poetry | dual personalities

August 31, 2020

“You’ve got to take the bitter with the sweet”*

by chuckofish

On Saturday the OM and I decided to take a drive down to Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery on the Mississippi River at Lemay, MO. Both our fathers are buried there, so we found their graves.

I was glad to be reminded that my father’s grave was located on Grant Drive with a nice view. (You will recall that U.S. Grant was assigned to Jefferson Barracks after graduating from West Point in 1843.) ANC III was a proud veteran of two wars and I think he would be pleased with his resting place.

We didn’t tarry.

The muffled drum’s sad roll has beat
The soldier’s last tattoo;
No more on life’s parade shall meet
That brave and fallen few.
On Fame’s eternal camping-ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And Glory guards, with solemn round,
The bivouac of the dead.
From “Bivouac of the Dead” by Theodore O’Hara (1820 – 1867)

In other news I was sad to note the passing of Julia Evans Reed who fought the good fight but lost it finally on Friday. She was a journalist and wrote for Garden & Gun in recent years. She appreciated old things and history, her southern heritage, old friends and good parties. And she was a good writer. Also lost to cancer was Chadwick Bozeman, who soldiered on through surgeries and chemotherapy to make several movies, most notably Black Panther (2018), exhibiting extraordinary courage.

Into paradise may the angels lead thee and at thy coming may the martyrs receive thee, and bring thee into the holy city Jerusalem. (BCP, Burial of the Dead, Rite I)

On a happier note, daughter #2 dressed wee Katiebelle in a smocked dress my mother made for daughter #1 and had a photo shoot. Note the wee babe is wearing the cherry bloomers and matching booties her aunt made to complete the ensemble.

Here is daughter #1 wearing the dress on Christmas in 1984 with her grandma who made it.

Sunrise, sunset.

One of the lessons in Sunday’s liturgy was this wonderful passage from Romans:

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Words to live by. I especially like the part about leaving room for the wrath of God. Trust that he is in control. Everything will work out.

*Carole King

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August 24, 2020

A poem for Tuesday

by chuckofish

What happened is, we grew lonely
living among the things,
so we gave the clock a face,
the chair a back,
the table four stout legs
which will never suffer fatigue.
We fitted our shoes with tongues
as smooth as our own
and hung tongues inside bells
so we could listen
to their emotional language,
and because we loved graceful profiles
the pitcher received a lip,
the bottle a long, slender neck.
Even what was beyond us
was recast in our image;
we gave the country a heart,
the storm an eye,
the cave a mouth
so we could pass into safety.
“Things” by Lisel Mueller

My apologies for the shortness of this post, but I have had a busy week so far…but a poem a day is good for dealing with stress, right?

Who knows, but I like this one!

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August 18, 2020

A barrel full of bears

by chuckofish

Tomorrow is the birthday of Ogden Nash (August 19, 1902 – May 19, 1971), an American poet known for his light verse. This poem, which I haven’t thought about for years and years, was a great favorite of mine as a child. Remember “The Tale of Custard the Dragon”?

Belinda lived in a little white house,
With a little black kitten and a little gray mouse,
And a little yellow dog and a little red wagon,
And a realio, trulio, little pet dragon.
Now the name of the little black kitten was Ink,
And the little gray mouse, she called him Blink,
And the little yellow dog was sharp as Mustard,
But the dragon was a coward, and she called him Custard.
Belinda was as brave as a barrel full of bears,
And Ink and Blink chased lions down the stairs,
Mustard was as brave as a tiger in a rage,
But Custard cried for a nice safe cage.

You can read the whole poem here.

Our copy was in “The Golden Treasury of Poetry” illustrated by Joan Walsh Anglund.

I wonder if people still read Nash’s poems to their children as our parents did. Studies show, of course, that reading to one’s children is one of the most effective ways to build the “language” neural connections in their growing brains as well as a strong base for cognitive development. Indeed, babies who are read to have their “receptive” vocabularies (number of words they understand) increased 40 per cent, while those not read to increase by only 16 per cent. (Studies show!)

Well, a toast to old Ogden Nash and a realio, trulio, little pet dragon.

While on the subject of reading, John Piper gives 10 reasons for reading the Bible every day. “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32)

(Painting by Mary Cassatt: “Mrs Cassatt Reading to her Grandchildren” -1888)

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August 10, 2020

“Remark to this, Whittaker Walt.”*

by chuckofish

I took Friday afternoon off and had a picnic with my two pals in Laumeier Park and started off the weekend on a fine note. Daughter #1 arrived in town in time for a beer on the patio.

Then we listened to the 2-record Henry Mancini set she found at an estate sale. Life in the fast lane, man.

We enjoyed a pretty mellow weekend, the highlight of which was a visit from the wee babes who shrieked with delight at the prospect of a play date with their aunt.

On Saturday we had unearthed more treasures from our basement cache of vintage toys, which included a lot more Beanie Babies…

…and myriad other 1990s treats…

The wee laddie preferred to play with his old favorites, “my Cooper” in particular…

although he did climb into the doll crib for a pretend nap.

There is never a dull moment when these monkeys are around.

We FaceTimed with the newest wee babe and her Mommy.

We mused that she really does bear a striking resemblance to her great great grandfather ANC Jr…

Aren’t genes fascinating?

After daughter #1 returned to mid-MO on Sunday, I repotted some plants and caught up with daughter #2. I read some more Lovejoy (I’m on my third mystery.) I tidied up and got my mind set for the work week.

Here are some good words from the Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier to start your week:

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways!
Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives Thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise.

In simple trust like theirs who heard
Beside the Syrian sea
The gracious calling of the Lord,
Let us, like them, without a word
Rise up and follow Thee.

O Sabbath rest by Galilee!
O calm of hills above,
Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee
The silence of eternity
Interpreted by love!

With that deep hush subduing all
Our words and works that drown
The tender whisper of Thy call,
As noiseless let Thy blessing fall
As fell Thy manna down.

Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.

Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm.

*Alan Arkin in The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966)–an hilarious movie which I highly recommend watching.

6 Comments

August 4, 2020

Masters of the trivial

by chuckofish

The Things
When I walk in my house I see pictures,
bought long ago, framed and hanging
— de Kooning, Arp, Laurencin, Henry Moore —
that I’ve cherished and stared at for years,
yet my eyes keep returning to the masters
of the trivial — a white stone perfectly round,
tiny lead models of baseball players, a cowbell,
a broken great-grandmother’s rocker,
a dead dog’s toy — valueless, unforgettable
detritus that my children will throw away
as I did my mother’s souvenirs of trips
with my dead father. Kodaks of kittens,
and bundles of cards from her mother Kate.
by Donald Hall

Trivial, we all know, means “of little value or importance.” Yes, it is true, most of my things are of no monetary value. But trivial in any other sense is in the eye of the beholder. To each his own, I say. I love my trivial pursuits.

The OM and I watched a great movie the other night–Kes (1969), an English film directed by Kenneth Loach and based on the novel A Kestral for a Knave by Barry Hines. It is ranked seventh in the British Film Institute’s Top Ten (British) Films.

The story is about Billy Casper, a neglected working-class 15-year-old who finds solace and meaning training a kestrel, and it packs quite a punch. It is not an easy film to watch–so dreary and sad and sometimes it’s like watching a movie in a foreign language, so hard to understand are the Yorkshire accents–but it is well worth the effort. A wonderful film. The boy is perfect. We had DVR’d it on TCM, but you can rent it on Amazon Prime.

The world is more than we know.

“He knew then what it was that Liz had given him; the thing that he would have to go back and find if ever he got home to England; it was the caring about little things–the faith in ordinary life; the simplicity that made you break up a bit of bread into a paper bag, walk down to the beach and throw it to the gulls. It was this respect for triviality which he had never been allowed to possess; whether it was bread of the seagulls or love.”
― John le Carré, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold

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July 31, 2020

The song of my marrow-bones

by chuckofish

It is the last day of July. Baseball has (kind of) started and I can’t say I care much. But here’s a throwback from 1966 when our Big Brother was in 9th grade and played on the CODASCO “C” team.

They look so young. Our BB is in the front row, third from the right. His best friend is next to him in the middle of the row. He has at least 7 inches to grow! His other friend Mike is directly behind him (obscured) and had about a foot to grow! Such babes. Our brother played third base.

I remember going to see several Cardinals games at the old Busch Stadium with all three of those boys. It was always so much fun to be around them! Though pushing 70 now (!), they are still nice boys.

Well, besides looking nostalgically backwards, I have been reading more Lovejoy.

“Cheerful adversity is vaguely entertaining, but even friends steer clear of doom.”
(Gold By Gemini)

I also searched high and low for my copy of Knowing God, having read about the passing of J.I. Packer last week. I have yet to find by book, but I have read a lot about Packer and listened to an interesting interview with Packer and John Piper. Packer was an evangelical and a lifelong Anglican, someone with whom I can identify. He spent the first half of his life in England and the second half in Canada but was perhaps most popular in the United States. He is widely recognized as one of the most influential theological popularizers of the twentieth century. Like the Puritans he loved, Packer believed that the Christian faith is based on clear thinking while at the same time engaging the heart. According to Justin Taylor, he saw himself as “a voice that called people back to old paths of truth and wisdom.” His entire life was spent resisting the idea that “the newer is the truer, only what is recent is decent, every shift of ground is a step forward, and every latest word must be hailed as the last word on its subject.”

Knowing God was given to me in 1976 as a Christmas present by a young man at Williams College who was in a Bible study I attended. He was a little older than everyone because he had taken a year or two off to travel in Africa. He was certainly not your typical Williams student. He was the first person outside my family who recognized that I was perhaps spiritually deeper than the flakey chick most people saw. I’m not sure what became of Joe, but I’m pretty sure he was headed to divinity school. It is good to be reminded of such people–the ones who encourage and nudge you along the way.

Here’s some more pandemic musing which I found interesting.

And a poem by Stanley Kunitz:

End of Summer

An agitation of the air,

A perturbation of the light

Admonished me the unloved year

Would turn on its hinge that night.

I stood in the disenchanted field

Amid the stubble and the stones,

Amazed, while a small worm lisped to me

The song of my marrow-bones.

Blue poured into summer blue,

A hawk broke from his cloudless tower,

The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew

That part of my life was over.

Already the iron door of the north

Clangs open: birds, leaves, snows

Order their populations forth,

And a cruel wind blows.

Best Face Mask Award goes to Marty Stuart and his Manuel-designed couture mask. ❤️

4 Comments

July 27, 2020

“How good to rise in sunlight”

by chuckofish

As you can imagine, I have been doing a lot of snoozing, watching tv and reading as I recuperate from surgery.

High on my list of things to do, is watch episodes of Lovejoy, the British tv show from the early 1990s which starred Ian McShane as the antiques dealer/amateur sleuth. I also read the first novel in the Lovejoy series, The Judas Pair from 1977. It was great–full of details about the antiques trade and actual suspense! Lovejoy himself is a great character and, for once, the tv show is well cast with Ian McShane.

I am now waiting with bated breath for my lot of 10 Lovejoy novels, which I purchased on eBay, to arrive. Then I will be all set (for awhile.)

I know she was 104, but I am still very sad that Olivia de Haviland has died.

She was a beautiful lady, a great actress and a devout Episcopalian. They don’t make ’em like Olivia anymore. Aren’t we lucky to have a large array of Olivia’s films to remember her by! She made some classics in her long career. My favorites include: Captain Blood (1936), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), The Santa Fe Trail (1940), They Died With Their Boots on (1941), Devotion (1948), The Proud Rebel (1958) and a lot more.

Into paradise may the angels lead thee, Olivia, and at thy coming may the martyrs receive thee, and bring thee into the holy city Jerusalem. (BCP, Burial of the Dead, Rite I)

And I have to say I have always had a soft spot in my heart for Regis Philbin who also died recently. He endeared himself to me when he co-hosted Regis and Kathie Lee, which I watched during the 1980s when I was home with three little kids. He even made me like (a little bit) The University of Notre Dame, which he loved so much. Going there had clearly meant everything to him, a smart-alecky kid from the Bronx, who made it to the Big Time. The man was a workhorse, a rare thing nowadays. RIP, Regis.

And here’s a poem for Monday–seize the day!

Dawn Revisited
by Rita Dove

Imagine you wake up
with a second chance: The blue jay
hawks his pretty wares
and the oak still stands, spreading
glorious shade. If you don’t look back,
the future never happens.
How good to rise in sunlight,
in the prodigal smell of biscuits –
eggs and sausage on the grill.
The whole sky is yours
to write on, blown open
to a blank page. Come on,
shake a leg! You’ll never know
who’s down there, frying those eggs,
if you don’t get up and see.

3 Comments

July 14, 2020

“Sweet July, warm July!”*

by chuckofish

I have been reading a little bit of this, a little bit of that…

The Walter Mirisch book is fascinating if you are at all interested in movies. Written by an extremely successful film producer (several Academy Awards for Best Picture), one learns how someone who can make brilliant decisions can also make dumbfoundingly bad ones and never understand why. The David McCullough book contains “portraits in history” ranging from Louis Agassiz to Frederick Remington to Miriam Rothschild. As I have said before, McCullough understands context better than almost anyone writing today. He does not judge his subjects, but he likes them (you can tell).

Did I mention that we watched The Brothers Karamazov (1958) Sunday night? I’m not sure I had ever really watched the whole movie. Of course, it is not the masterpiece that the book is–it is just the plot with some character development that we see. The spiritual aspects are mostly left out, although (spoiler alert!) Richard Basehart as Ivan does admit that there is a God at the conclusion of the story.

Nevertheless, it is very good. Yul Brynner is excellent and so handsome–really at the top of his game–his performance shows a lot of depth. Also, William Shatner is very good as the youngest, most spiritual brother. (And he is also very handsome.) There are also some casting mistakes (why did Albert Salmi have a career?), but on the whole, I was impressed by this adaption by Richard Brooks–well done.

[Also I will note that there is a line in the movie said by Grushenka–“All the truth adds up to one big lie.”–which is also a line in a Bob Dylan song. Of course, Bob.]

I am having some follow-up surgery this Thursday, but my DP, along with daughters #1 and 2, will pick up the slack, and I’ll be back soon.

“Be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education.”

–Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

*George Meredith, “July”

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June 29, 2020

“I’ll keep the path open, the path in my mind.”*

by chuckofish

I had a quiet weekend. It was hot and sometimes rainy, so I stayed close to home. But I ventured out to a couple of estate sales and had some luck. I found an antique/vintage highchair, of which I am in need since we sometimes have wee twins to dine…

I also rescued a needlepoint brick!

Anyway, I was pleased.

I also did some closet rummaging/rearranging and finished reading A Glassful of Blessings by Barbara Pym. Practically nothing happens in her novels, but she is such a good writer and her descriptions of the smallest interactions are so on target, that I find her books very enjoyable.

In my rummaging I found this little doll from the Soviet Union, which my mother told me she had bought with her pennies in Woolworth’s in the 1930s. It may have been the first thing she bought herself. She is small–only about 5 ” tall.

It appealed to her and she had kept it all those years and now I have kept it all these years. How different she is from all of Lottiebelle’s Disney princesses!

I watched Destry Rides Again (1939) which stars James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich.

Stewart is well cast as the initially misunderstood deputy who does not wear a gun. Dietrich, as usual, steals the show, and everyone is happy to let her. The supporting cast is strong. All in all, it is an excellent summer entertainment.

I fell asleep in the middle of most everything else I watched. Par for the course.

Now it is back to the salt mine of working remotely.

The lark is up to meet the sun,
The bee is on the wing,
The ant her labor has begun,
The woods with music ring.

Shall birds and bees and ants be wise,
While I my moments waste?
Oh, let me with the morning rise,
And to my duties haste. (Jane Taylor)

*Bob Dylan

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June 26, 2020

“Forc[ed] to sing our songs in little rooms”*

by chuckofish

So another weekend is upon us. June is nearing its end! The year is already half over! Good grief.

But it is tiger lily season here in all its glory. And fireflies are back! Summer is definitely here in flyover country! I’ll toast that!

In other news, I liked what Paul Walker said in his daily devotional the other day:

Christ Church, Charlottesville, is taking its Sunday morning service outside this week. I don’t know if that means they will not be recording it. If so, I will miss them. But it is a good thing that more and more churches are getting back together in person. I salute them.

I liked this too, written by Sam Bush, who plays the guitar at the Christ Church services. (The bit by John Mulaney is pretty funny too. I haven’t watched SNL for 100 years.)

While rummaging in the basement, I found some smocked dresses made by my mother (and two store-bought) plus one made by my grandmother. I washed and ironed them this week and sent them to daughter #2 for Katiebelle.

Here’s Katiebelle’s Mommy wearing one of them!

I didn’t do anything else too interesting this past week. The OM and I watched Patton (1970)–all three hours of it!–and enjoyed it, but not that much. Patton ends on a depressing note. As usual, journalists come off badly.

We also watched The Train (1964) an American/French WWII film with Burt Lancaster getting to do all the physical stuff at which he excelled.

The story takes place in August 1944 when masterpieces of modern art stolen by the Wehrmacht are being shipped to Germany by train. The Nazi officer in charge of the operation is determined to take the paintings to Germany, no matter the cost (in other words, he’s a nut.) The French resistance members (led by Burt) save the paintings but at quite a loss of French lives, begging the question, is art worth human lives? The obsessed art-loving Nazi in this story would say, yes, without hesitation. But Burt doesn’t agree–very existential, and in black and white too (unlike the poster above, of course).

I will note that on this day in 1977 Elvis Presley held his final concert in Indianapolis, Indiana at Market Square Arena. We might want to watch an Elvis movie and raise a toast. Jailhouse Rock (1957) anyone?