family | dual personalities

October 31, 2013

This and that: toil and trouble edition

by chuckofish

Halloween really crept up on me. For the first time, I forgot to send cards to my loved ones. Not that it has ever been one of my favorite holidays, but without any little children around, it holds even less appeal for moi. I mean there are people in my neighborhood who put up fake cemeteries in their front yards at the end of September! Good grief.

Since I have sworn off candy corn, what does that leave?

Well, because I love my traditions, I did dig out my Halloween candles earlier in the month.

And here’s an adorable picture of the boy in toddler cowboy mode:

In other news, earlier in the week I picked up my finished needlepoint pillow from the Sign of the Arrow.

You’re impressed, right? The ladies at the SOTA were too. Allow me to bask in the light of this accomplishment for a little bit, please.

And in honor of our departed pater, who died on this day 21 years ago, let us read Psalm 90.

LORD, thou hast been our refuge, *
from one generation to another.
Before the mountains were brought forth,
or ever the earth and the world were made, *
thou art God from everlasting, and the world without end.
Thou turnest man to destruction; *
again thou sayest, Come again, ye children of men.
For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday
when it is past, *
and as a watch in the night.
As soon as thou scatterest them they are even as a sleep, *
and fade away suddenly like the grass.
In the morning it is green, and groweth up; *
but in the evening it is cut down, dried up, and withered.
For we consume away in thy displeasure, *
and are afraid at thy wrathful indignation.
Thou hast set our misdeeds before thee, *
and our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.
For when thou are angry all our days are gone; *
we bring our years to an end, as it were a tale that is told.
The days of our age are threescore years and ten;
and though men be so strong that thy come to fourscore years, *
yet is their strength then but labor and sorrow,
so soon passeth it away, and we are gone.
So teach us to number our days, *
that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

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October 22, 2013

Happy Trails

by chuckofish

Good-by is a prayer, a ringing cry. ‘You must not go – I cannot bear to have you go! But you shall not go alone, unwatched. God will be with you. God’s hand will cover you’ and even – underneath, hidden, but it is there, incorrigible – ‘I will be with you; I will watch you – always.’ It is a mother’s good-by.

–Anne Morrow Lindbergh, North to the Orient

Well, I got up at 4:30 this morning, after a fitful night’s sleep, to drive daughter #1 to the airport. I have a long day ahead of me at the salt mine, but c’est la vie, n’est-ce pas?

We managed to fit in every favorite hometown thing she wanted to do. Yes, we went to the zoo.

We went to Grant’s Farm,

the Missouri Botanical Garden,

and squeezed in some estate-saling and outlet mall shopping.

We also ate out four times. We even went to church!

And the Cardinals won the National League pennant for the 19th time.

The Missouri Botanical Garden displays its Cardinal pride.

I am not too sad that daughter #1 has jetted back to her glamorous life in NYC, because I am going to visit her there in a few weeks for a quick weekend. Then daughter #2 will be home for Thanksgiving. In between my life will settle back into its old routine.

Thank goodness! I couldn’t keep up this pace for too much longer!

4 Comments

October 21, 2013

Flyover fun

by chuckofish

There are few places in the world more fun to hang out on a beautiful fall day than the beer garden of Grant’s Farm.

Free beer samples and giant pretzels. The best.

Daughter #1 heads back to NYC tomorrow, so I’ll have a longer post then. For now, the Cards trounced the Dodgers in game 6, so it’s on to the World Series!

Washington Post photo

Go Cards!

3 Comments

October 18, 2013

Back in the STL

by chuckofish

Daughter #1 flew into town from NYC yesterday with a full agenda of flyover activities in hand.

We’ve already checked off the zoo. And Steak ‘N Shake.

I am looking forward to a whirlwind weekend! Have a good one.

And Go Cards!

5 Comments

October 16, 2013

Keeping it all in perspective

by chuckofish

Baseball is not the only sport played in the fall. There is field hockey.

The nip in the air always brings me back to the hockey field. The crack of the neatly hit ball and all that. The girls in their green shorts. Shinguards.

Also the misery of never making the team. I played for years, but only intramural. My mother (who played varsity field hockey in high school) always told me that in a few years it wouldn’t matter. She was right, but at the time, oh my. Tragic.

I enjoyed my dual personality’s success on the hockey field vicariously. She played for four years. Superstar.

My two girls both played J.V.

The cool girls have their sleeves rolled. Some things never change.

But back to me. Wah Wah. I just had no skills. Zip. Better players than I did not make the cut. At the time I just wanted to be on the team. One of the girls in a green and gold pinney. I longed to be in the team picture.

The truth is, I am not a team player.

No, I could always relate to old Jane Eyre:

“…The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”

I am an observer. And that’s okay. It’s all about self-awareness, right?

In the words of the great Lou Holtz: “Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.” So I never made the field hockey team.

I got over it.

But when I feel that nip in the fall air…

7 Comments

October 2, 2013

Good grief, Charlie Brown

by chuckofish

The comic strip Peanuts was introduced on October 2, 1950 and ran for nearly 50 years. The final original strip ran on February 14, 2000.

According to Wikipedia, Peanuts is the most popular and influential strip in the history of the comic strip, with 17,897 strips published in all. At its peak, Peanuts ran in over 2,600 newspapers, with a readership of 355 million in 75 countries, and was translated into 21 languages. It helped to cement the four-panel gag strip as the standard in the United States, and together with its merchandise earned Schulz more than $1 billion. Reprints of the strip are still syndicated and run in almost every U.S. newspaper.

Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson wrote:

“Peanuts pretty much defines the modern comic strip, so even now it’s hard to see it with fresh eyes. The clean, minimalist drawings, the sarcastic humor, the unflinching emotional honesty, the inner thoughts of a household pet, the serious treatment of children, the wild fantasies, the merchandising on an enormous scale — in countless ways, Schulz blazed the wide trail that most every cartoonist since has tried to follow.”

As a child, I was a great fan of Peanuts. My 5th grade friends always compared me to Lucy, but I definitely related to the misfit Charlie Brown who didn’t get invited to parties and never got Valentines, and to the spiritual, but uncertain, Linus who sucked his thumb and had a blanket. So had I. I kept a scrapbook of clippings and had many books and several stuffed Peanuts character dolls. My brother once made me a balsa wood dog house for a Snoopy figure. It was painted to look like his WWI doghouse-fighter plane.

It was probably the nicest present he ever gave me.

Although a “comic” strip, I always had the sense that it was inherently sad. Life is sad and the knowledge of that is what ultimately binds us together. Clearly Charles Monroe Schulz (November 26, 1922 – February 12, 2000), even with a nickname like Sparky, understood that too.

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September 30, 2013

A sheep of thine own fold

by chuckofish

On Saturday I went to yet another funeral–this time for someone who we all felt would live forever. (Her mother died last year at 101.)

I had known Marian for years and years. She was an exceptional Churchwoman–chair of countless important diocesan committees, vestry member, head of the church school. Plus, you know, she was president of the Vassar Club and the Junior League. She was confident and organized and energetic–in a word: awesome. When I was chairman of the Musee de Noel (a monstrous fundraising effort organized by the Vassar, Smith and Bryn Mawr clubs for many years) and had no help from the hapless and helpless president of the Smith Club, Marian was my right-hand man.

She also changed my life. We were in a small prayer group together and she took me aside once and said (in so many words): “Katie, you can see the glass as half empty or see it as half full. It’s as simple as that. It’s your choice.” Really, it was one of those bolt-from-heaven-slap-in-the-face moments where you realize you have to pay attention and make a change.

And I did. I trained myself to see the glass as half full. It can be done. It is hard for us melancholy Scot types, but not impossible.

Anyway, I had to go back to my old church for her funeral, which is always a bit of a stressful undertaking.

The church was packed–picture a good turn-out on Easter–and the service, which the bulletin termed a “Requiem for the Repose of the Soul of MFC” let out all the stops. Usually the minister says the “I am the resurrection and the life saith the Lord” opening section of the “Order for the Burial of the Dead” as he processes down the aisle, but their “world-class” choir chanted it. They also sang the psalms, as well as anthems at the communion and the commendation, and so it all felt sort of like a performance. But oh well. If anyone deserved such a service, it was Marian. We got to sing three hymns and it was Rite One–always a treat nowadays.

The rector gave the homily and although I do not like him, I liked what he said. This is another reminder to pay ATTENTION, because you never know when or from whom you will hear something meaningful. What he said was quite puritan-like I thought: We are living in a botched creation. Heaven is the world as God wants it to be. But we will be raised, restored and finished. As Christians, Heaven is our destination. Alleluia.

I have to say it was good to be back at old Grace Church on Sunday. In contrast to the well-oiled machine that is my old church, it was business as usual. For example, the Intercessor prayed “For those who rest in China and for all the dead” instead of “those who rest in Christ.” Good grief–let’s remember to wear our glasses next time, honey. It made me chuckle.

Blessings to Marian who fought the good fight of faith and who rests in Christ.

2 Comments

September 27, 2013

Blast from the past: Mountain Day

by chuckofish

Yesterday was Mountain Day at my Alma Mater Smith College. Every year the President of the college announces Mountain Day without prior notice, and the student body heads to the mountains or a park when the bells are rung early in the morning signaling no classes. Students are supposed to enjoy the beautiful fall day out and about appreciating the foliage. It has been a Smith tradition since 1877.

Here is the sophomore me circa 1975 doing just that with some fellow nerds who took the call seriously. The cool kids were still in bed.

I am in the middle row on the left in the pink sweater.

We rode our bicycles out to Look Park with a picnic lunch. Of course we did.

And it really was wonderful.

Today I spoke to a fellow alum who is 15 years older than I, and she said that when the Mountain Day bells chimed she hopped on the train to New Haven. Well, she would.

In the spirit of Mountain Day, here are the lyrics to “The Mountains”, the Alma Mater of Williams College, which I hope is still sung lustily and with feeling by the gallant and the free.

The Mountains

O, proudly rise the monarchs of our mountain land,
With their kingly forest robes, to the sky,
Where Alma Mater dwelleth with her chosen band,
And the peaceful river floweth gently by.

CHORUS
The mountains! the mountains! we greet them with a song,
Whose echoes rebounding their woodland heights along,
Shall mingle with anthems that winds and fountains sing.
Till hill and valley gaily, gaily ring.

Beneath their peaceful shadows may old Williams stand,
Till suns and mountains nevermore shall be,
The glory and the honor of our mountain land,
And the dwelling of the gallant and the free.

–Written by Washington Gladden, class of 1859

4 Comments

September 23, 2013

That old September feeling

by chuckofish

“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.”

― George Eliot

How was your weekend? Mine was very low-key. The weather was lovely. I went estate sale-ing but actually found something at one of my favorite antique malls.

I have been looking for a small desk or work table for some time now. I found a nice old slant-top desk (and a chair) for a wonderful price and snatched them up. I had to go home and get our trusty Subaru to transport it and then asked the boy to come over and get it out of the Subaru and upstairs. He, as usual, was more than willing to do so. I sure do appreciate his man-strength and his good humor.

He also hung up a very large watercolor that I got at the Autumn Gallery Auction at our local auction house last week. It was their quarterly fancy auction as opposed to the monthly ones I usually go to. Sometimes I’ll just throw in a lowball silent bid to see what will happen and sometimes I win. Very exciting.

We moved some things around and that is always fun.

I went to church on Sunday (five weeks in a row!) and we celebrated St. Matthew’s Day and had our annual picnic. It was a beautiful sunny day–perfect for outdoor dining, bouncy houses and bar-b-que.

After doing some house cleaning and laundry, we wound down the day with these:

A perfect start to fall!

*The pictures from the church picnic are from the Grace church Facebook page.

7 Comments

September 16, 2013

Weekend update

by chuckofish

Oh fall weekends! The heat finally broke here last Thursday and the temperatures plunged to where they really should be. Sweet relief.

On Saturday I decided to throw away my list of estate sales and instead I walked downtown to view our flyover town’s annual Greentree Parade. (Please forgive my iPhone pictures!)

Motorcycle cops ~~showing off~~ skillfully driving in circles opened up the parade.

They were followed by the High School band and cheerleaders,

motley groups of scouts,

local vendors,

Yes, that’s a giant bison he’s pulling!

bagpipers,

a giant motorized shopping cart,

and various groups of equestrians,

In addition, of course, the elementary schools and middle schools in town all had floats. A lot of churches also participated as well. The Methodist church always has the best entry and this year was no different with their own super-cool rockin’ Christian band blasting their live music.

Seriously, I always want to join their church after seeing them rock by. But my own Grace Church tries so hard—you have to love them despite the fact that they might as well hang a banner that says, “Yes, we’re Episcopalian nerds–join us!” We had music too, but we piped in hymns like “Let Us Gather at the River,” because we always stick to the yearly theme—this year it was “The Wild, wild West”. At least for our trouble we were awarded 1st place in the category of theme interpretation!

I took this picture on Sunday morning outside our church where it was proudly parked.

I did not take a picture of our float at the parade because I was so distracted by this friendly Episcopalian who was trotting around very much in character (“Howdy, Ma’am”).

(I found this better picture–with cacti–on our church website)

He handed out these invitations.

Real wooden crosses handmade in Bethlehem!

We may be a small congregation, but we are always classy! (No candy or dog treats for us.)

As if all this local excitement wasn’t enough, the boy and his bride invited us to go to the Cardinals game with them that evening.

Our seats were in the seventh row behind the home dugout–how perfect is that? Besides seeing the game at a great vantage point and the players up close and personal, we had many opportunities to see this guy.