dual personalities

Tag: birthdays

November 29, 2023

For all the saints

by chuckofish

Well, November has flown by, hasn’t it? The years too…On Monday I had lunch with my old admin and a former chair of our institute board. We had a lovely, laughter-filled lunch. Time passes and things inevitably change, but old friends remain.

Then yesterday I went to the funeral of a man who went to my former church. He went on the church trip to the Holy Land with me in 2018. I didn’t know him well, but I admired him a lot–the kind of fine, young man who goes to church every week with his family and ushers and serves where needed. Unfortunately I had written the time down incorrectly on my calendar and I was an hour late and came in for the tail end of communion and the commendation. I was so chagrined. But c’est la vie. It was nice to see some familiar faces, who all look much older (as do I) now. And I was reminded, even in the ten minutes I was there, how happy I am to be a Presbyterian. In my church we would have blown the roof off singing “For All the Saints”! This congregation acted like they didn’t know what singing is.

Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend your servant Eric. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. Receive him into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. Amen. (BCP)

Let us take note that today is the birthday of C.S. Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963). Here’s an interesting article on his last days by Trevin Wax. I am thinking of signing up for the Hillsdale College online course on Lewis. I really enjoyed my Hillsdale course on supply-side economics. I learned a lot and did well on all my quizzes, but I have to admit, I did not pass my final. (J’ai profondément honteuse.) I suppose I could take it again, but by now you can imagine I have forgotten everything except the very basic concepts. Taxes bad, free trade good! Well, onward to C.S. Lewis!

And we celebrated the boy’s birthday with all the bells and whistles.

God bless us everyone.

3 Comments
November 28, 2023

Happy birthday, brown-eyed handsome man

by chuckofish

Today is the boy’s birthday! We will celebrate tonight with tortellini and cake after he has put in a long day at the salt mine. We didn’t see much of him over the holidays because he was working very hard; there was no day off for him on Black Friday! But he was in church on Sunday, singing alongside me and, as you know, that brings me great joy.

Adult children are a real blessing and I am truly grateful for mine.

2-3 the count with nobody on
He hit a high fly into the stands
Roundin’ third, he was headed for home
It was a brown-eyed handsome man that won the game
It was a brown-eyed handsome man.
(Chuck Berry)

My cup runneth over as usual.

4 Comments
October 5, 2023

I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart

by chuckofish

Today we celebrate the birthday of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)–here are 10 things you should know about him.

“Men have a great deal of pleasure in human knowledge, in studies of natural things; but this is nothing to that joy which arises from divine light shining into the soul. This spiritual light is the dawning of the light of glory in the heart. There is nothing so powerful as this to support persons in affliction, and to give the mind peace and brightness in this stormy and dark world. This knowledge will wean from the world, and raise the inclination to heavenly things. It will turn the heart to God as the fountain of good, and to choose him for the only portion. This light, and this only, will bring the soul to a saving close with Christ. It conforms the heart to the gospel, mortifies its enmity and opposition against the scheme of salvation therein revealed: it causes the heart to embrace the joyful tidings, and entirely to adhere to, and acquiesce in the revelation of Christ as our Savior.”
― Jonathan Edwards

So live with all your might, never suffer the least motions of anger to irrational beings, tell the truth, do your duty willingly and cheerfully, and…

2 Comments
September 11, 2023

“But meantime let me whoop it up”*

by chuckofish

Today is daughter #1’s birthday. She was born during a humdinger of a thunderstorm and a low pressure system that caused the water of every pregnant woman in St. Louis County to break. Seriously, they were lined up in the hallway at St. Luke’s. She was two weeks early, but that wasn’t a big deal since back then Moms stayed at the hospital for a week anyway–at least Dr. Gulick’s patients did. I was never in the hallway either and I had a private room, so no complaints from this peanut gallery.

This year we celebrated her birthday on Sunday in our usual style…

…with tacos and Tippin’s pie.

Because daughter #1, the OM and I went to our favorite winery on Saturday to celebrate her birthday and listen to the musical stylings of Bryan Toben…

…we missed the wee laddie’s first soccer game (there are 9 more), but the boy, who is also one of the coaches, took lots of good pictures.

I looked for, but could not find, any pictures of the boy at the same age playing soccer–but he looked just like this.

Sunrise, sunset.

In other news, the twins started Sunday School with the big kids (1st grade!) so we are all going to Sunday School at 10:00 am before the 11:00 am service. This is quite a departure from the way we were used to doing it in the Episcopal Church where Sunday School was just a short business during the sermon and communion. Besides all the kids’ classes, there are six adult classes to choose from–the boy and I attended the class on “Modern Ethical Topics”. I was impressed.

So onward and upward. This will be a busy week. May the God of love and peace be with you.

*Robert W. Service, “Birthday“

4 Comments
July 17, 2023

Come weary saints

by chuckofish

How was your weekend? I redeemed a gift card from Mother’s Day and had an hour-long spa pedicure, which had me walking on air for quite some time. Wow.

We had a guest preacher in church and he preached on Daniel 6–the lion’s den! I love Daniel so I was pleased. We need reminders of heroes like Daniel to keep us on track. We also had interesting musical accompaniment to all our hymns–a harmonica. Not the usual for A Mighty Fortress is Our God, but not bad. The OM and I stayed for a luncheon with our “fold” after the service. They acknowledged his birthday (today) but refrained from singing Happy Birthday.

We celebrated the OM’s birthday later on Sunday when everyone came over for a barbecue and party. (Even Mr. Smith)

Good times…and presents!

We watched McClintock! (1963), one of my favorite movies extolling the Patriarchy. It is loosely based on The Taming of the Shrew. (And Maureen O’Hara is one helluva shrew.) It has a smart script which moves along at a brisk clip. I enjoyed it thoroughly. It has nothing good to say about bureaucrats, the government or college boys, but is very sympathetic to Native Americans and free enterprise.

Anyway, when you have had enough of our modern day BS, I recommend a good dose of John Wayne at his most John Wayne-ish. “I know, I know. I’m gonna use good judgement. I haven’t lost my temper in forty years, but pilgrim you caused a lot of trouble this morning might have got somebody killed. Somebody oughta belt you in the mouth but I won’t, I wont…the hell I won’t.“

In other news baby Ida got her first taste of solid food…

It was a big hit.

And ol’ Ricky Skaggs is nominated for several Dove Awards this year, including this song which is a favorite of mine…

…as well as this banger version of Go Tell It on the Mountain with Crowder (for a little Christmas in July):

Have a good week!

7 Comments
June 5, 2023

It is hotter than the devil’s hootchie-cootchie out here

by chuckofish

Yes, it is full-on summer here in flyover country–hot and humid–and you better not walk barefoot on your asphalt driveway, that’s for sure. Heavy sigh. Well, we had a nice long spring and it was great while it lasted.

We kept a low profile this weekend, but Katie turned three in style back in Maryland.

She celebrated appropriately. (She is wearing her favorite vintage nightie, which my mother made for daughter #1/Aunt Mary about 36 years ago.)

Aunt Mary made her a tote bag with Pete the Cat fabric she found at Joann’s!

She immediately filled it up with books–a girl after our own hearts. Love the matching bow!

And, of course, there was cake!

I stayed after church on Sunday to go to a meeting for VBS volunteers–because, yes, I am once again doing my part, even after I said never again last year. This year I am on my own with 14 4th/5th graders! Am I crazy? Yes, yes I am. I will never be able to remember their names, much less keep track of them. I am praying for a teenage helper to step up to the plate.

I got a new t-shirt, since I threw mine away last year thinking I would never need it again. Well, I have a week to psych myself up for this. Please pray for me.

Enjoy your Monday!

4 Comments
May 31, 2023

I contain multitudes

by chuckofish

It is the last day of May and the Christmas Cactus is blooming again!

It is also Walt Whitman’s birthday! We will toast him and all the birthdays we have celebrated in May.

We do not all contain multitudes. Some people, I am told, do not even have/are incapable of having an inner monologue. (This is science.) I toast those who do.

In other news, in reading through the Bible, I have found several references to bears, which I found interesting. I was unaware that there even were bears in the Ancient Middle East. But I guess there were. Here is an interesting article about a difficult passage. Why did God send bears to attack a group of boys?

And here is John Piper on fighting the fears of old age, which, believe me, I am fighting. He never pulls any punches:

Your outward sufficiency is getting smaller, right? You are weakening. Your body is weakening, your eyes are weakening, your ears are weakening, your memory is weakening, and everything is wasting away. That’s what it means in this age to die. We all will die if Jesus doesn’t come, to which we say, “Come, Lord Jesus.”

But I believe the promise of 2 Corinthians 9:8 is that every good work that you are expected to do by God, you will have the resources to do it — the mental resources, the physical resources, the affectional resources, the financial resources. If you don’t have the resources to do it, he doesn’t expect you to do it.”

Well, take time to smell the flowers today, consider the cosmos, talk to the “Listener up there!” and have a snack.

4 Comments
May 24, 2023

Watching the river flow

by chuckofish

Today we toast Bob Dylan on his 82nd birthday! Huzzah!

Recently, when I awaken in the middle of the night and can’t go back to sleep, I have been re-reading Chronicles, Volume I by BD. He is one of the best-read guys you could know. He never wasted his free time in his youth, but read whatever was available on the bookshelves of whoever’s apartment he was crashing in. And he remembered what he read.

I read the biography of Thaddeus Stevens, the radical Republican. He lived in the early part of the 1800s and was quite a character. He’s from Gettysburg and he’s got a clubfoot like Byron. He grew up poor, made a fortune and from then on championed the weak and any other group who wasn’t able to fight equally. Stevens had a grim sense of humor, a sharp tongue and a white-hot hatred for the bloated aristocrats of his day. He wanted to confiscate the land of the slaveholding elite, once referred to a colleague on the floor of the chamber as “slinking in his own slime.” …He got right in there, called his enemies a “feeble band of lowly reptiles who shun the light and who lurked in their own dens.” Stevens was hard to forget. He made a big impression on me, was inspiring. Him and Teddy Roosevelt, maybe the strongest U.S. president ever. I read about Teddy, too. He was a cattle rancher and a crime buster, had to be restrained from declaring war on California–had a big run in with J.P. Morgan, a deity figure who owned most of the United States at the time. Roosevelt backed him down and threatened to throw him in jail.

Good stuff. So read some history, some poetry, and listen to some BD today: pick a good one.

Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an Italian poet 
From the thirteenth century
And every one of them words rang true
And glowed like burnin' coal
Pourin' off of every page
Like it was written in my soul
4 Comments
May 17, 2023

Mid-week movies

by chuckofish

We have had a lot of rain in the past few days. And, not surprisingly, there has been flooding near here…

(Photo of the Cedar Creek Lodge Apartments parking lot in South County courtesy of Fox2)

Anyway, May is a month for birthdays and today we toast Dennis Hopper (1936-2010), who had quite a career in Hollywood as a supporting actor in many films. He was also known as a notoriously difficult actor and his career nearly ended early on because of his reputation. Had it not been for John Wayne hiring him to appear in The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), Hopper acknowledged years later, it would have ended.

During the filming of True Grit (1969)–released the same year as Easy Rider–he got to know the Duke quite well. Perhaps this explains in part how he became a Republican in later years, having given up drugs and Rock ‘n Roll.

It is also the birthday of Bob Saget (1956-2022) who died last year under somewhat mysterious circumstances in a hotel. It turns out he fell and hit his head and died in his sleep. He never made any noteworthy movies, but he was the “raddest, baddest dad a kid ever had” on Full House (1987-1995). He was no Ward Cleaver, but he was pretty rad.

Yesterday was the birthday of actors Henry Fonda (1905-1982) and Harry Carey, Jr. (1920-2012) both of whom made quite a few movies with John Ford, any of which would be worth watching tonight. Harry is also the OM’s doppelgänger.

And lest we forget, today is also the 80th anniversary of the Dam Buster raids in WWII in 1943. It might be time to watch The Dam Busters (1955) again.

So we have quite a few toasts to make and lots of good movie options to consider watching. Thanks be to God.

2 Comments
April 26, 2023

Just another Wednesday–more things of minor consequence

by chuckofish

Today we toast Kevin James and Channing Tatum on their birthdays!

In case you were wondering, they did actually make a movie together. The Dilemma (2011) directed by Ron Howard is not a great movie, but you might want to give it a whirl. I am always in the mood for these two.

Today is also the anniversary of the day in 1865 when John Wilkes Booth was surrounded in a barn in Maryland and killed. And, hey, Mary Chapin Carpenter wrote a song about it.

Meanwhile Ida is crushing tummy time…

And here’s a poem: “Days” by Billy Collins–

Just another Wednesday–make it a good one.

3 Comments