dual personalities

Tag: poetry

September 8, 2022

Here in the spacious classroom of the world*

by chuckofish

I have been inspired by daughter #1 to read some David McCullough history, but first I have to read #18 in the Walt Longmire series by Craig Johnson. My copy of Hell and Back arrived in the mail on schedule on Tuesday and I dove right in. I’ll let you now how it goes.

I am also reading Dane Ortlund’s Deeper for our women’s book group at church. I am not really one for book clubs since I tend to be too critical and usually am triggered by people and their comments, but I thought I’d give it a whirl. It will be good practice on keeping my mouth shut.

Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few.

Ecclesiastes 5:2

I watched the original To Be or Not to Be (1942) starring Jack Benny and Carol Lombard earlier this week and it really is a terrific movie. It is Ernst Lubitsch at his best. The plot revolves around a troupe of actors in Nazi-occupied Warsaw who use their talents with disguise and acting to fool the occupying troops. It is a very funny, dark comedy about a not-very-funny situation. It is witty and light and never crosses the line into slapstick. Carole Lombard, radiantly beautiful and smart, was never better. (Sadly, she died before the movie was released.) And Jack Benny, who supposedly felt out of his depth, does a fine job as the hack actor who must rise to the occasion several times. Felix Bressart as Greenberg, who dreams of playing Shylock, stands out among the supporting cast, but they are all terrific.

Mel Brooks remade To Be or Not to Be in 1983 and, as I recall, it is a good movie too. But as comedies go, the original is one of the Top 10 best.

Also, I stumbled upon this old blogpost and I think the Oswald Chambers quote bears repeating.

P.S. John Wayne: An American Experience was voted the Best Museum in Fort Worth by the readers of @fwtxmag 🤠 (I voted.)

Have a good Thursday!

*Billy Collins, “The Only Day in Existence”

4 Comments
September 5, 2022

“Here I raise my Ebenezer”*

by chuckofish

Our Labor Day weekend has been very rainy and gloomy. C’est la vie. We still had fun. Daughter #1 came in to town to have lunch with an old friend on Friday and then we visited several antique malls.

This is our idea of a good time. It was a lot of junk, but daughter #1 found a few things accidentally.

We watched The Wizard of Oz (1939) on Saturday night and were once again reminded what a wonderful movie it is. And let’s remember, it’s 83 years old! Almost an antique! It is one of my top five favorite/best movies ever. It is perfect. The technicolor! The details! The acting! Judy Garland! The Munchkins! Toto! No CG!

Good lord, I hope they don’t go through with plans for a “a modern reimagining of the iconic musical.” This would be a huge mistake. It is always a disaster to “re-imagine” something that is perfect. Just no.

But, yes, it is wonderful. Watching it on our big tv, I noticed several things for the first time. For instance, did you ever notice that in the scene where Dorothy and her three compadres enter the scary forest in search of the witch, the Scarecrow is carrying a handgun? He is. Anyway, it is worth watching again for the 100th time.

The boy and his family came over after church on Sunday to celebrate Labor Day with a barbecue. It was raining, but we had fun anyway.

Looking at the rain and breaking in the new sofa

Everyone enjoyed the burgers and hotdogs and a Tippins creme pie for dessert. It’s the little things, right?

Well, enjoy your day off if you have one today. Watch an old movie. Read a poem about work:

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,

Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,

The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,

The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,

The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,

The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,

The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,

The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,

Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,

The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,

Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

–Walt Whitman, “I Hear America Singing”

And this is a good illustration. “If a non-christian wants to know why we believe that the Bible is God’s word, there’s a lot of things that we could talk about.”

*Baptist minister Robert Robinson (1735–1790) wrote “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” at age 22, not long after his conversion, which was influenced in part by the preaching of evangelist George Whitefield. The meaning of Ebenezer originates more than a thousand years before Christ, during the ministry of the prophet Samuel, who played a pivotal role at a key juncture in the history of God’s people. Read all about it here.

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August 23, 2022

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”*

by chuckofish

Another summer is slipping away. The twins have started kindergarten! The time just skis by.

Sunrise, sunset.

I must note that tomorrow is the birthday of the great Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986). A toast (or two or three) is in order for this great Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, who thought about time a lot too.

We are the time. We are the famous
metaphor from Heraclitus the Obscure.

We are the water, not the hard diamond,
the one that is lost, not the one that stands still.

We are the river and we are that greek
that looks himself into the river. His reflection
changes into the waters of the changing mirror,
into the crystal that changes like the fire.

We are the vain predetermined river,
in his travel to his sea.

The shadows have surrounded him.
Everything said goodbye to us, everything goes away.

Memory does not stamp his own coin.

However, there is something that stays
however, there is something that bemoans.

–“We are the Time. We are the Famous”

*Heraclitus

3 Comments
August 18, 2022

A dark mythological river

by chuckofish

Today is National Bad Poetry Day. This seems to me to be a stupid holiday and I will ignore it. I prefer to read some good poetry. Here’s Billy Collins reading his poem “Forgetfulness,” which is a favorite of mine.

(We cannot mention Collins without remembering this classic.)

Here’s Richard Burton reading John Donne…

…Ralph Fiennes reads Kipling’s “The Way Through the Woods”…

…”Two English Poems” by Jorge Luis Borges read by Tom O’Bedlam…

Don’t you feel better…and smarter? (Even if you are losing your memory.)

Here’s an interesting chat with Carl Trueman. And here’s a good reminder. You can do this.

Blessed is the one
    who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
    or sit in the company of mockers,
2 but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
    and who meditates on his law day and night.
3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
    which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
    whatever they do prospers.

–Psalm 1: 1-3
5 Comments
August 2, 2022

Fun facts to know and tell and other stuff

by chuckofish

Does this picture spell summertime or what?

Summer is flying by, but there are actually 51 more days of summer!

Fun fact to know and tell: I always wondered where the French filmmaker, actor and spiritual father of the Fench New Wave, Jean-Pierre Melville, got the name Melville, which is very Scottish. Well, when he was with the French Resistance during WWII, he adopted the pseudonym Melville as a tribute to his favorite American author Herman Melville. He kept it as his stage name once the war was over. How about that? Please note that the famous Frenchman also died on this day in 1973, so you might want to toast him and watch one of his movies.

August is the Summer Under the Stars Month on TCM when a different star is celebrated every day. It’s not a particularly great lineup this year, but I will set my DVR on August 5 (Orson Welles), August 6 (Audrey Hepburn), August 9 (William Holden), and August 19 (Toshiro Mifune). And hold the phone, Gilbert Roland has his own day on August 24! Save the date!

This is a really good sermon. Read the whole thing.

Let’s forget about trying to please the world. The mission of the church is NOT to please the world anyway. So let’s not even try to be The Church of What’s Happening Now.

Instead let us please Christ by being the faithful church that “earnestly contends for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3) by the Scriptures and by the Apostles and Church Fathers. Then, and only then, we will be able wisely to “speak the truth in love” and to address what’s happening now, instead of being The Church of What’s Happening Now.

Here are some classic moments with Tony Dow as Wally Cleaver in Leave It to Beaver, which, let’s be frank, was really a great show. I chuckled throughout this highlight reel. Rest in peace, Tony, you were a great big brother.

And here’s a poem I like:

Blighted is the man
who doesn’t stick his neck out,
doesn’t think for himself,
doesn’t revere anything.
But he laughs on cue
while watching TV day and night.
He is like everybody else.
In all that he does, he gets by.
The believers are not so,
they don’t move with the times.
Therefore, the godly will not stand
in the court of human approval,
nor the Christlike at the best parties in town.
For who’s to say what is right?
And doesn’t everybody go to heaven?

–Ray Ortlund, “Psalm 1, a reverse translation”
Saying, “Hi, Mamu!”

Grace and peace to you today, my friends.

6 Comments
June 23, 2022

“I fill my lungs, a summer-full of breaths. The great field holds the wind, and sways.”*

by chuckofish

Not surprisingly, June has buzzed by. We are a week away from July! I have been taking it easy this week, while also trying to get ready for my trip to North Carolina which commences on Saturday when daughter #1 and I leave at an ungodly hour on a very early flight out of town.

I am praying for easy travel, nice weather and good health for all concerned.

Anyway, I don’t have much to blog about, just a few links and a reminder:

“Beware of manufacturing a God of your own: a God who is all mercy, but not just; a God who is all love, but not holy; a God who has a heaven for every body, but a hell for none; a God who can allow good and bad to be side by side in time, but will make no distinction between good and bad in eternity. Such a God is an idol of your own, as truly an idol as any snake or crocodile in an Egyptian temple. The hands of your own fancy and sentimentality have made him. He is not the God of the Bible, and beside the God of the Bible there is no God at all.”

–J.C. Ryle *1816-1900), evangelical Anglican bishop

This is very true. “Christianity has a long history of taking words seriously. Hold fast to that noble tradition. As Jesus said, ‘by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned’ (Matthew 12:37).”

Our father was like this too. It’s called being a gentleman, which, as we know, is a dying breed.

Hang in there!

*Jay Parini, from the poem “Ordinary Time”

3 Comments
June 21, 2022

 “Consider the lilies, how they grow”*

by chuckofish

Yesterday was Juneteenth, which I wrote about back in 2013 before it was a whole thing. As is our custom, we watched The Professionals (1967), starring Woody Strode, in honor of the day. It is a great movie, one of my top 20 favorites.

Coincidentally, we also watched The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) recently–another great movie starring the inimitable Strode. Sergeant Rutledge (1960), of course, is his greatest role.

“That was a classic,” he said later of his part. “It had dignity. John Ford put classic words in my mouth… You never seen a Negro come off a mountain like John Wayne before. I had the greatest Glory Hallelujah ride across the Pecos River that any black man ever had on the screen. And I did it myself. I carried the whole black race across that river.” Amen, brother.

Ay, man is manly. Here you see
  The warrior-carriage of the head,
And brave dilation of the frame;
  And lighting all, the soul that led
In Spottsylvania’s charge to victory,
  Which justifies his fame.

A cheering picture. It is good
  To look upon a Chief like this,
In whom the spirit moulds the form.
  Here favoring Nature, oft remiss,
With eagle mien expressive has endued
  A man to kindle strains that warm.

–From “On the Photograph of a Corps Commander” by Herman Melville

We didn’t watch any special movies for Father’s Day, but here’s a list of Father’s Day movie picks which isn’t bad, but, of course, it only mentions two films made before the year 2000. Here’s my list from a few years ago, which includes some older, excellent movie choices.

This video is inspiring as well as a good reminder of how quickly we forget the devastating things that happen to other people.

And guess what? It’s Day Lily season! The hearty orange blooms are everywhere and will continue to cheer us up for several weeks as it heats up in flyover country.

The lilies in our yard are lagging behind, but they are coming along. Ain’t they grand?

Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

*Luke 12:27

6 Comments
June 2, 2022

June, she’ll change her tune

by chuckofish

Well, here we are–a new month and the year almost half over! It is also the start of the festivities celebrating Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee.

We wish her well. Here are some thoughts on a long monarchy and what comes next for the church. “Queen Elizabeth is a devout Christian and has increasingly made this clear through her annual Christmas broadcasts. At the same time, she is the representative of a sort of national folk-Christianity; a symbol of a time when Britain was a Christian nation. As such, she has allowed us to fool ourselves that things are not as bad as they could be. The nation still has a Christian heart.”

And, boy, this rings true:

“Where men are forbidden to honour a king they honour millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead: even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.”
― C.S. Lewis, Present Concerns

Do you think he was talking about us?

Anyway, it is feeling decidedly like summer around here. Here’s a summery snapshot of my grandmother (Catherine) and her beau/future husband (Bunker Cameron) circa 1919 with some great-aunt in between.

Bunker is, of course, goofing around wearing someone else’s hat. Catherine thinks it’s hilarious. Who knows what the old lady thinks–but she was probably amused by Bunker too.

I went to the dances at Chandlerville,
And played snap-out at Winchester.

One time we changed partners,
Driving home in the midnight of middle June,
And then I found Davis.
We were married and lived together for seventy years,
Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,
Eight of whom we lost
Ere I had reached the age of sixty.
I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick,
I made the garden, and for holiday
Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,
And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,
And many a flower and medicinal weed–
Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.
At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all,
And passed to a sweet repose.
What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?
Degenerate sons and daughters,
Life is too strong for you–
It takes life to love Life.

–Edgar Lee Master, “Lucinda Matlock–Spoon River Anthology”
3 Comments
May 24, 2022

Early one morning the sun was shining

by chuckofish

Yesterday I worked in the yard for a little bit because it was too beautiful a day to stay inside. I paid for it though with the sneezing fit it set off. Curses, pollen strikes again!

Meanwhile the iris continue to be insane.

Well, I feel like some Walt Whitman poetry, don’t you? His birthday is a week from today…

Not from successful love alone,

Nor wealth, nor honor’d middle age, nor victories of politics or war;

But as life wanes, and all the turbulent passions calm,

As gorgeous, vapory, silent hues cover the evening sky,

As softness, fulness, rest, suffuse the frame, like freshier, balmier air,

As the days take on a mellower light, and the apple at last hangs

really finish’d and indolent-ripe on the tree,

Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all!

The brooding and blissful halcyon days!

“Halcyon Days”

And a toast to brother Bob Dylan, whose birthday is today.

And I will offer in His tent sacrifices with shouts of joy;
I will sing, yes, I will sing praises to the Lord.

Psalm 27:6

5 Comments
May 12, 2022

This and that

by chuckofish

Another hot one! In fact, we broke a record yesterday with a high of 94 degrees. Back in the day, we would still have been at school on May 12–where there was no air-conditioning! How ever did we survive? Well, we did somehow. For several years in high school, I had long, waist-length hair which I wore in braids in order to stay cool.

Even after it cooled off, I still wore the braids, because they were practical. I can’t remember if anyone else at my school wore braids. It was probably just nerds like me and Judy Hensler on Leave It to Beaver…

and Willie Nelson…

C’est la vie.

Well, I seem to have once again gone down a rabbit hole in my brain. Mea culpa. Here’s the poem by Sara Teasdale I was going to share before I went off the track. It’s called “Sunset: St. Louis”…

Here’s a photo of the riverfront in 1938, taken a few years after she wrote the poem, but you get the idea.

It is a totally different riverfront than we have today.

Well, daughter #1 is driving in from Jeff City this morning and we are picking up daughter #2 and the precocious Katiebelle at the airport this afternoon.

Stay tuned for super fun. In the meantime here are a couple of links which I enjoyed. Read them or not; I leave that up to you.

5 1/2 Habits of Remarkably Ineffective People. “Today, many of the institutions and ideas that have shaped our culture are on life-support. And it has been “successful” people who have led us to this place. This “post-everything” moment offers us an opportunity to question what seems unquestionable, to study our values — and maybe even reconsider Jesus’ upside-down approach.”

Stop Praying “Be With” Prayers. “All that matters may be brought before God, but we must always bring before God those things that matter most.”

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