Today we toast Errol Flynn on his birthday. Born in 1909 in Tasmania, he moved to Hollywood in 1934. His third movie was Captain Blood (1935) with 19-year old Olivia de Havilland, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Wow.
I always say Errol was a much better actor than people give him credit for, because he always comes across as such a nice gentleman, and we know that probably wasn’t the case. Whatever. I like his movies and will watch one this weekend. It is a pleasure to watch him handle a horse…
…a bow…
…a sword…
…and the ladies…
In other news, here are the Seven Wonders of the South. You will get no argument from me, Matt Mitchell, and #7 is right on the money!
We are experiencing some lovely weather this week and–bonus!–the cicadas seem to be gone! I was working outside on Tuesday when I suddenly noticed how quiet it was. The incredible din was gone. Thanks be to God.
The boy and his family have been in Florida this week–first at DisneyWorld and then in Sarasota with the other grandparents–so, even without the cicadas, it’s been pretty quiet around here.
(I had no idea it ever rained in DisneyWorld!!)
But I am getting ready for a short jaunt of my own up to Michigan on Thursday to meet with my sister and brother at his lake house. It has been a decade since I ventured up there, so I am looking forward to it.
The summer moves along…
I watched the great Italian movie La Strada (1954) the other day. It is one of my favorites. Federico Fellini’s masterpiece about a traveling strongman who buys a young girl from her poverty-stricken mother in ugly postwar Italy should be depressing, but somehow it is not. Anthony Quinn plays the strongman, who is a brute, a beast without an inner monologue. Giulietta Masina gives a shining performance as Gelsomina, the simple girl who follows him, and Richard Basehart is the Fool who tries to teach her that everyone has a purpose in life. It is a hard lesson to learn under the circumstances. “The Road” is a metaphor for life, of course, and so it is full of sadness and comedy. Here is Martin Scorsese talking about it.
“And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Way of Holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it. It shall belong to those who walk on the way; even if they are fools, they shall not go astray.” (Isaiah 35:8)
Have a good day–enjoy the good (or bad) weather, watch an old movie, and remember that your most important attachment is to God.
My weekend was a quiet one, especially compared with last weekend. Since I was still recovering from a cold (or whatever), I didn’t do much. Daughter #1 came over while Mr. Smith was being groomed on Friday and we went to Hobby Lobby. After we picked him up we enjoyed Happy Hour at my house, which has become somewhat of a routine (a good one.)
I did very little on Saturday, but watched the PGA tour on TV. I’m so happy to see Scottie back on top. The OM and I watched The Boys in the Boat (2023) on Prime and enjoyed it. It is based on the fantastic (true) story of the University of Washington J.V. crew team that beat the Ivy League elite teams for a spot on the 1936 US Olympic team. I read the book back in 2015.
(The blond kid really reminded me of my nephew Foster throughout the movie.)
The film, directed by George Clooney, is well done, but lacks a certain spark that would have made it a great movie. I know I sound like a broken record but back in the day Michael Curtiz or Howard Hawks or John Ford would have known how to supply that spark. For one thing, you don’t learn much about any of the guys on the crew team except for the hero Joe Rantz (Callum Turner). In a sport where all eight members of the team must move in unison, it is a mistake to make them all invisible except for 2 or 3. Also, the coxswain was an integral part of the team and you don’t get to know that really until the end. It just fell a little flat to me. Too bad, because it is such a great story! Read the book!
It was good to be back in church after a week away when we were out of town. We had a guest preacher, a church member who is on the faculty at Covenant Theological Seminary up the road. Our pastor introduced him by reciting his impressive CV and also by mentioning that once in a meeting J.I. Packer had conceded a point to him. Everyone laughed–Presbyterian humor. Anyway, it was a good sermon on Psalm One.
After church there was a meeting for VBS volunteers–zut alors!
They had me with the first graders, and I was, like, no way, José ! They switched me to 4/5th graders. Okay, then. They can at least go to the bathroom by themselves.
Well, I have a week to get my head straight with this.
Today we toast the American writer Stephen Crane, who died on this day in 1900 at the age of 28. He wrote poetry and short stories and the famous war novel The Red Badge of Courage.
A river, amber-tinted in the shadow of its banks, purled at the army’s feet; and at night, when the stream had become of a sorrowful blackness, one could see across it the red, eyelike gleam of hostile camp-fires set in the low brows of distant hills.
John Huston made a movie adaption of the novel in 1951 starring Audie Murphy. Although I know a man who just thinks it is the best movie ever, I find that hard to believe, given the star and the director, but I should see it before I judge. I should also read the book again, which I may have read in high school, but I do not remember it clearly. The Civil War scene in How the West Was Won (1962) where George Peppard drinks from the bloody river with the confederate deserter is derivative I’m sure. Anyway, I’ll add that to my list.
Willa Cather wrote this lovely piece –When I Knew Stephen Crane–and sums him up brilliantly. She was a college girl when she was acquainted with him briefly in Lincoln, Nebraska and he opened up to her on a memorable evening.
Men will sometimes reveal themselves to children, or to people whom they think never to see again, more completely than they ever do to their confreres. From the wise we hold back alike our folly and our wisdom, and for the recipients of our deeper confidences we seldom select our equals. The soul has no message for the friends with whom we dine every week. It is silenced by custom and convention, and we play only in the shallows. It selects its listeners willfully, and seemingly delights to waste its best upon the chance wayfarer who meets us in the highway at a fated hour. There are moments too, when the tides run high or very low, when self-revelation is necessary to every man, if it be only to his valet or his gardener. At such a moment, I was with Mr. Crane.
I will also note that Stagecoach (1939) is on TCM tonight. It is always a good time to watch this movie, which is one of the best 96 minutes ever put on film. Stagecoach was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Picture; Thomas Mitchell received an Academy Award for his supporting role as “Doc Boone,” and Richard Hageman, Franke Harling, John Leipold and Leo Shuken received an Academy Award for their score. Stagecoach also made the National Board of Review’s ten best list, and John Ford was honored as best director of 1939 by the New York Film Critics. It catapulted the western genre into the A-film realm. (And, of course, the stunts are out of this world.)
Here’s Viggo Mortensen’s take on Stagecoach:
So read an old book, watch an old movie (again) and praise God from whom all blessings flow!
(The photo is Stephen Crane in Corwin Knapp Linson’s studio on West 22nd Street, Manhattan, c. 1894, when Crane was writing The Red Badge of Courage.)(Syracuse University Libraries via Roger Williams University)
Like baby Ida, it is taking me some time to recover from my busy weekend.
This week I will be catching up on a lot of things and working on an article for the Kirkwood Review. Besides the usual laundry and tidying up, I have quite a bit of Bible reading to catch up on. In my chronological Bible I am still in I Kings/I Chronicles and Psalms. I can’t help chuckling that I am such a movie nerd that when I read the verses Psalm 46: 10-11, I heard the voices of the Colour Sergeant and the missionary in a famous scene from Zulu (1964)!
I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.
The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.
I’m sure some of you can relate.
Here’s a good reminder that you do not need to be perfect for God to use you. And as the line from my favorite hymn says, “if you tarry till you’re better, you will never come at all.”
And by the way, I volunteered to do VBS again this year, so I am preparing myself mentally for some good times to come in two weeks.
Onward and upward.
*I’m trying to appreciate this along with Walt Whitman (Miracles)–as our cicada invasion continues…
Today marks the 113th anniversary of the first Indianapolis 500 race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Ray Harmon was the first winner of the 500-mile auto race in his Marmon Wasp.
I will toast Harmon and his Wasp with an orange soda and the wee bud, who, as you know, loves all things with four wheels and a motor.
It is also the birthday of film director Howard Hawks, born in 1898 in Goshen, Indiana. I appreciate him more and more as the years go by. As Orson Welles once said in an interview with Peter Bogdanovich, “Hawks is great prose; [John] Ford is poetry.” I think that is a good assessment. Anyway, I will watch one of his many great movies tonight. Maybe Air Force (1943) since I have been on a WWII kick since Memorial Day.
Meanwhile the new Longmire book arrived on Tuesday and I am happily catching up with Walt and Henry…
Katie and Ida are hanging out on the deck…
…and the bud is playing it cool on the driveway…
And Anne hits the nail on the head several times in this one.
Here’s to the last day of school! Hang in there! God is in control!
I have been thinking about Gen. Douglas MacArthur and listened once again to his farewell speech to West Point, arguably one of the best speeches of the 20th Century.
In twenty campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand campfires, I have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation, and that invincible determination which have carved his status in the hearts of his people. From one end of the world to the other he has drained deep the chalice of courage.
Let’s all take a few moments to think about that patriotic self-abnegation and the men (and women) who made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of their country.
(Here’s a photo of my grandfather on the right with his younger brother who was killed in the Argonne Forest in 1918.)
If you have half an hour, listen to the speech.
As I have said before, Memorial Day is not just an excuse to have a day off and barbecue with family and friends–although we did that yesterday.
There was no mention of Memorial Day at our church which I found interesting but not really surprising. It was just a regular service and two of the four hymns made me cry like a baby. I was a mess. C’est la vie. Our new young pastor finished the Letter to Titus in his sermon and he was on fire, which was pretty impressive considering it was Titus. But that goes to show that any scripture is worthy of our study and exegesis.
In the afternoon the boy and his family, daughter #1 and her friend Liz and her husband and kids gathered with us for family fun and frolic. We started off outside…
…but we had to move inside when it started to thunder and rain. Our twins showed their twins how to have fun at Mamu’s house…
The menfolk had to move the barbecue into the garage, and by the time we were almost ready to sit down to eat, the tornado sirens were blaring, the wind was blowing and the air had turned that green color we know so well. I went to check what was going on outside and Lottie was like, “Mamu, what are you DOING?!” (She was all for heading to the basement immediately.) I said, “Oh it’s nothing to worry about!” and daughter #3 agreed, “If it starts to hail, we’ll reconsider.”
In no time Lottie had the little ones set up with pillows under the dining room table…
As we sat down to eat (at the table), it started to hail. But the hail was only dime-sized, so we went on and ate our dinner.
All’s well that ends well. That’s life in flyover country.
This is a moving tribute about Sacred Duty: A Soldier’s Tour at Arlington National Cemetery. Lest we forget.
Meanwhile, tonight I’ll be watching They Were Expendable (1945) which has become my Memorial Day tradition.
This is just a great movie. Great action scenes and the romance between Donna Reed and John Wayne is one of the sweetest in cinema history. And General MacArthur makes an appearance.
“That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
–President Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, 1863
How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge? –Proverbs 1: 22
Feeling down? Tired of the news cycle and all the bad news? Severe weather forecasts giving you the blues? Me too.
Well, it’s times like these when I turn to my DVD collection to find something–not necessarily the “best” movies–but one that will cheer me up. You know, like McClintock! (1963), because John Wayne.
Yup. Here are some further suggestions:
Hatari (1962) John Wayne and a diverse hipster crew go on safari in Africa. “Hatari” means danger in Swahili, but there’s nothing to worry about in this adventure film.
The Professionals (1966) Four American soldiers of fortune head to Mexico to rescue a kidnapped wife, but everything is not what it seems. The Oscar-nominated screenplay is A+.
The Court Jester (1956) Singing, dancing, jousting–“A royal treat for the whole family”. A great cast, a great screenplay, and Danny Kaye.
Guys and Dolls (1955) Sometimes a musical hits the right spot and this is one of my favorites. Marlon Brando sings!
Pillow Talk (1959) A classic rom-com starring Rock Hudson and Doris Day as a playboy songwriter and an interior decorator who share a party line and fall in love.
The Best of Times (1986) Robin Williams and Kurt Russell star as two guys hoping to redeem themselves thirteen years after a disastrous high school football game. We can all relate.
The Sting (1973) Newman and Redford in a classic caper film involving a complicated plot by two professional grifters to con a mob boss.
The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming! (1966) Chaos (and hilarity) ensue following the grounding of a Soviet submarine off a small New England island.
Hoosiers (1986) One of the best sports films ever tells the story of a small-town Indiana high school basketball team that enters the state championship led by coach Gene Hackman with a spotty past.
21 Jump Street (2012) or 22 Jump Street (2014) Just because. Channing Tatum.
P.S. The boy concurred with these choices and also suggested Roberta, The Awful Truth and Top Hat–all classics from the 1930s, plus Donovan’s Reef (1963) and Kung Fu Panda (2008). What would you suggest?
It was a rainy, busy weekend. I went to two of the five (!) scheduled reunion events and I enjoyed myself. However, I reached my level of introvert overload very quickly and baled pretty early both times.
The highlight of my weekend was when my two oldest friends…
…came over to my house for lunch on Saturday and we gabbed away for three hours and laughed til we cried. I’m not sure if we lived up to Saint Paul’s direction to “older women” to be “reverent in behavior” and “not slanderers”, but at least we were not drinking. (Titus 2:3) We did not talk about the distant past, but about other more important things. We agreed that it is, indeed, the small things that bring us joy. We are happy to be alive and kickin’ and do not worry about being skinny and wearing false eyelashes. We’re glad to have the same husbands we started out with and children that still talk to us.
At church on Sunday we had another really wonderful class on Stories as Apologetics–this week on J.R.R. Tolkien and the problem of evil in the LOTR trilogy. Our leader talked about Boethian’s view of Evil vs. The Manichaean (Gnostic) view of Evil and how Good seems to be to be absent in LOTR but isn’t. It is like being back in college for an hour a week. Our sermon was on Titus 2:1-10 and I felt convicted (see above) of my sin and lack of self control, which I readily admit is a good thing.
Daughter #1 came over on Sunday afternoon and we drank a margarita in honor of Cinco de Mayo and ate the guacamole that the OM had made for the church Pig Roast on Saturday. Unfortunately, the Pig Roast had to be moved inside because of rain. (We skipped it.)
I watched Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) with the Rock, Kevin Hart and Jack Black. It is hilarious. No bad language, minimal vulgarity, a clever plot, and good lessons about teamwork and using your gifts–what more can you ask for?
Also, I love these pics of little Lottie playing against 10-year olds! You go, girl!
Funnily enough, the giant Imperial Walker was removed yesterday morning, only to be replaced by a variety of other large vehicles. Lots of coming and going ensued.
Onward and upward.
Today we celebrate the birthday of movie actor William Holden (1918-1981).
He was born just across the river in O’Fallon, Illinois, but he spent most of his youth in California. Though a very sophisticated type, he managed to hold on to his midwestern charm–not unlike his friend and fellow Illinoisan, Ronald Reagan. He made a lot of good movies.
Of course, my favorite is The Horse Soldiers (1959).
Like too many other people, sadly, alcohol was his downfall. He died at 63 after tripping on a rug at home alone and hitting his head. He was found four days later–an ignominious end. Toasting may be inappropriate, but I will find something on his playlist to watch.
We also note that today marks the 234th anniversary of the death of Benjamin Franklin in 1790. Approximately 20,000 people attended his funeral after which he was interred in Christ Church Burial Ground in Philadelphia.
In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own. Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech … Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom, and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech, which is the right of every man …
Silence Dogood, 1722
I couldn’t agree more. I also like Franklin’s proposal (which was not adopted) for the design of the Great Seal of the United States which featured the motto: “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God”.
The OM texted me yesterday to inform me that Whitey Herzog had died. Whitey was great and we sure loved that 1982 St. Louis Cardinals team that won the World Series. Ozzie Smith, Keith Hernandez, Willy McGee, Darrel Porter, Lonnie Smith, Bruce Sutter…
The team hit a grand total of 67 home runs in 1982, the fewest in the major leagues. But they caught the ball, pitched well and ran–they played what became known as “Whiteyball”. The style was solidified one Sunday afternoon at Busch Stadium, when the team’s third-string catcher stole home with two outs and two strikes in the 12th inning for a victory. The Cardinals won the division by three games, then swept the Braves in a best-of-five playoff. They kicked off the World Series against the Milwaukee Brewers with Gussie Busch riding around the stadium behind the Clydesdales and Smith doing a backflip on the way to his position. In truth, reading about it now, it sounds a lot like the Indians in Major League (1987)!
Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction! Have a good Wednesday!
dual personalities 