dual personalities

Tag: movies

February 4, 2025

Flyover Tuesday

by chuckofish

Well, here we are in February. Yesterday we broke a record from back in the 1880s–reaching the temperature of 76 degrees! I made my usual Monday trip to the grocery store and swung by the P.O. It is a soggy mess out there, but I am not complaining.

Today we toast the wonderful writer MacKinlay Kantor, who was born on this day in 1904 in Webster City, Iowa. He wrote a lot of short stories for popular and pulp magazines before publishing his first historical novel, Long Remember, in 1934. Kantor was a war correspondent with the British RAF during WWII and also served as a gunner in the U.S. Air Force. After his service he became a screenwriter in Hollywood. His verse novel about three American servicemen returning to civilian life, Glory for Me, was adapted for the screen, becoming the Academy Award-winning film The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). He won the Pulitzer Prize for Andersonville, based on the notorious Confederate prisoner-of-war camp in Georgia where nearly 13,000 Union soldiers died, in 1955. I would re-read it, but I’m not sure I can handle such total depravity right now.

Anyway, I have been an admirer of Kantor for a long, long time and I recommend his books (and movies made from his books).

At the moment I am reading another historical novel by another American writer who wrote short stories for magazines while working in a hardware store in his hometown of Bloomington, IL. Harold Sinclair also wrote a few well-received novels, but The Horse Soldiers was his only bestseller. I have my father’s old signed copy from 1955 and I am enjoying it. Of course, the movie version starring John Wayne and William Holden is a favorite of mine. Here’s a picture of the author with John Wayne and the director John Ford.

We also toast country singer Clint Black, who was born on this day in 1962. He was born in New Jersey, but grew up in Katy, Texas. We always think of him as the secret twin of George W. Bush.

Quite the resemblance, don’t you think?

Speaking of twinsies, the prairie girls are enjoying the warmer weather too…

Enjoy your day!

3 Comments
January 29, 2025

“The eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth”*

by chuckofish

I am proud to say I finished reading Drums Along the Mohawk–all 654 pages! It was well-worth the effort. Really a wonderful book. The author, Walter D. Edmonds, writes in his Author’s Note:

To those who may feel that here is a great to-do about a bygone life, I have one last word to say. It does not seem to me a bygone life at all. The parallel is too close to our own [1936]. Those people of the valley were confronted by a reckless Congress and ebullient finance, with their inevitable repercussions of poverty and practical starvation. The steps followed with automatic regularity. The applications for relief, the failure of relief, and then the final realization that a man must stand up to live…They suffered the paralysis of abject dependence on a central government totally unfitted to comprehend a local problem. And finally, though they had lost two-thirds of their fighting strength, these people took hold of their courage and struck out for themselves. Outnumbered by trained troops, well equipped, these farmers won the final battle of the long war, preserved their homes, and laid the foundations of a great and strong community.

Woohoo, yes, they did.

I was also reminded of how truly hard it was to be a woman on the frontier–something today’s bloggers/influencers, who find it “hard” to have babies and bring up children today, might find mind-boggling. Just to give birth to a baby in 1779 and then watch it starve or freeze to death or be tomahawked and scalped is beyond their comprehension. It’s kind of beyond mine, and, yes, yes, parents do have plenty of modern problems today–iphones and activist teachers etc. etc.–I know, but at least I have the grace to be thankful for my OB-GYN, and safe, warm house, and well-stocked grocery stores. Ye gods, women, get some perspective!

Anyway, we should all take a moment every once in awhile to remember our ancestors who stepped up and made many sacrifices so that we can enjoy our freedom. And stop whining. Please.

Today is the birthday of one of my favorite ancestors, John Wesley Prowers, who was a pioneer on another frontier. I think of his mother, my great-great-great grandmother, who gave birth to him in 1838 in Westport, MO, a frontier outpost on the Missouri River where just a handful of white people lived at the time. She gave birth to my great-great grandmother the following year. Then her husband died. She did have family nearby and the settlement was growing, but wow.

Anyway, it is my practice to watch a good cowboy movie to celebrate JWP’s birthday–usually the great Red River (1947). But I think I might dip again into Lonesome Dove (1989) this year. JWP, you will recall, was a friend and business partner of Charles Goodnight, upon whom the character Captain Call (Tommy Lee Jones) is based. 

Here’s to the sunny slopes of long ago.

And this is really, really good. “To the rest of the country—the rest of the world–we don’t matter, here in the Middle of Nowhere. And that’s fine, for the most part. Most of us are happy to let the noise and craziness of the world pass us by. But that doesn’t mean that we are unseen by God. That we are unnoticed by Heaven.”

Have a good day! Read an old book. Watch an old movie. Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

*II Chronicles 16:9

3 Comments
January 23, 2025

What are you reading?

by chuckofish

It has been such a cold week! Thankfully the sun has been out much of the time and I have been able to needlepoint by my window. I also sent the Review off to the printer. I do love crossing items off my to-do list, don’t you?

I am also making headway reading Drums Along the Mohawk–the 600+-page tome given to me for Christmas. I am more than a third of the way in and I must say, it is wonderful. Published in 1936, it is well-written, exciting, and populated with realistic characters. It is very scary in parts and well it should be. It was a scary time to be on the New York frontier.

“For the first time they began to realize that there was no protection for them except in themselves. An unpredictable force had been born in the Mohawk Valley…”

The book is peopled with historical persons such as General Nicholas Herkimer and Adam Helmer, and other descendants of the German immigrants who were the majority residents in the central Mohawk Valley at the time. It also features such historical events as the Battle of Oriskany.

(Side note: When I was writing the Review article about RADM Courtney Shands, I learned that he was the commander of the aircraft carrier USS Oriskany during the Korean Conflict. The USS Oriskany was named after the famous and bloody engagement during the Saratoga Campaign. Synchronicity!)

Anyway, I am learning a lot and enjoying the book. Of course, young people today never read books like this and it is a shame. They might actually learn something about our country and the pioneers who built it. It was not easy, not easy at all.

Here’s another bit of trivia. Henry Fonda, the star of the film Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), was a descendent of Douw Fonda, (1700–1780) a prominent settler and trader in the Mohawk Valley. During the fighting with Loyalists, he was captured by a Mohawk, tomahawked and scalped. Two of Douw Fonda’s sons, John and Adam, were taken prisoner in the raid and taken to Canada.

Our ancestors were a hardy lot. They had to be.

So stay warm, read some (good) historical fiction, watch an old movie. Be thankful for and remember those who came before you.

4 Comments
January 20, 2025

Skies could not blue-er be

by chuckofish

Because ice was predicted on Friday night, daughter #1 decided to hold our Saturday morning DAR meeting on Zoom instead of at the country club where we usually meet. I had not experienced a Zoom meeting since retiring in 2021, but it worked just fine, I did not suffer PTSD and daughter #1 looked very glamorous indeed.

Sunday morning we went to church in the freezing cold. I was able to wear my vintage fur coat again. The twins were there with their dad and everyone kept their depravity in check. They drew in their journals with half an ear cocked to the service and the sermon on Hebrews 9:1-14. I am very proud of them. In Sunday School they are finishing up the book of Acts. We came back to our house after church for Episcopal/Calvinist Souffle and conversation. Plus, the boy and daughter #1 got my car set up with Apple Play. I tried to read the car manual but it is all Greek to me. Cars are so complicated now and I am such an old lady! Oh well, c’est la vie. I do the best I can.

Sunday night the OM and I returned to church for our annual meeting. We elected new elders and deacons and went through the annual report. I am so blessed to be a member of this church community. I thank God every day that he has led me to this place and that, although it has taken me a long time to get here, I will finish strong.

So–a typical January weekend. I watched The Court Jester (1955), a movie that I just love. Danny Kaye et al will lighten your mood, if you need it lightened. And if you are actually feeling pretty good, as am I, it will just add to your joy. I told the twins they should watch it and they did on Sunday night–according to their Dad, they were “transfixed”–of course they were! Even the credits are great:

Meanwhile daughter #1 and I are working on getting a new blog launched, so maybe this week we’ll have something to show you. Courage, dear hearts!

3 Comments
January 16, 2025

“Since the Puritans got a shock/ When they landed on Plymouth Rock”*

by chuckofish

Today we toast the Broadway star Ethel Merman on her birthday (1908-84). I bet you didn’t know that she was a lifelong Episcopalian (Her funeral was held in a chapel at St. Bartholomew’s in NYC)–which is hilarious (or perhaps not) since she was notorious for her brash demeanor and for telling vulgar stories in public. She was truly a force of nature and very famous in her time, indeed a cultural icon. I’m sure no one under the age of 60 today even knows who she is. Que sera, sera.

It is also the birthday of the English poet Robert Service, about whom I have blogged before. As you toast him, you might read one of his poems or watch The Spoilers (1942) in which he shared a brief scene with Marlene Dietrich. (Service appeared unbilled as a Yukon poet patterned after Service himself.) The Spoilers, which takes place in Alaska, is a good choice for a cold January night.

On a more serious note, this is a good article by Jen Wilkin about the chiastic pattern of life she discovered at her mother’s deathbed. “Remembering that seasons of life follow a patterned order helps us inhabit the season we are in and prioritize how to use the time we are given. Since death announced its presence in Genesis 3, our days have been numbered. Perhaps God, in his infinite kindness, gave us a chiasm, a patterned measuring rod, to number those days rightly.” (A chiasmus is a literary device in which ideas are presented and then subsequently repeated or inverted in a symmetrical mirror-like structure.  A modern example of a short chiasm would be If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. “Jesus makes a pithy chiastic statement in Mark 2:27: ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.'”)

This is one of several articles I have read about the inappropriateness of singing ‘Imagine’–“a strange and indeed hopeless song for any funeral, let alone one that is meant to be Christian in nature”–at Jimmy Carter’s funeral. “John Lennon’s song collapses in on its own irrationality. He imagines ‘living life in peace’, and there being no “greed or hunger”, but such talk demands a form and purpose, but atheism and naturalism cannot provide such a definition.” Indeed.

Have a good day. Sing a song loudly and brazenly, read a poem, watch an old movie, think about the arc of your life, thank God for his mercies which are new every morning.

*A line from “Anything Goes” by Cole Porter; Ethel Merman starred in the original Broadway production in 1934.

2 Comments
January 14, 2025

“Grandpapa is an old basoon”

by chuckofish

Today we toast Sterling Holloway (1905-92) on his birthday. If you grew up like me in the 1960s, you surely would recognize his voice, if not his name. He was a Disney legend from the good ol’ days. He was in Bambi and Dumbo and The Three Caballeros and Alice in Wonderland and The Jungle Book and, most famously, in Winnie the Pooh features through 1977.

Holloway was more than a voice though, and he made a lot of movies. He was Gene Autry’s comic sidekick in five movies. He played the role of a medic assigned to an infantry platoon in the critically acclaimed film A Walk in the Sun (1945). And he appeared in over 40 TV shows–who can forget him as Bert, the non-pushy salesman, on the Andy Griffith Show?

He was the narrator on the Disney adaption of Prokofieff’s “Peter and the Wolf” which I listened to many, many times in my childhood.

I just loved him (and his voice).

Enjoy these videos–I sure did!

5 Comments
January 6, 2025

 Faith holds wide the door*

by chuckofish

Well, we were warned about the blizzard conditions that were coming all last week and so were prepared to be home for several days. In fact, I did not leave the house all weekend, but stayed holed up in my cozy domicile. I had plenty of wine and nibblies, so I was not overly concerned. We were lucky and largely dodged the bullet, unlike Kansas City where conditions were pretty dicey. But we did experience “thunder snow” which sent our weatherpeople into paroxysms of delight. Flyover weather–par for the course.

Church was cancelled and so I watched (on YouTube) the service from last week when we were in Mahomet. It was interesting to watch from the virtual balcony and good to see all those familiar communicants. They sang “O Little Town of Bethlehem” which was nice to hear, since we had not sung it earlier during the Christmas season. The lyrics* by Phillips Brooks are so good.

I took down all the Christmas decorations (and two trees) which is quite a job and takes hours and hours. Daughter #1 came over on Friday and helped me, but it is a multiple-day event. I’m sure I will continue to find Xmas items that have escaped my attention for weeks to come.

Today is Epiphany, so don’t forget to watch 3 Godfathers (1948). I watched it over the weekend and it is just a great, great movie. You will recall that it is a loose retelling of the biblical Three Wise Men story in an American Western context, starring John Wayne, Pedro Armendariz and Harry Carey, Jr. It is also the birthday of our lovely daughter-in-law (daughter #3). We will celebrate as soon as the roads are cleared and we can synchronize our calendars!

Here’s Sinclair Ferguson’s resolution for the Christian life. “But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

It is very frustrating not to be able to include photos on my blog and daughter #1 and I are working on figuring out what to do. I probably will be starting a new blog, perhaps on Substack, very soon, so keep checking in and I’ll let you know.

3 Comments
December 16, 2024

Angels, from the realms of glory, wing your flight o’er all the earth

by chuckofish

We’re nearing the home stretch…but it rained all day Saturday which dampened everyone’s holiday spirits. We were grateful, however, that it was rain and not ice or snow. And we got the tree up!

It was a group effort. The boy came over Thursday evening to carry the tree in from the garage and put it in the stand. The OM and I strung the lights on Saturday morning. And daughter #1 came over after her DAR luncheon to help decorate it. Ain’t it lovely?

I missed the DAR luncheon because I had to go to our Historical Society Christmas party and membership meeting. It was actually quite fun. The house looked beautiful and festive. Of course, I didn’t take any pictures. C’est la vie.

The boy and his famille were in Kansas City this weekend, so the OM and I sat alone in church. They missed a good sermon on the Mosaic Covenant, some great hymns and solos, and a fantastic adult ed class, continuing on the angels and demons theme. The teacher even referenced Hermann Bavinck (see Friday’s post). I am learning a lot. My Bible Study leader made a really good and astute comment during the class and I told her so afterwards, and she said, “It was the Holy Spirit, not me”. Once again, I am humbled and grateful to be among these people.

We watched three Christmas movies: Home Alone (1992), The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)…

and White Christmas (1954), the latter on the big screen! We enjoyed them all.

What an absolute treat to see White Christmas on the big screen! In recliners! Can’t believe it wasn’t sold out! For the 50th time, it was great. And I had to laugh thinking of little Ida watching it for the first time at home on her TV and running to get her tambourine during the “Mandy” number! Perfect!

Have a good Monday, watch an old movie, feel the joy, read some poetry:

  1. Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
    And with fear and trembling stand;
    Ponder nothing earthly-minded,
    For with blessing in His hand,
    Christ our God to earth descendeth,
    Our full homage to demand.
  2. King of kings, yet born of Mary,
    As of old on earth He stood,
    Lord of lords, in human vesture,
    In the body and the blood;
    He will give to all the faithful
    His own self for heav’nly food.
  3. Rank on rank the host of heaven
    Spreads its vanguard on the way,
    As the Light of light descendeth
    From the realms of endless day,
    That the pow’rs of hell may vanish
    As the darkness clears away.
  4. At His feet the six-winged seraph,
    Cherubim with sleepless eye,
    Veil their faces to the presence,
    As with ceaseless voice they cry:
    “Alleluia, Alleluia,
    Alleluia, Lord Most High!”

Liturgy of St. James, 5th century (adapted by Gerard Moultrie, 1864)

4 Comments
December 10, 2024

This and that

by chuckofish

Yesterday I tried to catch up after my very busy weekend. I got some “desk work” done, met with my co-editor, Ron, to talk about the next Kirkwood Historical Review, and I went to the P.O. where I stood in line for 45 minutes waiting my turn for the one employee to wait on me.

I meant to start addressing Christmas cards but I did not. Tant pis.

In other news, today we toast the great movie actor Victor McLaglan (1886-1959) on his birthday. Best-known for playing Irishmen in John Ford movies, he was not Irish. He was English, of Scottish descent. His father was a bishop. He had a long career in the movies, winning an Oscar for Best Actor in The Informer (1935). I think I will watch Gunga Din (1939) in which he starred along with Cary Grant and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.

He was also great, of course, in the John Ford Cavalry Trilogy: Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950). He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in Ford’s The Quiet Man (1952).

So try not to obsess over all the things on your ‘to do’ list! They will get done in due time. In the meantime, watch an old movie!

P.S. It brings me joy to see my granddaughters in their hand-me-down clothes…

I had a conversation with the wife of our new pastor about this. Her mother also saved all her smocked dresses and now her daughter (Edith!) wears them to church. I love it. Of course, it’s fine if you don’t do this! But I love seeing the different generations wearing the same outfits.

And it’s so environmentally responsible!

2 Comments
December 2, 2024

‘Tis the season

by chuckofish

How was your long weekend? Daughter #2 and famille drove home on Friday afternoon after a fun-filled two days here with us. It is so nice knowing they will back in a few weeks!

Then it snowed all day Saturday–enough to change everyone’s plans and stay home. We had started unpacking Christmas things at daughter #1’s house on Friday morning with the prairie girls…

…and then she finished up the next day with the always helpful Mr. Smith…

I started the process at my house alone on Saturday. It is a lot of work! First to put away and clean up all the Thanksgiving stuff; then to haul all the Christmas things up from the basement. But I managed to get the little tree put up in the dining room…

…and did the mantle…

The feral cat in the Florida room watched me the whole time.

Daughter #2 got a start at her house with her helpers…

At church we observed the first Sunday in Advent with Advent hymns and the first in a new sermon series on God’s covenants in the Old Testament. The new adult ed class series is on angels. Thankfully I am not helping with the children’s Sunday School, so I can attend. The twins and their dad were not there because they were at the bud’s birthday party at the Lego Mini Fig store.

Lottie’s (separate) party is next Saturday. There is too much going on for me to keep it all straight. The boy stopped by later with the bud to tend to the cat and to take the extra leaf out of the dining room table. I heard all about the party–good times!

We, of course, watched Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) on Thanksgiving night, but the next day after everyone had left, we watched Grumpy Old Men (1993) on Friday night. It was pretty funny–even the grumpy OM I live with thought so.

It takes place around Thanksgiving, so it was seasonally appropriate. I recommend it.

This is a really good post about remembering that God is good regardless.
“You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.” (Psalm 4:7)

So start decorating for Christmas–it’s not too early! Feel the joy. Watch an old movie. Wave to someone. Happy December!

4 Comments