Henry David THoreau | dual personalities

June 18, 2018

“See! the streams of living waters, springing from eternal love”*

by chuckofish

It’s tiger lily time in flyover country. They are everywhere! I do love these heat-loving beauties. And, boy, this weekend was a hot one!

I went to three estate sales (no luck) and did a little shopping of the home-store variety. I went to church. Other than that, it was strictly inside for me this weekend: I yakked on the phone and worked on some inside projects. It warmed my heart that daughter #1 in Mid-MO went estate-saleing and was more successful than I.

Screen Shot 2018-06-17 at 12.54.18 PM.png

I finished reading The Bondwoman’s Narrative, a 19th century novel by Hannah Craft and possibly the first novel written by an African-American woman. (Daughter #2 had left it at home for me.) In 2013 Crafts’ identity was documented as Hannah Bond, an enslaved African-American woman on the plantation of John Wheeler and his wife Ellen in Murfreeboro, North Carolina. Bond served there as a lady’s maid to Ellen Wheeler, and escaped about 1857, settling finally in New Jersey. Here’s a review of this very interesting and well-written book by the great Hilary Mantel in the London Review of Books.

I should mention that yesterday, besides being Father’s Day, was also Bunker Hill Day, which commemorates the battle of Bunker Hill on June 17. It is also the birthday of our maternal grandfather, who was always known as Bunker because he was born on Bunker Hill Day in 1900.

Here’s an appropriate word from old Henry David Thoreau in honor of Bunker:

The fishermen sit by their damp fire of rotten pine wood, so wet and chilly that even smoke in their eyes is a kind of comfort. There they sit, ever and anon scanning their reels to see if any have fallen, and, if not catching many fish, still getting what they went for, though they may not be aware of it, i.e. a wilder experience than the town affords.

(December 26, 1856)

Screen Shot 2018-06-17 at 3.52.14 PM.png

Today is a busy day for me and I have to pick up the wee babes and their parents at the airport tonight at 9:00 pm–way past my bedtime!

Screen Shot 2018-06-17 at 5.45.16 PM.png

All in a day’s work.

Have a good one.

*Hymn 522, John Newton; the painting is by N.C. Wyeth, “Thoreau Fishing”

5 Comments

March 23, 2018

“Sit down, you’re rocking the boat”*

by chuckofish

Funny story: when I was returning from my trip east on Tuesday, my carryon bag was detained when it went through security at BWI. I had to wait while another TSA agent came over to check things out. He said, “It looks like you have a book in there.”

“Yes,” I said, thinking, is a book a problem?

He opened up my suitcase and rooted around until he found the 640-page Henry David Thoreau: A Life, which daughter #2 had given me in my welcome goodie bag of treats. He whiffled through the pages, but didn’t come up with anything, so he put it back inside and we closed up the bag.

Then he said, “Do you mind if I ask you what that book is about?”

“It’s the new biography of Thoreau,” I said. “What do you think he’d make of all this?” I chuckled.

He chuckled too, but he had no idea what I was talking about.

“I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.” (Civil Disobedience)

That’s what I thought.

Well, this weekend will be a busy one. Carla and I are hosting a bridal shower at my house for our friend Becky’s future daughter-in-law. Daughter #1 is coming into town to make the champagne punch!

Can’t wait to see the wee babes–it’s been two weeks!

And can you believe it, Sunday is Palm Sunday! Time for the Passion story and the Grace Church showcase of lay reader stars. It is also time to catch up with some Lenten movie fare. Indeed, it may be time to dust off Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth (1977) and get down to business. Holy Week is upon us.

*Nicely-Nicely in Guys and Dolls

3 Comments

November 23, 2017

Love your life

by chuckofish

Tuesday when I was driving home it happened to be just the right time to experience those few moments known as “the Golden Hour” –when the sun is just at the point on the horizon that the light is redder and softer than usual. At this time of year, it hits the golden and orange leaves of the trees and turns them into molten gold.

Anyway, I was trying to stay on the road while looking east at the trees and not burst into tears. Does this happen to you? Happily I made it safely to the grocery store where I then got a look at an amazing sunset right there in the parking lot. The horizon was a blazing orange under a ceiling of clouds. Amazing!

Then I went in and bought my food. The most incredible stuff goes on around us all the time!

I have quoted this before, but it bears repeating:

“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.”
―Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Happy Thanksgiving!

(The painting is by Albert Bierstadt, 1886)

2 Comments

October 25, 2017

Deep thoughts for Wednesday

by chuckofish

Today is St. Crispin’s Day and the 602nd anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt!

It is also two months until Christmas! Have you started planning for Christmas?

I have–just barely. But I have been thinking about it. This year, in addition to daughter #2 visiting, we will have her husband staying with us. Zut alors! We will also have grandchildren present for the first time. (Last year they were in the NICU.) And daughter #1 will be driving in from central MO, not jetting in from NYC, praying for good weather. Times change faster than the blink of an eye.

This all got me thinking about the passing of time, which sometimes can be a bit depressing. So here are a few thoughts to get you thinking as well.

“This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not health, but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished, but it is going on, this is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.”
―Martin Luther

“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.”
―Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“There is a time in the life of every boy when he for the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood. The boy is walking through the street of his town. He is thinking of the future and of the figure he will cut in the world. Ambitions and regrets awake within him. Suddenly something happens; he stops under a tree and waits as for a voice calling his name. Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness; the voices outside of himself whisper a message concerning the limitations of life. From being quite sure of himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. If he be an imaginative boy a door is torn open and for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing, as though they marched in procession before him, the countless figures of men who before his time have come out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives and again disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistication has come to the boy. With a little gasp he sees himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind through the streets of his village. He knows that in spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must live and die in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a thing destined like corn to wilt in the sun.”
―Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio

Do you see yourself as a leaf blown by the wind or someone on the road and growing in righteousness? Or are you fishing and gazing at the sandy bottom?

697480d33b5d03e22f9581ce0d75af52--calvin-hobbes-calvin-and-hobbes-tattoo.jpg

Discuss among yourselves.

3 Comments

October 12, 2017

Life is real! Life is earnest!

by chuckofish

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

   Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

   And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

   And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

   Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

   Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each to-morrow

   Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

   And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

   Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,

   In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

   Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!

   Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act,— act in the living Present!

   Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us

   We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

   Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

   Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

   Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

   With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

   Learn to labor and to wait.

–Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, A Psalm of Life

The fall season always brings me back to New England–not literally, but in my imagination–and a poem by Longfellow seems appropriate. It is good to read these old poems, so out of fashion these days, but full of good stuff!

I would like to join the throngs of leaf-peepers, but I will have to be satisfied with flyover landscapes this year. Here are a few paintings of New England landscapes to whet the whistle, so to speak.

c217cb0913386913186f3745b525b596--people-art-landscape-art

Eric Sloane

Winslow Homer

ori_333-34264-767917-Robert-Shaw-Wesson-painting-of-Vermont-farm-in-autumn-picture2

Robert Wesson

Alden Bryan, 1955

Luigi Lucioni, Village of Stowe, 1931

And here’s a little Thoreau to wind things up:

Minott is, perhaps, the most poetical farmer–who most realizes to me the poetry of the farmer’s life–that I know. He does nothing with haste and drudgery, but as if he loved it. He makes the most of his labor, and takes infinite satisfaction in every part of it. He is not looking forward to the sale of his crops or any pecuniary profit, but he is paid by the constant satisfaction which his labor yields him.

—A Writer’s Journal

And read this from the Big Surprise file…

6 Comments

July 24, 2017

“I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.”*

by chuckofish

Well, I’m back from my whirlwind weekend in New York. We arrived on Friday around noon, and while the OM napped, daughter #1 and I hiked through Central Park and visited a few of our favorite UWS spots. Then we cleaned up and went to happy hour, dinner and the wonderful Morgan Library.

where we saw the Thoreau exhibit.

The next day we had breakfast with daughter #1 who then went off to work and we headed to the Guggenheim Museum.

The building is quite amazing and the collections it houses are fun to see although not really my thing. But I did finally get to see some wonderful Joseph Cornell shadow boxes. (He has always fascinated me.)

Then we set off to Long Island for the Big Wedding at Oheka Castle.

1200x1200_1386870737947-ohekacastle130buildresizedwe.jpg Yes, that Oheka Castle. I think Peta and Maks were married there…but believe you me, their wedding didn’t have anything on this one.

Well, we headed home on Sunday and it sure was nice to get back to our flyover home. I can only take so much of cab and Uber rides and busy, busy streets and all. those. people!

*H.D. Thoreau,Walden

5 Comments

March 9, 2017

Food for thought

by chuckofish

130322_FRESCA_wallace_03.jpg.CROP.article568-large.jpg

How meanly and miserably we live for the most part! We escape fate continually by the skin of our teeth, as the saying is. We are practically desperate. But as any man, in respect to material wealth, aims to become independent or wealthy, so, in respect to our spirits and imagination, we should have some spare capital and superfluous vigor, have some margin and leeway in which to move. What kind of gift is life unless we have spirits to enjoy it and taste its true flavor? if, in respect to spirits, we are to be forever cramped and in debt?

–Henry David Thoreau, Journals

As for [William] Blake’s happiness–a man who knew him said: “If asked whether I ever knew among the intellectual, a happy man, Blake would be the only one who would immediately occur to me.”

And yet this creative power in Blake did not come from ambition. …He burned most of his own work. Because he said, “I should be sorry if I had any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a man has is so much detracted from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing for profit. I wish to live for art. I want nothing whatever. I am quite happy.”

…He did not mind death in the least. He said that to him it was just like going into another room. On the day of his death he composed songs to his Maker and sang them for his wife to hear. Just before he died his countenance became fair, his eyes brightened and he burst into singing of the things he saw in heaven. ”

–Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write

In the empty night hours I can still walk through the streets. Dawn may surprise me on a bench in Garay Park, thinking (trying to think) of the passage in the Asrar Nama where it says that the Zahir is the shadow of the Rose and the Rending of the Veil. I associate that saying with this bit of information: In order to lose themselves in God, the Sufis recite their own names, or the ninety-nine divine names, until they become meaningless. I long to travel that path. Perhaps I shall conclude by wearing away the Zahir simply through thinking of it again and again. Perhaps behind the coin I shall find God.

–Jorge Luis Borges, The Zahir

Discuss among yourselves.

(The photo is of Lew Wallace)

3 Comments

January 18, 2017

Against the arrows of the coming sun

by chuckofish

Within the circuit of this plodding life
There enter moments of an azure hue,
Untarnished fair as is the violet
Or anemone, when the spring stew them
By some meandering rivulet, which make
The best philosophy untrue that aims
But to console man for his grievences.
I have remembered when the winter came,
High in my chamber in the frosty nights,
When in the still light of the cheerful moon,
On the every twig and rail and jutting spout,
The icy spears were adding to their length
Against the arrows of the coming sun,
How in the shimmering noon of winter past
Some unrecorded beam slanted across
The upland pastures where the Johnwort grew;
Or heard, amid the verdure of my mind,
The bee’s long smothered hum, on the blue flag
Loitering amidst the mead; or busy rill,
Which now through all its course stands still and dumb
Its own memorial, – purling at its play
Along the slopes, and through the meadows next,
Until its youthful sound was hushed at last
In the staid current of the lowland stream;
Or seen the furrows shine but late upturned,
And where the fieldfare followed in the rear,
When all the fields around lay bound and hoar
Beneath a thick integument of snow.
So by God’s cheap economy made rich
To go upon my winter’s task again.

–Henry David Thoreau

Flyover photos via KMOV.com

2 Comments

August 23, 2016

We amuse ourselves

by chuckofish

I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, over those who were obliged to look abroad for amusement, to society and the theatre, that my life itself was become my amusement and never ceased to be novel. It was a drama of many scenes and without an end. If we were always, indeed, getting our living, and regulating our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, we should never be troubled with ennui. Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour. Housework was a pleasant pastime. When my floor was dirty, I rose early, and, setting all my furniture out of doors on the grass, bed and bedstead making but one budget, dashed water on the floor, and sprinkled white sand from the pond on it, and then with a broom scrubbed it clean and white; and by the time the villagers had broken their fast the morning sun had dried my house sufficiently to allow me to move in again, and my meditations were almost uninterrupted. It was pleasant to see my whole household effects out on the grass, making a little pile like a gypsy’s pack, and my three-legged table, from which I did not remove the books and pen and ink, standing amid the pines and hickories. They seemed glad to get out themselves, and as if unwilling to be brought in. I was sometimes tempted to stretch an awning over them and take my seat there. It was worth the while to see the sun shine on these things, and hear the free wind blow on them; so much more interesting most familiar objects look out of doors than in the house. A bird sits on the next bough, life-everlasting grows under the table, and blackberry vines run round its legs; pine cones, chestnut burs, and strawberry leaves are strewn about. It looked as if this was the way these forms came to be transferred to our furniture, to tables, chairs, and bedsteads- because they once stood in their midst.

—Walden, chapter four, Henry David Thoreau

I don’t know about you, but old HDT always cheers me up.

The painting is by Thomas Hart Benton.

1 Comment

July 20, 2016

“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after”*

by chuckofish

Here is a nostalgic mid-week look back at our grandfather Bunker Cameron holding a garpike in the 1920s. Bunker liked nothing better than fishing and he was quite accomplished. He was a member of a private club on North Hero Island (or was it South Hero?) on Lake Champlain and spent a lot of time there over the years. He went to Florida and did some deep sea fishing, but his heart was always in his home state of Vermont.

Although I do not fish, I would like nothing better than to be on North Hero Island in Vermont right now. However, I am in hot and sticky flyover country–C’est la vie!

Par for the course.

And apropos of something: “It is better to sit in a boat thinking about God than to sit in church thinking about fishing.” As someone (not Thoreau) somewhere said.

*Henry David Thoreau

6 Comments

Tag: Henry David THoreau

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish