spectacular photo of the St. Louis arch from Picture of the Day who, in turn, got it from user llamapen on Reddit. Amazing, no?

2. Reading beautiful prose makes everything better. Despite what Joseph Conrad felt about writing in English, which was, after all, his third or fourth language, he certainly had a way with words.

“… the chipped plates might have been disinterred from some kitchen midden near an inhabited lake; and the chops recalled times more ancient still. They brought forcibly to one’s mind the night of ages when the primeval man, evolving the first rudiments of cookery from his dim consciousness, scorched lumps of flesh at a fire of sticks…”

— which brings me to my next item.

3. Internet recipes. I’ve been making dinners for a long time now and I get tired of making the same thing over and over. It’s nice to be able to try something new. This week I had one culinary disaster (too much hot paprika in the Goulash) and one success, shepherd’s pie with scallion cheese crust. It was yummy. Still, as a chef, I resemble this

more than the real Julia Child. I’m something of a wreck in the kitchen…

4. Ruins. Yep, I’ve always been fascinated by ruined buildings — everything from ancient cities to abandoned Detroit.

French chateau

Don’t you want to explore? Ruins are so romantic somehow.

5. And let’s not forget music. Where would we be without that? As you already know, at the moment I’m listening to a lot of Gregory Alan Isakov. You should too:

So that’s it for this week. I’m feeling better about those papers already. Look at what wonderful things await me when I get finished!

* said by Joseph Conrad, who struggled mightily with his writing.

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November 15, 2013

Natural delights and changing joys

by chuckofish

“How lucky country children are in these natural delights that lie ready to their hand! Every season and every plant offers changing joys. As they meander along the lane that leads to our school all kinds of natural toys present themselves for their diversion. The seedpods of stitchwort hang ready for delightful popping between thumb and finger, and later the bladder campion offers a larger, if less crisp, globe to burst. In the autumn, acorns, beechnuts, and conkers bedizen their path, with all their manifold possibilities of fun.”

― Miss Read, Village Diary

It is the clean-up season in America. The leaves are falling and piling up. The sound of leaf-blowers is ubiquitous. But there is rain in the forecast, so we are going to have a yard full of wet leaves and no time over the wet and stormy weekend to do anything about it.

C’est la vie. We’ll just have to chill and not stress about it.

Meanwhile the last of the brave flowers are blooming.

And the Christmas cactus is fabulous!

And here is another seasonal joy from those other two blogging sisters who also reside in my flyover state, the wonderful girls of A Beautiful Mess blog. You gotta love a turkey-shaped cheese tray! While we are chilling this weekend and not raking leaves, maybe we’ll get creative and put together one of these fantastic turkey trays.

But don’t forget:

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November 14, 2013

Quotations

by chuckofish

Every book is a quotation;
and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries;
and every man [woman] is a quotation from all his ancestors.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men (1850)

It never ceases to amaze me, especially in regards to my grown children, how right Emerson is.

Spending a few days with daughter #1 reminded me that she is such a quotation of this guy:

and also this gal:

What a lovely combination of grandparent quotations!

9 Comments

November 13, 2013

The moon’s a balloon*

by chuckofish

The lunar phase on November 13, 2013 is Waxing Gibbous. The moon is growing bigger.

Take a look this afternoon. A waxing gibbous moon appears high in the east at sunset. It’s more than half-lighted, but less than full.

When I flew to New York last week, it was at sunset. We flew over the clouds in the dark. The lights of the cities twinkled below. Then I looked out the window and there was the big dipper (Ursa Major)!

The moon was a sliver then. What a beautiful world!

O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.

2 Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.

3 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

5 For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.

6 Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet:

7 All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;

8 The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.

9 O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!

Psalm 8 (KJV)

* e.e. cummings

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November 12, 2013

If you really want to hear about it

by chuckofish

Well, I don’t know about you, but I just love Central Park. It really is the coolest. I mean we have a large, beautiful municipal park in my flyover town too, but it quite pales next to New York’s.

Someone had a brilliant idea back in the mid-1800s. Two men in particular, the poet and editor of the Evening Post, William Cullen Bryant, and the first American landscape architect, Andrew Jackson Downing, began to publicize the city’s need for a public park in 1844. All the big European cities had one, so why shouldn’t we? The state of New York appointed a Central Park Commission to oversee the development of the park, and in 1857 they held a landscape design contest.

Photo of American Elm trees from the Central Park Website

In 1858 Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won the design competition with a plan they entitled the “Greensward Plan”. They really knocked themselves out. Construction began the same year, continued during the American Civil War, and was completed in 1873.

Central Park is the most visited urban park in the United States.

You’ll find babbling brooks in the middle of this great metropolis!

Shakespeare “in the park”

And there’s Shakespeare and Burns and Sir Walter Scott and many more statues to see. However, there is no sense of the space being cluttered with objects, which I like a lot. We walked all around the reservoir and down to the skating rink. We climbed to the top of Belvedere Castle, which was not as strenuous as the Walter Scott monument in Edinburgh but I did have a flash-back because the stairs are very similar!

We saw many of the outcroppings of Manhattan schist which we have seen in our favorite movies.

We walked over those famous bridges as well.

Across the street from the park and a block or so from daughter #1’s apartment is the wonderful American Museum of Natural History. I had not been there since 1978. Happily, not much has changed!

One of the largest and most celebrated museums in the world, the museum complex contains 27 interconnected buildings housing 45 permanent exhibition halls, in addition to a planetarium and a library. The museum collections contain over 32 billion specimens of plants, humans, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, and human cultural artifacts, of which only a small fraction can be displayed at any given time, and occupies 1,600,000 square feet. The Museum has a full-time scientific staff of 225, sponsors over 120 special field expeditions each year, and averages about five million visits annually.

Theodore Roosevelt and Indian mate guard the front door.

Last Friday we saw many stuffed mammals, the big blue whale, dinosaur skeletons and bones,

and the wonderful hall of Northwest Coast Indians, which is the oldest extant exhibit in the Museum. There were hundreds of children running around, but they did not bother me. They seemed to be enjoying themselves in this gloriously old-fashioned space–and why wouldn’t they?

Holden Caulfield, you’ll recall, was a big fan of this museum, so I thought about him when I was there.

The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and they’re pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you’d be so much older or anything. It wouldn’t be that, exactly. You’d just be different, that’s all. You’d have an overcoat this time. Or the kid that was your partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you’d have a new partner. Or you’d have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you’d heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you’d just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you’d be different in some way—I can’t explain what I mean. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d feel like it.

― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

I love this particular paragraph and so I have always had a soft spot in my heart for this museum. I know exactly what Holden means, don’t you? Some things should just not change. They are great they way they are. And because we are always changing, we need those stable places in our lives.

It is 25-degrees here in my flyover town this morning. Hope you are keeping warm today!

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