“Not all those who wander are lost”*
by chuckofish
The OM and I are back home after our little flyover trip to KC. More tomorrow. Stay tuned!
*J.R.R. Tolkien
dual personalities
Tag: quotes
June 2, 2016
Tonight I long for rest
by chuckofish
Here’s a great poem, “The Day is Done,” from the forgotten Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Read the whole thing.
The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o’er me
That my soul cannot resist:A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time,For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life’s endless toil and endeavor;
And tonight I long for rest.Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.Such songs have a power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And comes like the benediction
That follows after prayer.Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.–Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882
The painting is “Fire Fancies” by Arthur Hacker, 1865
May 23, 2016
“I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)” *
by chuckofish
I’m back from my long weekend celebrating my niece’s wedding. It was fun being with my brother and his family.
Chris with his son Foster
My dual personality was there with one of her sons.
There was a lot of music.
…and plenty of cousin time…
Foster and the boy
Cousins, including Ellen, the bride
Good times.
*e.e. cummings
May 16, 2016
“O Lord, how manifold are your works!” *
by chuckofish
Happy Pentecost! How was your weekend?
We went to the last lacrosse game of the season on Friday after work and enjoyed sitting outside on a beautiful day, watching the game and the people around us. We never talked to the boy but the OM took a few pictures of him across the field with his giant lens.
On Saturday I went to several estate sales, including one in the lovely home of the brother of a former president of the U.S. His wife died a few months ago and I suppose he is down-sizing–you know, the kids took what they wanted and they were getting rid of the rest. The house was lovely and unpretentious, full of familiar things (books and LPs and monogrammed towels) and comfortable in an old school, slightly shabby way–just my style. They even had one of these–our family totem:
(I didn’t buy his, because I have already given one to each of my children.) I did buy an old child’s chair, which had been chewed by a family dog, and a BCP.
A good morning’s outing to be sure.
I finished Nightwoods by Charles Frazier and I highly recommend it. Good characters, tightly paced–well done. I am now reading Hope Leslie written by Catharine Maria Sedgwick in 1827, encouraged by daughter #2 who has read all of Sedgwick’s oeuvre for her dissertation. I am pleasantly surprised to report that Sedgwick is a regular Jane Austen, writing with a wry humor about “early times in Massachusetts.” Indeed the action takes place in the early seventeenth century and explores the “tumultuous relations between Puritans and Pequots.” I love this scene, described in a letter, where the fourteen-year old son pokes fun at an Anglican newcomer during a storm:
But Dame Grafton was beside herself. At one moment she fancied we should be the prey of the wild beast, and at the next, that she heard the alarm yell of the savages. Everell brought her, her prayer-book, and affecting a well-beseeming gravity, he begged her to look out the prayer for distressed women, in imminent danger of being scalped by North American Indians. The poor lady, distracted with terror, seized the book, and turned over leaf after leaf. Everell meanwhile affecting to aid her search. In vain I shook my head, reprovingly, at the boy–in vain I assured Mistress Grafton that I trusted we were in no danger; she was beyond the influence of reason; nothing allayed her fears, till chancing to catch a glance of Everell’s eye, she detected the lurking laughter, and rapping him soundly over the ears with her book, she left the room greatly enraged.
Now that is funny. “The prayer for distressed women, in imminent danger of being scalped by North American Indians.” I already like this Catherine Maria Sedgwick a lot.
The rest of the weekend was spent pleasantly puttering around, working in the yard, eating the donuts that my friend from Atlanta brought to me at work on Friday (he was in town for the air show)–note they are the “right” donuts–
and going to a garden party in support of the Shakespeare Festival St. Louis.
It was held at our friend’s 1867 house high up overlooking the mighty Mississippi…
There was even a bassett hunt.
Not bad for a stay-at-home introvert!
*Psalm 104
May 13, 2016
Weekend plans
by chuckofish
We have had a rainy, stormy week, but the forecast for the weekend is good. I plan to take it easy and prepare for next weekend when I am going to my niece’s wedding in Pennsylvania.
“I’ll read my books and I’ll drink coffee and I’ll listen to music, and I’ll bolt the door.”
–J.D. Salinger, A Boy in France: Saturday Evening Post CCXVII, March 31, 1945
Sounds like a plan to me.
(The painting is by Thomas Hart Benton)
May 11, 2016
Mid-week meditation
by chuckofish
“[All the ancient wisdom] tells us that work is necessary to us, as much a part of our condition as mortality; that good work is our salvation and our joy; that shoddy or dishonest or self-serving work is our curse and our doom. We have tried to escape the sweat and sorrow promised in Genesis – only to find that, in order to do so, we must forswear love and excellence, health and joy.”
–Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays, “The Unsettling of America”
The wood engraving is by Clare Leighton – Scything, 1935
May 10, 2016
“Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.”*
by chuckofish
Today is the 153rd anniversary of the death of General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson (age 39) following the Battle of Chancellorsville, when he was shot by friendly fire on the moonlit night of May 2, 1863.
“Chancellorsville” portrait, taken at a Spotsylvania County farm on April 26, 1863, seven days before he was wounded. What a face!
Here he is younger and beardless. Pretty dreamy.
I have always admired Stonewall Jackson as an exemplar of the Scotch-Irish Protestants who came to this country in the eighteenth century, many of them as indentured servants, and worked and fought hard to make a home here. In fact his paternal great-grandparents (John Jackson and Elizabeth Cummins) met on the prison ship from London and fell in love. They married six years later when they gained their freedom.
The family migrated west across the Blue Ridge Mountains to settle near Moorefield, Virginia in 1758. In 1770, they moved farther west to the Tygart Valley. They began to acquire large parcels of virgin farming land near the present-day town of Buckhannon, including 3,000 acres in Elizabeth’s name. John and his two teenage sons fought in the Revolutionary War; John finished the war as a captain. While the men were in the army, Elizabeth converted their home to a haven for refugees from Indian attacks known as “Jackson’s Fort.”
Yes, the Jacksons were awesome.
Furthermore, Stonewall was a profoundly religious man and a deacon in the Presbyterian Church. One of his many nicknames was “Old Blue Lights,” a term applied to a military man whose evangelical zeal burned with the intensity of the blue light used for night-time display. He disliked fighting on Sunday, although that did not stop him from doing so after much personal debate.
Here is a poem by Herman Melville that pretty well sums up my feelings about the great Stonewall:
Mortally Wounded at Chancellorsville
The Man who fiercest charged in fight,
Whose sword and prayer were long –
Stonewall!
Even him who stoutly stood for Wrong,
How can we praise? Yet coming days
Shall not forget him with this song.Dead is the Man whose Cause is dead,
Vainly he died and set his seal –
Stonewall!
Earnest in error, as we feel;
True to the thing he deemed was due,
True as John Brown or steel.Relentlessly he routed us;
But we relent, for he is low –
Stonewall!
Justly his fame we outlaw; so
We drop a tear on the bold Virginian’s bier,
Because no wreath we owe.
Monument Avenue in Richmond, VA
*Stonewall Jackson’s dying words–beautiful!
May 6, 2016
“It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants.”
by chuckofish
Today we note again the anniversary of the death of Henry David Thoreau in 1862.
Let us not forget these wise words:
The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls — the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.
Hear, hear!
Have a good weekend. Happy Mother’s Day!
May 4, 2016
Mid-week pep talk
by chuckofish
Henry and William James, brothers, early 20th century
“Now, my dear little girl, you have come to an age when the inward life develops and when some people (and on the whole those who have most of a destiny) find that all is not a bed of roses. Among other things there will be waves of terrible sadness, which last sometimes for days; irritation, insensibility, etc., etc., which taken together form a melancholy. Now, painful as it is, this is sent to us for an enlightenment. It always passes off, and we learn about life from it, and we ought to learn a great many good things if we react on it right. (For instance, you learn how good a thing your home is, and your country, and your brothers, and you may learn to be more considerate of other people, who, you now learn, may have their inner weaknesses and sufferings, too.) Many persons take a kind of sickly delight in hugging it; and some sentimental ones may even be proud of it, as showing a fine sorrowful kind of sensibility. Such persons make a regular habit of the luxury of woe. That is the worst possible reaction on it. It is usually a sort of disease, when we get it strong, arising from the organism having generated some poison in the blood; and we mustn’t submit to it an hour longer than we can help, but jump at every chance to attend to anything cheerful or comic or take part in anything active that will divert us from our mean, pining inward state of feeling. When it passes off, as I said, we know more than we did before. And we must try to make it last as short a time as possible. The worst of it often is that, while we are in it, we don’t want to get out of it. We hate it, and yet we prefer staying in it—that is a part of the disease. If we find ourselves like that, we must make something ourselves to some hard work, make ourselves sweat, etc.; and that is the good way of reacting that makes of us a valuable character. The disease makes you think of yourself all the time; and the way out of it is to keep as busy as we can thinking of things and of other people—no matter what’s the matter with our self.”
–William James, (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910), American philosopher and psychologist
May 3, 2016
Happiness is…
by chuckofish
“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.”
―Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
I have a pile of new and vintage books to read.
What is better than that? A window with a nice view. Maybe someone bringing you a cup of tea or making dinner for you?
I guess I am getting old, but that sounds very good to me.
