dual personalities

Tag: Mike Matheny

April 23, 2014

The man in the arena

by chuckofish

0-theodore-roosevelt

On this day in 1910, former President Theodore Roosevelt made a speech on the subject of “Citizenship in a Republic”  at the Sorbonne in Paris. One notable passage on page seven of the 35-page speech is referred to as “The Man in the Arena.”

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

These are good words to remember from our most active and hard-working president!

theodore-roosevelt-horse

So did you take my advice and watch Stagecoach last night? I was feeling a little  very down in the dumps because daughter #1 had returned to NYC that morning, so I knew it would be just the ticket to put me back on track. And it was.

It’s amazing how a little bit of sagebrush drama,

Annex - Wayne, John (Stagecoach)_04

exquisitely told by the master of the genre,

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with a generous dose of this guy

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in the part that blew open his career can do that. It is such a great movie with such finely drawn characters.

And have I mentioned that the OM gave me this for my birthday?

front

Yes, #22…

back

Life is good, right?

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Okay so I like the strong silent type. I get it. The man in the arena.

9 Comments
November 1, 2013

There is no joy in Mudville

by chuckofish

peanuts-aargh-baseball

Well, baseball season is finally over. Thank goodness.

Post-season baseball is just too stressful. We flyover fans identify so strongly with our hometown team and we are so eager for them to triumph…but we must keep telling ourselves: It is just baseball. Nobody died.

Yes, we will miss our (sad) skipper.

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But life goes on.

One of my goals for November is to be more consciously thankful.

You would think that would be an easy thing in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, but experience teaches us (or me at least) that this is not so. We start that snowball slide to Christmas and get busier day by day. And when we get busy, we forget to be thankful.

My mantra this month will be: Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Even today. Even when the Cardinals lose.

A sensible thanksgiving for mercies received is a mighty prayer in the Spirit of God. It prevails with Him unspeakably.

–John Bunyan

5 Comments
October 28, 2013

To go with the drift of things

by chuckofish

I had a rather sad weekend, spending a good deal of it thinking about what I had been doing the weekend before when daughter #1 was visiting. I try not to do this, but it is hard.

I watched a depressing movie about Sylvia Plath (played by Gwyneth Paltrow).

And I read some sad poems.

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question ‘Whither?’

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

― Robert Frost, Reluctance

I watched some stressful World Series games. But this guy always cheers me up.

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I will miss our skipper in the off-season. See, there I go again! Well, onward and upward this week and go Cards!

4 Comments
October 9, 2012

This and that

by chuckofish

On Sunday morning I was the second lector in church and read the second lesson which was from Hebrews and included the following:

But someone has testified somewhere,
“What are human beings that you are mindful of them,
or mortals, that you care for them?
You have made them for a little while lower than the angels;
you have crowned them with glory and honor,
subjecting all things under their feet.”

I love the vague attribution by the writer. The quote is, by the way, from Psalm 8. You may remember the less politically correct and gender-neutral version:

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

5 For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.

6 Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet…

King James Version (KJV)

And while we’re on the subject of humans being crowned with glory and honor, let’s give a big shout out to Mike Matheny, the new skipper of the St. Louis Cardinals.

You’re doing a great job, Mike. And you’re cute. But I’ve always been partial to catchers.

On a side note, the rhododendron bush in our yard has thrown out a few flowers. It normally blooms in early April. What a crazy year!

4 Comments