dual personalities

Tag: Mark Twain

January 13, 2022

Humble and contrite

by chuckofish

I recently watched The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944) starring Frederic March as Missouri’s favorite son. It gives a sanitized look at the great man’s life but it is really pretty good. It inspired me anyway to take down “Life on the Mississippi” from its place on the shelf and I have been reading it.

Not surprisingly, it is very good and extremely readable. Have you read any Twain lately?

I have also been following the Gospel Coalitions’s daily “Read the Bible” plan and so far so good (12 days in!). I am currently reading a chapter a day of Genesis, Matthew, Nehemiah and Acts. (I am taking notes, because my memory is so bad!) Breaking it up this way is a good idea, since you don’t get bogged down in the Old Testament and you also see how everything in the OT points to the fulfilling of its prophesy, the coming of our savior, Christ Jesus. As Don Carson says, “When you read, remember that God himself has declared, ‘This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word’” (Isa. 66:2).

It is easy to see why 19th century American writers were so good–they were immersed in the Bible, steeped in its vocabulary and vivid visualizations. So many of today’s writers write as if they grew up watching made-for-tv movies and not reading much. This does not make for good literature.

I found this article about C. S. Lewis and Billy Graham on the subject of Angels to be interesting. And here’s what Calvin thought about Angels. “Calvin’s view about angels is indeed not spectacular in the sense that it offers new and unexpected insights into the world of angels or presents an impressive and new, reformed angelology. But on the other hand it can be called spectacular in the sense that for Calvin, angels play a greater role in the life of the believer than could be drawn from the spirituality of the average Reformed believer.”

This is an interesting article. “Put simply, cancel culture is a culture of bullying. What starts with a difference of ideas ends with a willful public destruction of other human beings. Those who claimed to be the ones bullied have now become the bullies themselves, all because of a shift of power…Power is the critical concept, here. Cancel culture is based on the assumption that power—not truth—is the only way to drive cultural change.”

I am leaving tomorrow to visit daughter #2, baby Katie and DN in far-off Maryland, so wish me luck and traveling mercies. I’ll be flying…

…no choo-choo trains for me this time! I can’t wait to see everyone and check out their new house!

Love that red jumper made by her great-grandmother!

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July 25, 2016

Weekend update

by chuckofish

“Saturday morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh, and brimming with life. There was a song in every heart; and if the heart was young, the music issued at the lips. There was cheer in every face and a spring in every step. The locust-trees were in bloom, and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air. Cardiff Hill, beyond the village and above it, was green with vegetation, and it lay just far enough away to seem a Delectable Land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting.” *

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Happiness is road-tripping with your BFFs in your home state and stopping at every antique mall along the way.

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This past weekend we journeyed to historic Arrow Rock, MO. We stopped for lunch in historic Boonville and also in historic Blackwater.

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What, you ask, makes them historic? Well, they’re old and there is probably some link to the Santa Fe Trail or a Civil War engagement. To some people they are just old river towns that have seen better days. But I like them.

The whole town of Arrow Rock is on the historic register. It is truly lovely, lush and green and well cared for. There are some wonderful old buildings.

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The theater there seems to support the town and its bed and breakfasts, restaurants and shops.

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It is a booming place during the theater season. We bought our tickets back in March when tickets first went on sale. (They sell out fast!) We made our B&B reservations in April and got the last room in town (practically).

As usual, I came prepared for a late afternoon pick-me-up.

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Fun fact about Arrow Rock: In 1973, a musical version of Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer” was filmed here. It starred Johnny Whitaker as Tom, Jeff East as Huck, Celeste Holm as Aunt Polly, Warren Oates as Muff Potter, and Jody Foster in her third movie as Becky Thatcher. Supposedly, many of the town’s buildings and landscapes are recognizable in the film. I saw the movie back in 1973, but I guess I will have to check it out.

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The OM, who does not enjoy the above activities, spent a quiet 36 hours home alone, ordering pizza and watching Nascar. At least that’s what he told me.

Our electricity went out Sunday night–it was 100-degrees outside–but it came back on after a couple of hours. Thunder and lightening followed. Now it is Monday and it’s back to the salt mines. Have a good week!

*Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

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February 23, 2016

In yo’ life

by chuckofish

mark twain

“You gwyne to have considerable trouble in yo’ life, en considerable joy. Sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you’s gwyne to git well agin.”

–Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

While sick, I have cleaned up my DVR list and watched several movies that have been sitting there for a while. I watched The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944) starring Frederic March as our famous native son. It was entertaining but pretty white-washed. At least it did stress the fact that Twain was a hero for publishing President Grant’s war memoirs and giving him 70% of the profits. And there’s a good scene where he receives an honorary degree from Oxford.

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Onward and upward.

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August 21, 2014

“My soul has grown deep like the rivers”*

by chuckofish

St. Louis in 1846

St. Louis in 1846

“The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book–a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.”

– Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

I have lived in the city on the River nearly my whole life and I always know where I am in relation to the river. I always know or feel where it is–running north and south and I am “situated” that way. I cannot imagine not living by a river or some body of water. I wonder if other people feel this way?

*Langston Hughes

 

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February 18, 2014

“To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin”

by chuckofish

On this day in 1885 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was first published in the United States. What a book! It is still controversial, lo, these many years later.

An illustration by Thomas Hart Benton

An illustration by Thomas Hart Benton

We will not go into all that today. I will let ol’ Huck speak for himself in this, one of the greatest scenes in literature:

“It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn’t try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn’t come. Why wouldn’t they? It warn’t no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from ME, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn’t come. It was because my heart warn’t right; it was because I warn’t square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting ON to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth SAY I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger’s owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can’t pray a lie–I found that out.

So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn’t know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I’ll go and write the letter–and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:

Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send.

HUCK FINN.

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking–thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, ‘stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the ONLY one he’s got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

“All right, then, I’ll GO to hell”–and tore it up.”

–Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 

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