Yesterday was a typical day for this old retired lady. First thing in the morning I did my daily Bible reading. Then I hopped in the Cooper and drove down to the Link Auction Galleries to pick up my ‘winnings’ (i.e. old stuff no one else wants) from last week’s auction.
It was a beautiful day to take a drive as spring is busting out all over this flyover town.
I came home and caught up on my emails and “desk work”. Daughter #2 sent this picture of baby Idabelle already wearing a dress that daughter #1 made for Katie!
Sunrise/sunset. And, of course, I got the daily update on Katie’s day at daycare…
The boy came over for our usual Tuesday morning gabfest before he headed off to work.
In the afternoon I worked on putting together the first issue of the Kirkwood Historical Society Review with me as co-editor. (The Review has been around for 60-odd years.) Everything goes to the printer today, so say a little prayer. We switched printers when the old printing company’s warehouse burned down and now the printer is my old friend Cherie, with whom I worked for many years while I was at my flyover university. It is good to be back doing business with an old pal.
I walked the dog. I read some poetry:
(W.H. Davies, 1911)
I made hash for dinner with the leftover pork tenderloin from Easter. It was really tasty.
Life is good and God is sovereign. Take the time to stop and stare. Enjoy your day!
Today I am getting ready to head to Maryland tomorrow to see daughter #2 and her little family. DN is going to be in a wedding this weekend in Pennsylvania so I am going “to help” in his absence not that I need an excuse or anything.
I think baby Ida is pretty excited.
Meanwhile the chorus of leaf blowers/lawn mowers has started up in our neighborhood–non-stop noise which will go on for nine months. Ye gods! Do I sound like an old battle ax or what? Well you know what they say: “How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth.”
(John Milton: Sonnet 7)
So please say a travel prayer for me–fair weather and no delays. I’ll be back next week. Daughter #1 will be here tomorrow with a post.
The twins’ Mom is out of town for a few days so they came over on Saturday for lunch and a movie. We watched the Disney classic Toby Tyler or Ten Weeks in a Circus (1960). I figured they are old enough to handle a 90-minute movie about a little boy who runs away to the circus and they mostly were.
I had seen the movie fairly recently and was struck by how appealing the chimp is (and I am not a monkey person). He and Kevin Corcoran are great together. The twins liked the monkey but they had a lot of questions. “Why is he wearing pants?” And they were kind of shocked by his naughty/depraved behavior (irony alert)!
They were, however, enthralled with the circus act scenes and were very impressed with the kids who did the stunt riding.
Lottie also couldn’t believe the elephants were “dancing in a conga line.”
I asked her where she learned about conga lines and she said from her friends at school. 🤔
Anyway, I recommend it as a wholesome movie with a (spoiler alert) happy ending. You better get a copy though before it is canceled. I mean, all those poor animals being made to wear pants and dance in conga lines…
Meanwhile Mr. Smith continues to grow and perfect his own dance routine.
He could jump through a ring of fire no problem.
For the first time in a long time I went to church on Sunday at 8:30 am by myself, because I wanted to go look at some houses with daughter #1 later in the morning. It was weird but also kind of nice to have no distractions. But don’t worry–I will be glad to have my distractions back!
Anyway, I was reminded of this poem by William Butler Yeats:
I have been reading about Marianne Moore, the eminent 20th century American poet, who was born in Kirkwood, Missouri in 1887. In the introduction to her Pulitzer Prize winner, Collected Poems, T.S. Eliot, another St. Louisan, said: “My conviction has remained unchanged for the last 14 years that Miss Moore’s poems form part of the small body of durable poetry written in our time…”
I love this thing she said in an interview with Donald Hall for the Paris Review in 1960 when he asked her, since she and Eliot were both born in St. Louis around the same time, if their families knew each other:
No, we did not know the Eliots. We lived in Kirkwood, Missouri, where my grandfather was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church. T.S. Eliot’s grandfather–Dr. William Eliot–was a Unitarian…My grandfather, like Dr. Eliot, had attended ministerial meetings in St. Louis. Also, at stated intervals, various ministers met for luncheon. After one of these luncheons my grandfather said, “When Dr. William Eliot asks the blessing and says, ‘and this we ask in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,’ he is Trinitarian enough for me.’
Isn’t that great?
A lifelong Presbyterian, she was also, FYI, a Republican! She’d be canceled for that today. Well, she didn’t take herself too seriously even back then.
March has entered like the proverbial lamb, but I’m not taking the down blanket off my bed just yet. I know we will experience another hard freeze sometime in the next few weeks. Just you wait and see.
And while we’re waiting and seeing, did you hear that a bear escaped its enclosure for the second time at the St. Louis Zoom? I mean, come on, who is running the zoo these days? Are all the keepers smoking pot while on duty? Now we are having lockdowns at the zoo? Zut alors–I am not amused.
In honor of famed film producer Walter Mirisch, who died last week at 101, I suggest we watch one of his movies, which include: Some Like It Hot (1959), The Horse Soldiers (1959), The Magnificent Seven (1960), The Great Escape (1963), The Pink Panther (1963), The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966), In the Heat of the Night (1967) The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Fiddler on the Roof (1971) and Same Time, Next Year (1978). As Elmore Leonard characterized him, Mirisch “was one of the good guys.” I read his memoir, I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History, and I have to agree with Leonard, although, as I said at the time, it is always amazing to me how smart guys can make some really dumb decisions. But he made a lot of good movies and was, for the most part, a gentleman.
Here are six movies to celebrate NASCAR’s 75th anniversary. I am not particularly a fan of this film genre, but the wee bud is a huge NASCAR fan and of cars in general. When we were driving to church the other Sunday through our new cut-through, his eyes nearly bugged out of his head at the sight of an orange Charger in a driveway. It is his “favorite street” now.
This month is also the “31 Days of Oscar” month on TCM, so there are a lot of good movies to see. Check out their schedule here. We watched The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) last night. Mr. Smith was riveted. (Best. Movie. Ever.)
This is a good one from Sam Bush. “Many contemporary children’s books are fixated on an end-goal (whether it’s encouraging your child to use the potty or challenge the patriarchy), but the classics refrain from telling a person what to think.”
I appreciated this article by an American medical doctor about insufferable patients. He even references Planes, Trains and Automobiles. It is also interesting in light of the horrific state of medicine in Canada and their suicide on demand policy. “We stopped speaking in terms of her merit – as a vagabond who deserved her state and did not deserve our medicine. But this took explicitly naming all I’ve said above, interrogating it candidly in community, repenting over what we had said, disrupting the momentum of morning rounds to point toward a different way of treating and speaking about the insufferable. Amy forced us to ask crucial questions we should have been asking long before: What are we doing here again? Who are we becoming? What is medicine for … and who is medicine for?”
Blessings upon you, readers. Take a walk, pat a dog, read a poem. Maybe one by that scoundrel Roald Dahl:
‘My teacher wasn’t half as nice as yours seems to be. His name was Mister Unsworth and he taught us history. And when you didn’t know a date he’d get you by the ear And start to twist while you sat there quite paralysed with fear. He’d twist and twist and twist your ear and twist it more and more. Until at last the ear came off and landed on the floor. Our class was full of one-eared boys. I’m certain there were eight. Who’d had them twisted off because they didn’t know a date. So let us now praise teachers who today are all so fine And yours in particular is totally divine.’
Daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty; violets dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes.
–William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale (1610–11) act 4, sc. 3, l. 121
Yes, the big storm missed us. It just rained and then the sun came out. No big deal.
Tomorrow I do have a Big Deal–an Event to attend back at my flyover university. It is the kind that makes me very nervous, so pray for me. People always think I am so calm, cool and collected, but little do they know. I will be inwardly reciting my mantra: “For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power and of love and of self-control.” (2 Timothy 1:7)
Plus, I don’t even know what I’m wearing.
But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
Don sent this terrific poem, The Man Watching, by Rainer Maria Rilke:
I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields saying things
I can’t bear without a friend,
I can’t love without a sister.
The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape, like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.
What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.
When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestlers’ sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.
Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.
–Rainer Maria Rilke
I thought this was inspiring and true. “That’s the blessing of God. Just like we hear every Christmas: Immanuel–God with us. No matter the suffering we go through, God’s presence is better than anything our hearts desire. Though my body may fail, my faith and life is fireproof: though there are rumors of war, pestilence, and ruin, and our little sheep eyes can’t hazard what’s ahead, we can trust in the voice of our Shepherd, who is ever near.”
Enjoy your day. Read a poem. Know that God is with you. “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:27)
The painting is “Before the Storm” by Isaac Levitan (1860- 1900).
I have seen the sun break through to illuminate a small field for a while, and gone my way and forgotten it. But that was the pearl of great price, the one field that had the treasure in it. I realize now that I must give all that I have to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after an imagined past. It is the turning aside like Moses to the miracle of the lit bush, to a brightness that seemed as transitory as your youth once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
“A Bright Field” by R. S. Thomas (1913–2000)
The painting is by Jacob Van Ruisdael – “View of Haarlem from the North West with the Bleaching Fields in the Foreground” c.1670-1675.
P.S. This is a wonderful response to the Michigan State University shooting by Kevin DeYoung. “As long as there is sin and suffering in the world the gospel will be relevant. Is there more hostility to authentic biblical Christianity than a few decades ago? Probably. But people are still people. They don’t want to be scared, and they don’t want to die. They need forgiveness, they need comfort, they need hope. They need Jesus.”
And Brett McCracken makes a good point here: “In a twist Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel likely never saw coming, the avant-garde has, in the 21st century, become middlebrow ennui. Subversion has scaled up like Starbucks, going stale in the process. This means “normal” starts to feel unexpectedly radical…In an age where amoral excess is the bland standard, disciplined restraint is the flavorful exception.”
Have a good day. Read some poetry. Think for yourself.
Well, the weekend started out chilly and chill, the highlight being daughter #1’s sighting of a very large hawk on the back fence.
Later the same day we spotted a bald eagle flying over our neighborhood! We were not fast enough to snap a picture, but it was exciting. Mais vraiment, two large raptors in one day! According to our local news rag, it is the season for Turkey Buzzards to return from their southern migration, so we’ll be on the lookout for them, although, let’s be honest, it is not very exciting to see vultures.
Another highlight was going to The Cracker Barrel for dinner! We had not been there in many, many years, but after hearing that they now serve alcohol, we headed over to Fenton around 4:45 pm so we could get a table without having to wait on the front porch. We were pleasantly surprised with our meals (mine was from the kid’s menu) and the addition of a cold Blue Moon only enhanced the experience.
“Yeah, that’s a big bite. I’m a big boy.” (The hashbrown casserole is delish.)
At church on Sunday, the wee laddie filled out the welcome card as usual…
…before heading down to Sunday School. The service still fills me with joy and sets me on my course for the week. Amen.
We went home afterwards and ate bagels and then went outside to frolic…(Lottie was sick at home with her Mom, but Mr. Smith got quite a workout with just the wee laddie, chasing the car and playing soccer.)
It was even warm enough to do some driveway sittin’! It was so great to see the sun and that blue sky!
Meanwhile, the two sisters continue to bond adorably…
Have a good week! “By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.” (1 Peter 2: 24-25)
From prayer that asks that I may be Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee, From fearing when I should aspire, From faltering when I should climb higher, From silken self, O Captain, free Thy soldier who would follow Thee.
From subtle love of softening things, From easy choices, weakenings, Not thus are spirits fortified, Not this way went the Crucified; From all that dims Thy Calvary, O Lamb of God, deliver me.
Give me the love that leads the way, The faith that nothing can dismay, The hope no disappointments tire, The passion that will burn like fire; Let me not sink to be a clod; Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God.
