Well, (almost) the whole fam made it to New York for the wedding and back again. Tune in tomorrow for a full recap. In the meantime, be sure to check out DN’s blogpost from Friday in case you missed it!
*Bryan Ferry, 1985
Well, the first sleepover at Mamu and Pappy’s house is in the books.
Since the wee twins are not quite old enough to be introduced to our classic film favorites in their entirety, daughter #1 and I had the genius idea that we would introduce them to some favorite movie dance/song sequences from movie musicals. Their favorite was “Make ‘Em Laugh” from Singin’ in the Rain (1952):
Who can blame them?
We also watched the square dance/barn-raising scene from Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (1954), “Everything’s Up-to-Date in Kansas City” from Oklahoma! (1955), “Getting to Know You” from The King and I (1956), and the rehearsal scene from Viva Las Vegas (1964). When we watched “Do Re Mi” from The Sound of Music (1965) Lottie said, “They keep saying my name!”–Do re mi fa so la ti do! She was not wrong.
We also showed them the Moses parting the Red Sea sequence from The Ten Commandments (1956) because they love The Prince of Egypt (1998). They thought it was pretty cool, but were non-plussed to see the Pharaoh was also the King of Siam. Somehow this does not compute.
Anyway, all parties lived through the night.
*”Make ‘Em Laugh” by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown
Here is a vintage photo of my DP (on top) and me (middle, right) with our cousins at their house on Lake Damariscotta in Maine, circa 1964. I don’t know where my brother is–off fishing with Bunker? Our Uncle George is in the back, holding up the pyramid. We had super fun that summer as you can imagine.
Indeed, I am thinking of those cool Maine breezes as we bear up through a mid-summer heat wave in flyover country. Heat waves are nothing out of the ordinary here–despite what HC may say–but they are no fun. In the summer of 1936, for instance, St. Louis endured an unbroken 37-day stretch of 100-degree–plus temperatures. I remember one old lady from my flyover institute telling me how in the 1930s they would escape the heat of their un-airconditioned city apartment by sleeping in Forest Park! The whole family. It was a thing people did (and were allowed to do). As a child, she had great fun. Maybe not as much fun as a lake house in Maine, but fun.
Fun is what you make it after all. So keep a merry heart and be thankful for air-conditioning. Pray for the electric grid.
A merry heart does good, like medicine,
But a broken spirit dries the bones.
(Proverbs 17:22)
In July we celebrate love 😍 with several anniversaries. Besides my dear DP’s, we remember daughter #2 and DN…
and daughter #3 and the boy.
Daughter #3 and the boy are celebrating their 11th anniversary tomorrow night by going to the St. Louis City soccer game at the new Centene Stadium downtown. The twins are coming over to our house for a first-time-ever sleepover, so keep the OM and me in your prayers. Thankfully, daughter #1 and Mr. Smith will be supporting us in this endeavor. Lottie has already warned me that “You know, I get up very early.” I told her, “Well, you know, I get up pretty early too.” I think we’ll be okay.
Yesterday the boy brought the wee laddie to hang out at my house while Lottie had a play date with her friend Sadie. He put a new battery in the Power Wheels Raptor and gave it some added umph, but not as much as he had hoped.
The bud is not doing wheelies, although he did attempt a Toyko drift…
Enjoy your Wednesday. Rejoice that the Lord’s mercies are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.
*Psalm 127:1
I thought we were going to have a quiet weekend because the boy and his family were in Kansas City, but we had visitors Sunday night–my brother and his son, who passed through our flyover town on their way to Arizona where Foster is moving. Lots of excitement as you can imagine. Cousins…
…and oldsters…
Further excitement when our resident OT professor from Covenant Seminary gave the sermon on Sunday–all about the Assyrians coming down like a wolf on the fold, i.e. 2 Kings 19:35-37. My DP would have really enjoyed it. We sang “It Is Well With My Soul” and I missed the twins, because they would have loved the fact that they know it and would have sung with gusto.
And back in Maryland daughter #2 beat the heat with her little ones.
(And the OM enjoyed lots of quality time with Mr. Smith.)
A good weekend all around–and no storms!
*Lord Byron
It’s Wednesday, so let’s all just take a moment to be thankful:
O MY GOD,
Thou fairest, greatest, first of all objects,
my heart admires, adores, loves thee,
for my little vessel is as full as it can be,
and I would pour out all that fullness before thee
in ceaseless flow.
When I think upon and converse with thee
ten thousand delightful thoughts spring up,
ten thousand sources of pleasure are unsealed,
ten thousand refreshing joys spread over my heart,
crowding into every moment of happiness.
I bless thee for the soul thou hast created,
for adorning it, sanctifying it,
though it is fixed in barren soil;
for the body thou hast given me,
for preserving its strength and vigour,
for providing senses to enjoy delights,
for the ease and freedom of my limbs,
for hands, eyes, ears that do thy bidding;
for thy royal bounty providing my daily support,
for a full table and overflowing cup,
for appetite, taste, sweetness,
for social joys of relatives and friends,
for ability to serve others,
for a heart that feels sorrows and necessities,
for a mind to care for my fellow-men,
for opportunities of spreading happiness around,
for loved ones in the joys of heaven,
for my own expectation of seeing thee clearly.
I love thee above the powers of language
to express,
for what thou art to thy creatures.
Increase my love, O my God, through time
and eternity.
(“Praise and Thanksgiving” from The Valley of Vision, the Puritan prayer book)
And that said, it seems appropriate to read this from Willa Cather’s My Antonia.
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!
July is turning out to be a busier month than anticipated. We went to an actual 4th of July party last week and to a birthday party for an old friend.
Are people finally getting back in the swing of things post-COVID? I hope so. The OM is always reluctant to go anywhere, preferring to stay home, but then he has fun, even with a bunch of oldsters. I am the same way. (I keep forgetting that I am an old lady.) But it is good to get out and about.
The boy brought the wee twins over to frolic in the afternoon yesterday. The driveway had just been sealed, so we had to frolic inside, but that was fun too.
The twins were very excited that I gave them that old globe. They know an impressive array of countries and states (and state capitols).
I heard all about their trip. It sounded wonderful–they even had to get out of the water once when there was a shark sighting!
I had lunch with some old flyover institute friends and we talked treason…and
So we’ll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news, and we’ll talk with them too—
Who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out—
And take upon ’s the mystery of things,
As if we were God’s spies. And we’ll wear out,
In a walled prison, packs and sects of great ones
That ebb and flow by th’ moon.
That’s as good a plan as any. Hang in there with me. Keep reading Shakespeare.
I did the flowers for church this weekend and they were a rather humble offering–Hydrangeas–not too inspiring.
C’est la vie. Meanwhile the summer is flying by.
And just when you think the Anglican Church cannot dig itself any deeper into its hole, another Archbishop says something really, really stupid. As usual, Ann comments better than I am able.
Funnily enough our sermon this Sunday was all about God as our Father, since we are still working our way through Hosea: When Israel was a child, I loved him (Hosea 11:1). As J.I. Packer wrote, “‘Father’ is the Christian word for God. Our understanding of Christianity cannot be better than our grasp of adoption.”
“Christians don’t always see how disbelief in one thing affects belief in another.” This article talks about the ripple effects of not believing in hell.
And thanks to Tim Challies for this great snippet from De Witt Talmage (1832-1902). “In many of the churches of Christ in our day, the music is simply a mockery.” As he says, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”
The boy and his petite famille made it back safely from South Carolina and we look forward to hearing all about it soon!
Have a good Monday!
*Romans 1:22-25
Here’s a reminder that knowing your past will guide your future.
“…[W]e are probably the first generation in human history that doesn’t really know the communities from which we come. I can’t name any of my eight great-grandparents. (Perhaps you can, but I would ask, respectfully, what do you know about them?) As Alasdair MacIntyre has famously argued, we speak of justice with verve and passion but are unlikely to know what justice really means or from whom we inherit the very concept. We’re so eager to throw off the shackles of our received traditions that we’ve wholeheartedly loosed our roots from the loyal land and bound ourselves instead to that great banality of modern self-actualization, “you do you.”
I do know the names of my eight great-grandparents, although I admit I don’t know much about my great-grandmother Isabel Stanley Sargent’s line. I only know she was from Maine and that she left her husband and two children and fled to Chicago. She was a shocking skeleton in the family closet, but undoubtedly there was a lot more to that story. I have a fair knowledge of the rest of my great-grandparents compared, I suppose, to my contemporaries.
Since I retired I have had it in the back of my mind to “organize” all the genealogy notes and notebooks I have stored in my office. I tell myself I should write some kind of narrative account of our family. I know from experience researching that there is very little written down out there in the way of personal history and a lot of it is full of mistakes anyway. Nevertheless, anything written down and preserved is good, if not always helpful. I think of my mother’s cousin Jane who wrote “a family history…at the request of her brother” for the “elucidation of our children and grandchildren.” A noble effort it was, which my mother and her sister Susanne tore apart and corrected and generally ridiculed. True, Jane made a few undeserved snarky comments about their mother, but beyond that and the multiple mistakes, it is still a valuable resource (with pictures).
So we shall see if I can get started. Starting is always the hard part.
Meanwhile my grandkids celebrated the 4th in patriotic red-white-and-blue style…
Cuties.
*The ODWM pictured is Joseph Warren Sargent, my great-great grandfather.
dual personalities 