dual personalities

Tag: Art

October 25, 2023

That we may reap, Great work is done while we’re asleep

by chuckofish

(Wendell Berry)

The days are getting shorter, aren’t they? I hope you are enjoying these wonderful fall days.

Meanwhile, Trevin Wax has been wondering “How can anyone preach Jesus without mentioning judgment? How do you deal with his parables? With his constant and consistent warnings about perdition? With his either-ors and contrasts? Even if you fashion yourself a “red-letter Christian” who waves off Paul and the other apostles, you can’t miss the red letters that warn about destruction and losing your soul, images of a worm that won’t die and a fire that never goes out.”

I have been wondering about that as well–where do people get this idea that Jesus is non-judgmental? In reality he is the mediator and judge of us all. He tells us not to judge, lest we be judged. But make no mistake, we will all be judged by Jesus.

Along those lines, Anne says, “I am always excessively bemused about so many pastor-influencers who purport to speak about a God they insist cannot be known by his own words. How do they know what it means to ‘Follow in the way of Jesus’ when they will not let Jesus have the last, authoritative, and final Word? How can they possibly say what God is like when they reject his Law, his instructions, his precepts, his version of the story? Why does anyone still listen to this?”

They listen because it is what they want to hear. The truth is too hard. It has always been too hard. I am currently reading the book of John in my daily reading and Jesus emphasizes many of his really important statements by starting off with “Most assuredly, I say to you…”. For instance, John 6:53:

“Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.”

You will recall that after this long, difficult section in John 6:53-65, “many of His disciples went back and walked with him no more.” Indeed.

Well, consider this your weekly reminder to read your Bible. Get to know the real Jesus.

And here’s a bonus pic of Katie and Ida in their two little bees finery.

The painting is Autumn Roadside, Kentucky by William Forsyth, 1903

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September 5, 2023

Choice

by chuckofish

“God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on his side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else – something it never entered your head to conceive – comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side.”

–C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

(Matthew 24:44)

(The painting is by Albert Bierstadt.)

2 Comments
August 30, 2023

The heart replies

by chuckofish

When summer’s end is nighing
  And skies at evening cloud,
I muse on change and fortune
  And all the feats I vowed
  When I was young and proud.

The weathercock at sunset
  Would lose the slanted ray,
And I would climb the beacon
  That looked to Wales away
  And saw the last of day.

From hill and cloud and heaven
  The hues of evening died;
Night welled through lane and hollow
  And hushed the countryside,
  But I had youth and pride.

And I with earth and nightfall
  In converse high would stand,
Late, till the west was ashen
  And darkness hard at hand,
  And the eye lost the land.

The year might age, and cloudy
  The lessening day might close,
But air of other summers
  Breathed from beyond the snows,
  And I had hope of those.

They came and were and are not
  And come no more anew;
And all the years and seasons
  That ever can ensue
  Must now be worse and few.

So here’s an end of roaming
  On eves when autumn nighs:
The ear too fondly listens
  For summer’s parting sighs,
  And then the heart replies.

–A.E. Housman

(The painting is by Pablo Picasso, 1902)

3 Comments
August 1, 2023

Nil sine Numine*

by chuckofish

Today we celebrate the day in 1876 when U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant signed a proclamation admitting Colorado to the Union as the 38th state. Because the country had just celebrated its centennial a few weeks earlier, Colorado became known as the “Centennial State”.

Several months prior, in December 1875, leading Colorado citizens gathered to draft a state constitution, among them our great-great grandfather John Simpson Hough, who represented Bent County.

He received 240 votes in the sparsely populated county.

Delegates to the convention came from every district in the soon-to-be state. They met at the Odd Fellows Hall, upstairs from the First National Bank, on Blake Street in Denver. Modeled after the United States Constitution, Colorado’s Constitution set the terms and duties of state government officials, and outlined the manner by which a law could be introduced and passed. It established the State Supreme Court, as well as district and county courts. A program for the supervision and maintenance of a public school system was created.  A state tax system was developed, rules that regulate railroads and other corporations were adopted, and provisions created to amend that State’s constitution.

So join me tonight in a toast to the state of Colorado and to John S. Hough.

In science news, please note that the first of two full moons in August will reach its peak today, August 1, so be sure to check it out. And as an added bonus, both of the full moons this month are also supermoons!

And here’s a poem about the moon by Robert Louis Stevenson:

Have a good day! Read some history. Look up at the night sky.

The painting is “Moonlight Study” by Christian Friedrich Gille, 1831 .

*The motto of the state of Colorado: “Nothing without the Deity”

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July 25, 2023

How does it feel?

by chuckofish

Well, it’s the last week of July and the summer continues to rush by in a blur.

If you want to feel really old, I’ll remind you that today is the 58th anniversary of the day Bob Dylan went electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. He was 24 years old. Dylan was said to have “electrified one half of his audience, and electrocuted the other”. He didn’t return to the festival for 37 years.

Dylan took exception with the people who called him a traitor. He later said: “These are the same people that tried to pin the name Judas on me. Judas, the most hated name in human history! If you think you’ve been called a bad name, try to work your way out from under that. Yeah, and for what? For playing an electric guitar? As if that is in some kind of way equatable to betraying our Lord and delivering him up to be crucified. All those evil m-f-ckers can rot in hell.”

Today is also the birthday of the artist Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966) who lived a long, productive and successful life. He was married once and had four children. He was a Quaker. During his career, he produced almost 900 pieces of art. 

He lived in New Hampshire where he belonged to the Cornish Art Colony…

His painting Daybreak became the most popular art print of the 20th century. Supposedly one in four U.S. households owned a print of the neoclassical landscape with two nymphs in the foreground.

We also toast Walter Brennan (1894-1974) on his birthday. Brennan played more than 230 film and television roles during a career that spanned nearly five decades. He won three Academy Awards for best supporting actor and deserved several more for movies like To Have and Have Not (1944), Red River 1948)…

and My Darling Clementine (1946) which I recently watched again. He is the definitive Old Man Clanton, playing against type, menacing and scary.

So join me in toasting these three great American artists. Put down your phone. Listen to some Bob. Look at some art. Watch an old movie. You’ll be glad you did.

5 Comments
January 27, 2023

Behold, I am coming soon*

by chuckofish

One more weekend in January and then we are on to February–the year is off to a fast start.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the death of William Butler Yeats in 1939. We will toast him and read some poetry. Hard to believe “The Second Coming” was written over 100 years ago. It certainly resonates.

(The painting is by Fairfield Porter.)

*Revelation 22:12

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December 2, 2022

I am listening hard

by chuckofish

It has grown cold here in flyover country, but, so far, no snow.

But I like this poem by Billy Collins.

The painting, Snow West Village New York City, is by Anthony Butera.

4 Comments
October 19, 2022

Life has not forgotten you

by chuckofish

How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloudshadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

And don’t forget:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
    his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.

Lamentations 3: 22-23

The painting is Interior with Cello by Carl Holsoe

3 Comments
May 19, 2022

“A spirit in my feet said ‘Go,’ and I went.”*

by chuckofish

Today we toast the most famous photographer of the 19th century, Mathew Brady (1822-1896). (His birthday was yesterday.) Best known for his scenes of the Civil War, he studied under inventor Samuel F.B. Morse, who pioneered the daguerreotype technique in America. Brady opened his own studio in New York City in 1844, and photographed every U.S. president from John Q. Adams through McKinley (except Harrison, who died 31 days after taking office) and myriad public figures throughout the century.  

Wonderful faces!

When the Civil War started, he set out to use his innovative mobile studio and darkroom to document the war, enabling the taking of vivid battlefield photographs that brought home the reality of war to the public.

Thousands of war scenes were captured, as well as portraits of generals and politicians on both sides of the conflict, producing a remarkable pictorial history of the war. (Many of these photos were taken by his assistants, rather than by Brady himself.)

This short video from the Smithsonian is “age-restricted” because it includes photos of dead bodies on the battlefields of the Civil War. We did not restrict the boy (when a mere child) from spending hours pouring over the pages of the American Heritage pictorial history of the Civil War. This big book included many photos taken by Mathew Brady.

I was likewise fascinated by those photos in that book at an early age. They were definitely more graphic than anything I had ever scene, but I don’t think I was scarred by the experience. No more than I should have been anyway. Some scarring is warranted.

The boy then made many of his own drawings of battles and soldiers.

The U.S. National Archives has most of Brady’s original photographs.  You can see them:  just click here.

P.S. I did something the other day that was life-changing. I switched out the light bulbs in my bedside table lamp and the lamp on the desk in my office for ones with a higher wattage. Amazing. I can see! Praise Jesus. It’s the little things, am I right?

Also, I am feeling this: a new way to exercise. (Turn on the sound and watch the whole workout.)

Does the word ‘gentleman’ still mean anything today? Here’s why it should.

And, finally, I hear this:

*Mathew Brady

5 Comments
January 20, 2022

Uncentering our minds from ourselves

by chuckofish

The extraordinary patience of things! 

This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses

How beautiful when we first beheld it,

Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;

No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,

Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads—

Now the spoiler has come: does it care?

Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide

That swells and in time will ebb, and all

Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty

Lives in the very grain of the granite,

Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.—As for us:

We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;

We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident

As the rock and ocean that we were made from.

–“Carmel Point” by Robinson Jeffers, who died on this day in 1961





It has turned very cold here in flyover country and we are hunkering down, dusting the bookshelves and sorting our collections. 





In other news, Katiebelle got her first haircut…










…and she is setting fashion trends in toddler daycare. 





And this made me laugh…










Grace and peace to you.





(The painting at the top is by Andrew Wyeth.)

					

	

	

		

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