“I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else.”
–Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek
“He took her face in his hands and kissed it, and she saw that he was laughing. “When you’re an old maid in mittens down at Helford, you’ll remember that,” he said, “and it will have to last you to the end of your days. ‘He stole horses,’ you’ll say to yourself, ‘and he didn’t care for women; and but for my pride I’d have been with him now.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Jamaica Inn
Happy birthday to Dame Daphne du Maurier (13 May 1907 – 19 April 1989)!
According to IMDB, “Daphne Du Maurier was one of the most popular English writers of the 20th Century, when middle-brow genre fiction was accorded a higher level of respect in a more broadly literate age. For her services to literature, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1969, the female equivalent of a knighthood.” In other words, they don’t write them like she did anymore.
Yes, it may be time to dust off Jamaica Inn or Frenchman’s Creek. I wish they would do justice to her books on film, but I haven’t seen any that really come close to her prose power. The Birds maybe. I must say, they keep trying. Check out all the versions here.
*Jamaica Inn, of course
I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a row of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green.
–Henry David Thoreau
Well, I know just what old Thoreau is talking about. Do you?
I go out to see if my pumpkin plants are still where I planted them every morning and then again when I come home from work.
The OM says, ironically, “Are they still there?” But I am worried about them! My past experience teaches me that their chances are not particularly good. Pesky garden varmints enjoy digging around in this bed, but so far so good.
I love this time of year though, don’t you?
When the plants are just starting to come up and the weeds and violets and creeping vines have not taken over.
peony buds
The first rose bud
When insect life is minimal. When it is still cool enough to enjoy my time in the yard. I admit I lose interest quickly when our flyover temperatures soar. I am a fair-weather gardener.
But you know how my mind works. Thoreau’s quote got me thinking about “a hill of beans” and how that expression became a synonym for something of negligible importance or value. I wonder how that came to be the case? Anyway, this made me think of that famous scene at the end of Casablanca, when Rick says to Ilsa: “I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand that…”
Yeats, you recall, wanted “Nine bean-rows” and “a hive for the honey-bee” in his Innisfree home.
Hmmm. If my pumpkins amount to even a hill of beans this year, maybe next year I’ll plant some beans.
On this day in 1992 Marlene Dietrich died. She was 91 and had lived quite a life.
[Dietrich’s gravestone in Berlin. The inscription reads “Hier steh ich an den Marken meiner Tage“–“Here I stand at the milestone of my days”.]
Marlene Dietrich stands out in the history of film as one of the few German actresses who attained international significance. I just watched her recently in the 1942 version of The Spoliers with John Wayne and Randolph Scott. She really steals the show, even with John Wayne opposite. She is exotic, beautiful, smart, and likable–not always the case with the femme fatale type.
Dietrich, a staunch anti-Nazi, became an American citizen in 1939. The U.S. Government awarded Dietrich the Medal of Freedom for her war work. Dietrich has been quoted as saying this was the honor of which she was most proud in her life. They also awarded her the Operation Entertainment Medal. The French Government made her a Chevalier (later upgraded to Commandeur) of the Legion d’Honneur and a Commandeur of the Ordre des Artes et des Lettres. Her other awards include the Medallion of Honor of the State of Israel, the Fashion Foundation of America award and a Chevalier de L’ordre de Leopold.
Yes, she was quite a gal and deserves a toast tonight. Here she is singing “Lili Marlene” in german. I seem to recall my pater getting weepy over this one.
*See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have by Frank Loesser from Destry Rides Again
Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.
John 20:19
This Sunday’s Gospel reading was the scripture where Jesus does not bother to use the door which is locked anyway. He just appears to 10 of the remaining 11 disciples. This is mentioned very casually. No one really makes a big deal of it. Because they don’t, one thinks it is probably just what happened. At least I think so.
The disciples, huddled in their locked room after everything that has happened, are both afraid and ashamed of their fear and their behavior in general. We should try to remember the disciples when we are fearful and anxious. They were not paragons of strength. Far from it. Some of them were not even very smart. (Think of Peter.) They were just like us. After this visit from Jesus, however, when he breathes on them and they receive the Holy Spirit, they seem to have gotten their collective acts together. It took a second visit for Thomas, because he missed the first and refused to believe without “touching and seeing”.
Jesus says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
We all have our doubts, and that’s okay. Doubts, Frederick Buechner says, are “the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”
Well, my mind wandered during the sermon on this scripture, but this is what I was thinking.
Meanwhile this weekend I enjoyed the spring weather by working in the yard. I also went on a birthday outing with my best Grace girlfriends. Our fearless leader and party planner Carla reasoned that, because we never have room for dessert when we go out to lunch, we should just go out for dessert. Brilliant! So we ventured downtown to a place famous for its ice cream concoctions and had sundaes. When was the last time you had a sundae? I cannot begin to remember when that was. It really was a treat.
Art Deco walls at the “Fountain”
We also went to the main branch of the downtown library which has been recently renovated.
Notice the 250th birthday cake in front and the spire of our Episcopal Cathedral barely visible behind the library.
Intrepid explorers that we are, we had a super fun time.
I also re-read “The Snow Goose” a very short novella by Paul Gallico about a lonely hunchbacked artist who participates in the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940 and the snow goose that watches over him. It gave me chills.
If you are looking for something to pick up and read at one sitting, I highly recommend this marvelous book.
Have a good week!
* Nickle Creek
Maud Hart Lovelace (April 25, 1892—March 11, 1980) was an American author best known for the 10-book Betsy-Tacy series.
Maud Palmer Hart was born in Mankato, Minnesota. She was the middle child; her sisters were Kathleen (Julia in the Betsy-Tacy books) and Helen (book character, Margaret). Maud reportedly started writing as soon as she could hold a pencil.
Shortly before Maud’s fifth birthday a “large merry Irish family” moved into the house directly across the street. Among its many children was a girl Maud’s age, Frances, nicknamed Bick, who was to be Maud’s best friend and the model for Tacy Kelly.
Baptized in a Baptist church, she joined the Episcopal church as a teenager. She went on to the University of Minnesota but took a leave of absence to go to California to recover from an appendectomy at her maternal grandmother’s home. It was while in California that she made her first short story sale. She returned to the university and worked for the Minnesota Daily, but did not graduate.
While spending a year in Europe in 1914, she met Paolo Conte, an Italian musician (who later inspired the character Marco in Betsy and the Great World). She married Delos Lovelace when she was twenty-five years old. Delos and Maud met in April 1917 and were married on Thanksgiving Day the same year.
Lovelace began the Betsy-Tacy series in 1938, having told stories about her childhood to her own daughter Merian. The first book in the series, Betsy-Tacy, was published in 1940, and the last book, Betsy’s Wedding, was published in 1955. The first four books increase in reading difficulty so that a child can grow up along with Betsy-Tacy. The Betsy-Tacy books take place mostly in the fictional town of Deep Valley, Minnesota, which is based on Mankato.
You can read more about her here.
Daughters #1 and #2 were (and are) both big fans of the Betsy-Tacy books. They read and re-read them when they were growing up. Occasionally they pick one up even now.
Betsy and Tacy were the original BFFs.
“She thought of the library, so shining white and new; the rows and rows of unread books; the bliss of unhurried sojourns there and of going out to a restaurant, alone, to eat.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land…
Song of Solomon 2:12
Things are looking up in our flyover yard. And about time. Phew.
On this day in 1910, former President Theodore Roosevelt made a speech on the subject of “Citizenship in a Republic” at the Sorbonne in Paris. One notable passage on page seven of the 35-page speech is referred to as “The Man in the Arena.”
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
These are good words to remember from our most active and hard-working president!
So did you take my advice and watch Stagecoach last night? I was feeling a little very down in the dumps because daughter #1 had returned to NYC that morning, so I knew it would be just the ticket to put me back on track. And it was.
It’s amazing how a little bit of sagebrush drama,
exquisitely told by the master of the genre,
with a generous dose of this guy
in the part that blew open his career can do that. It is such a great movie with such finely drawn characters.
And have I mentioned that the OM gave me this for my birthday?
Yes, #22…
Life is good, right?
Okay so I like the strong silent type. I get it. The man in the arena.
Jim Trainor on Easter…
“I believe the story. With my head, looking at the evidence and thinking logically as a person who was a research physicist for twenty-five years, I believe it. And after listening to the testimony of people – from beggars to kings — through all the ages who had concluded that the story is true, I believe it. And at the innermost levels of my heart, where the deepest truths reside but are not easily put into words, I believe it is true.
“And that is why I know that I will see my mother again someday. It’s not just wishful thinking, some little tale I’ve fooled myself with because I can’t face the cold hard facts of life. Yes, I will see Della Mae, and I am convinced that it will be a day of great victory and joy. St. Paul says that it will be like putting on a crown, and St. John says that it will be a time when every tear will be wiped away from my eyes. That’s what will happen someday to me. But what Jesus did affects me right here today also — I know that this Jesus who overcame death and the grave has promised not to leave me here twisting in the wind. He is with me every day, through his Spirit, to guide me, comfort me, embolden me, and use me for his glory and to serve his people, right here, right now.”
Read it all.
Re-blogged from TitusOne Nine, the weblog of the Rev. Canon Dr. Kendall Harmon
This morning I spent my hour “in the garden” waiting with Jesus–actually our little chapel in the near dark. There are supposed to be two people, but I was alone as was the women who kept the 4-5:00 a.m. watch before me. It is a little spooky being there alone, but I like it. I read the collects of Thomas Cranmer with meditations by my old friend Fred Barbee. Well, I think it is important to be aware of Good Friday and to try, at least in some small way, to keep it holy.
“So shall we join the disciples of our Lord, keeping faith in Him in spite of the crucifixion, and making ready, by our loyalty to Him in the days of His darkness, for the time when we shall enter into His triumph in the days of His light.”
– Phillips Brooks
Tomorrow daughter #1 is flying home (yay!) and we will spend Easter together, going to church and to brunch at my flyover faculty club and, of course, watching:
I am such a nerd. But then you know that about me.
Not only will I be watching Ben-Hur this weekend, but I will be watching this version:
Hope you all have a wonderful Easter, celebrating as you may.
P.S. Ganador del Premio Nobel Gabriel García Márquez muere a los 87 años. R.I.P.
“Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.”
— From his autobiography Living To Tell The Tale
* Quintus Arrius in Ben-Hur (1959)
dual personalities 