Fat Baby Friday returns! Here’s a picture of my life partner circa 1955. Poor kid looks like a turtle trying to right himself.
Here he is a year or so later bright-eyed and ready for boarding school. Sunrise, sunset. Where do the years go?
Have a great weekend!
I have always loved this illustration by Jessie Willcox Smith (1863 – 1935). I love the cranky little girl who has been sent to her room. I can relate. Her body language. Her droopy socks and carelessly dropped books. She is not a happy camper. And I am right there with that doll in time out. And isn’t that a wonderful wicker chair and pillow?
Smith was a prolific contributor to books and magazines during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, illustrating stories and articles for clients such as Good Housekeeping and the Ladies’ Home Journal. She also illustrated many books, notably A Child’s Garden of Verses and The Seven Ages of Childhood.
Here is a selection of her wonderful pictures on Pinterest. Funnily enough, my favorite is not included, but aren’t they great?
Blue, blue is the grass about the river
And the willows have overfilled the close garden.
And within, the mistress, in the midmost of her youth.
White, white of face, hesitates, passing the door.
Slender, she puts forth a slender hand;And she was a courtezan in the old days,
And she has married a sot,
Who now goes drunkenly out
And leaves her too much alone.
–Ezra Pound
Yesterday was the birthday of the late great Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune (April 1, 1920 – December 24, 1997) who appeared in almost 170 feature films. He is best known for his 16-film collaboration with filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, from 1948 to 1965, in works such as Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, and Yojimbo.
Who doesn’t love him as a samurai warrior? He is indeed the Best.
But I like him as well in the 1949 Japanese police procedural film noir classic, Stray Dog. He is so young and handsome!
He also stole the show as Toranaga in the 1980 miniseries Shogun.
So when you are trying to think of something to watch this week, think of old Toshiro Mifune.
Easter turned out to be a lovely day in our flyover town. Warm and sunny. The boy and his bride joined us at church. We were surrounded by small children. They were adorable in their Women’s Exchange finery, but very distracting. I didn’t get a whole lot out of the service, but oh well. It was nice just to be in a (full) church with my family (such as it is with the daughters so far away).
The boy’s Best Man was in town with his girlfriend and they were also at church.
After church we went to Easter brunch at the boy’s in-laws. I brought the dollar rolls and the sticky buns. I did not give the boy a basket this year since he is all grown up, but I had to give him some of these:
I worked in the yard a little when I got home, but since I hurt my back last weekend shoveling snow(!), I couldn’t do much. But it was nice to be outside, soaking up the vitamin D.
I spent a good part of this Easter weekend watching Ben Hur. My husband surprised me with the fancy 50th Anniversary boxed set (on super sale since that was 4 years ago!) Blu-Ray edition of the film–complete with a book about the making of the movie, a facsimile of Charlton Heston’s diary and a whole disc of special features.
Never since the old Lord of the Rings days have I felt like such a nerd. But a happy nerd.
How was your weekend?
Here is the King’s College Cambridge version of one of my favorite Easter hymns which we never sing at church.. It does not include verse 4–my favorite–but I could not find the Radney Foster rendition.
although as my dual personality can corroborate, I’ve never been able to resist an Easter basket for long. Back in the day I tended to finish my basket in a day or two. You can see in this picture
Easter 1964
that I probably had a stomach ache from too much chocolate. By contrast, my sister took weeks to finish her candy and sometimes never did (especially if the dog got it first). That’s why she grew up to look like this:
Katie circa 1974
and, well, why I didn’t. Despite the sweet tooth, as a child I took Easter very seriously. It was my favorite holiday in part because of the movie, “King of Kings,” which I thought was awesome. It was a big shock when in college I discovered how bad it really is, but when I saw the movie for the first time, I was smitten — it was the music that really got to me. I was so afraid I would forget the main theme that I hummed it constantly for days until I was sure I wouldn’t forget. It worked. I know it by heart the way I know old phone numbers or the poems I had to memorize for school. And if the movie itself didn’t stand the test of time, the music still moves. I had trouble finding exactly the right bit, but you’ll get the idea.
I leave you with a beautiful passage from Frederick Buechner, to whose brilliant insights my dual personality introduced my many years ago.
There is a fragrance in the air, a certain passage of a song, an old photograph falling out from the pages of a book, the sound of somebody’s voice in the hall that makes your heart leap and fills your eyes with tears. Who can say when or how it will be that something easters up out of the dimness to remind us of a time before we were born and after we will die?
― Frederick Buechner
Happy Easter!!
“Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act of the soul. The simplest person who in his integrity worships God, becomes God; yet for ever and ever the influx of this better and universal self is new and unsearchable. It inspires awe and astonishment. How dear, how soothing to man, arises the idea of God, peopling the lonely place, effacing the scars of our mistakes and disappointments! When we have broken our god of tradition and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with his presence. It is the doubling of the heart itself, nay, the infinite enlargement of the heart with a power of growth to a new infinity on every side. It inspires in man an infallible trust. He has not the conviction, but the sight, that the best is the true, and may in that thought easily dismiss all particular uncertainties and fears, and adjourn to the sure revelation of time the solution of his private riddles. He is sure that his welfare is dear to the heart of being. In the presence of law to his mind he is overflowed with a reliance so universal that it sweeps away all cherished hopes and the most stable projects of mortal condition in its flood. He believes that he cannot escape from his good. The things that are really for thee gravitate to thee. You are running to seek your friend. Let your feet run, but your mind need not. If you do not find him, will you not acquiesce that it is best you should not find him? for there is a power, which, as it is in you, is in him also, and could therefore very well bring you together, if it were for the best. You are preparing with eagerness to go and render a service to which your talent and your taste invite you, the love of men and the hope of fame. Has it not occurred to you that you have no right to go, unless you are equally willing to be prevented from going? O, believe, as thou livest, that every sound that is spoken over the round world, which thou oughtest to hear, will vibrate on thine ear! Every proverb, every book, every byword that belongs to thee for aid or comfort, shall surely come home through open or winding passages. Every friend whom not thy fantastic will but the great and tender heart in thee craveth, shall lock thee in his embrace. And this because the heart in thee is the heart of all; not a valve, not a wall, not an intersection is there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls uninterruptedly an endless circulation through all men, as the water of the globe is all one sea, and, truly seen, its tide is one.”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Over-Soul”
This is a long quote, but I hope you read the whole thing and did not skim. Dear daughter #2 shared this quote with me yesterday with the suggestion that “it’s nice to fall back on the Transcendentalist ideas if the institution of the church is failing you.” I guess my recent posts had her a little worried. But fear not, my relationship with the Episcopal Church, though a love/hate one, is a long-term one. From time to time I threaten to leave, but I probably won’t. I just continue to lower my expectations!
Thanks also to daughter #2 for sending her old mama some new music!
Josh Ritter and Trampled by Turtles! Great choices for me, especially the TBT–nothing gets me going in the morning like 21st century bluegrass! Here is my favorite song, titled appropriately “Walt Whitman”:
This song gets my Barbara Stanwyck alter ego all charged up and ready to go. Sometimes I think my driving may suffer, but so far so good.
Happy Easter and have a great weekend!
I regret to say that as Lent comes to a close I haven’t blogged about or even mentioned my usual Lenten movie watching traditions, because, alas, I haven’t watched any of my favorite Lenten movies! Last year I wrote about them here and here and of course here.
Indeed, it hasn’t been a typical Lent. In fact, the only thing I gave up for Lent was going to church! Sigh. Well, anyway, I will definitely watch Ben Hur on Good Friday.
Earlier in March I did try to watch The Bible, the television miniseries produced by Roma Downey and Mark Burnett on the History Channel, but I really couldn’t watch more than 15 minutes. Myeh.
Perhaps this weekend I will watch some of Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth, the miniseries first aired in 1977 which I like very much. It has a wonderful script by Anthony Burgess and I like Robert Powell as the unblinking Jesus.
Also memorable are Laurence Olivier as Nicodemus, my girl Claudia Cardinale as the Adulteress, Ralph Richardson as Simeon, and Ian McShane as Judas. James Farentino (!) as Peter and Ann Bancroft as Mary Magdalene, prove that, although it helps, you don’t have to be British to star in a biblical film. They are both wonderful.
Speaking of favorite biblical miniseries–I love Peter and Paul, a 1981 biblical drama starring Anthony Hopkins as Paul of Tarsus.
Ever since first watching it in 1981, whenever I read the words of Paul, I hear them spoken in Hopkins’ Welsh accent.
What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies; who is to condemn? Is it Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written,
“For thy sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8: 31-39
Well, we all worship in our own way.
“I think I’d like to say only that [people] should learn to be alone and try to spend as much time as possible by themselves. I think one of the faults of young people today is that they try to come together around events that are noisy, almost aggressive at times. This desire to be together in order to not feel alone is an unfortunate symptom, in my opinion. Every person needs to learn from childhood how to be spend time with oneself. That doesn’t mean he should be lonely, but that he shouldn’t grow bored with himself because people who grow bored in their own company seem to me in danger, from a self-esteem point of view.”
–Russian filmmaker and writer Andrei Tarkovsky
[Found here.]
And P.S. This is our 500th post! Salut!
In weather news the National Weather Service said 12.4 inches fell here on Sunday, beating the one-day record for St. Louis of 12.1 inches set one hundred years ago on March 24, 1912. Woohoo! The high Monday reached the mid 30s, compared with a high of 76 degrees a year ago on that date and 59 the normal high on March 25.
Yesterday I decided to venture forth into our flyover landscape which was draped in the fluffy white stuff. I decided that such an expedition warranted the wearing of my size 5 1/2 Fabiano hiking boots that I wore everyday when I was a junior at Williams College back in the day. They are one of the few things that still fits from my college days–haha! As you can imagine, I do not have many occasions to wear them anymore.
Tromping about in the snow is one of my favorite things to do, and there was much to see in the winter wonderland that is our yard.
This is a flower pot on the front porch:
I wonder how the birds are who live in this rhododendron bush?
This chair looks like it is upholstered in snow!
I guess these guys will have to wait a little longer to adorn the garden.
“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.”
― Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale
The dual personalities frolicking in the snow with their older brother circa 1964
Let it snow! We’ll be roasting here before you know it.
*Elizabeth Goudge, The Little White Horse
