dual personalities

Tag: quotes

July 11, 2012

Macomb County, born and bred

by chuckofish

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee was first published on this day in 1960.

It was immediately successful, winning the Pulitzer Prize, and has become a classic of modern American literature. It’s a shame Harper Lee never wrote another novel, but I admire her for not giving in to the pressure her publisher must have put on her. She said what she had to say. It was enough. It must have taken everything she had.

I love the scene in Infamous where Sandra Bullock, playing Harper Lee, tries to explain what it takes out of a writer to write. She says, “America is not a country where the small gesture goes noticed…We want everything you have, and we want it as fast as you can turn it out.”

Of course, they made a terrific movie based on the novel in 1962. It is one of the few instances where the movie stacks up to the novel. It is also one of those movies that I and my dual personality were too young to go see at the theater. We only got to hear about it from our older brother who came home with our mother and raved about it. They both loved it. We had to wait until it came on television many years later to see it. As I recall, it was a dark and stormy night when we watched it, home alone this time. It was pretty scary! But we loved it too, and every time I see it I love it anew.

And, of course, it has the scene where if you were to stop me on the happiest day of my life and say, stop, watch this, I would be unable to stem the flow of ensuing tears. You know, it’s the Boo Radley behind the door scene. And that music. Absolute perfection.

I always loved Scout. I was not at all like her as a child (too timid), but I always thought I looked like the actress who played her and that was cool (not to mention unusual).


You have to admit, the resemblance is amazing.

So all hail Harper Lee.

President George W. Bush awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to author Harper Lee during a ceremony Monday, Nov. 5, 2007, in the East Room. “To Kill a Mockingbird has influenced the character of our country for the better. It’s been a gift to the entire world. As a model of good writing and humane sensibility, this book will be read and studied forever,” said the President about Harper Lee’s work. (White House photo by Eric Draper)

AMEN.

2 Comments
July 6, 2012

Bottom line

by chuckofish

Bottom line is, even if you see them coming, you’re not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So, what are we, helpless? Puppets? Nah. The big moments are gonna come, you can’t help that. It’s what you do afterwards that counts. That’s when you find out who you are.

(Whistler, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 2)

3 Comments
July 5, 2012

Good news!

by chuckofish

July is Leslie Howard month on TCM.com! Here is the line-up for the Star of the Month.

So set your DVR for Tuesdays in July when they’ll be showing some well-known Leslie Howard movies like Pygmalion, Of Human Bondage and The Scarlet Pimpernel and some not-so-often seen ones like Berkeley Square and The Animal Kingdom. What a treasure trove!

You can see my favorite Leslie Howard movie The Petrified Forest (1936) next Tuesday–so mark your calendar! This movie was based on the play by Robert Emmet Sherwood, which Leslie Howard had starred in on Broadway. He insisted that Humphrey Bogart reprise his role as Duke Mantee, “the world-famous killer” in the movie. He did and the rest, as you know, is history. Bogart was duly grateful and even named his daughter after Leslie years later.

Bogart has lots of good lines which he makes the most of:

“Since I’ve been a grown up, I’ve spent most of my life in prison… I’ll probably spend the rest of it dead.”

and

“You can talk sitting down; I seen ya’ doing it.”

But Howard, as the dreamy Alan Squier, gets plenty of his own:

“So that was once a tree? Hmmm. Petrified forest, eh? Suitable haven for me. Well, perhaps that’s what I’m destined to become, an interesting fossil for future study.”

and

Gramp Maple: “But let me tell you one thing, Mr. Squier. The woman don’t live or ever did live that’s worth five thousand dollars!”

Alan Squier: “Well, let me tell you something. You’re a forgetful old fool. Any woman’s worth everything that any man has to give: anguish, ecstasy, faith, jealousy, love, hatred, life or death. Don’t you see that’s the whole excuse for our existence? It’s what makes the whole thing possible and tolerable.”

I even included an Alan Squeir quote on my senior page: “I had a vague idea I’d like to see the Pacific Ocean and perhaps drown in it. But that depends.” My mother raised an eyebrow at my teenage angst, but no one else ever commented!

Above all else, Leslie Howard was a great British patriot, who used his Hollywood fame to further the cause of England in WWII, by making several propaganda films like Pimpernel Smith and The First of the Few.

He died at the age of 50 in 1943 when the plane he was in was shot down by the Nazis. They thought he was a spy and they were correct. According to Sir William Samuel Stephenson, the senior representative of British Intelligence for the western hemisphere during the Second World War, the Germans knew about Howard’s mission and ordered the aircraft shot down. Stephenson further claimed that Churchill knew in advance of the German intention to shoot down the aircraft, but decided to allow it to proceed to protect the fact that the British had broken the German Enigma code.

I’m surprised no one has ever thought to make a movie about Leslie Howard. Wouldn’t he be an interesting subject?

8 Comments
June 27, 2012

It’s good to be curious

by chuckofish

I hope you enjoy this “remixed” Mr. Rogers as much as I did!

Fred McFeely Rogers (March 20, 1928 – February 27, 2003) was an American educator, Presbyterian minister, songwriter, author, and television host. He was most famous for creating and hosting Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (1968–2001).

In 2002 he gave the commencement address at Dartmouth College (which he had attended many years before). It was a good speech. Here’s a snippet:

I’d like to give you all an invisible gift. A gift of a silent minute to think about those who have helped you become who you are today. Some of them may be here right now. Some may be far away. Some, like my astronomy professor, may even be in Heaven. But wherever they are, if they’ve loved you and encouraged you and wanted what was best in life for you, they’re right inside yourself. And I feel that you deserve quiet time on this special occasion to devote some thought to them. So let’s just take a minute in honor of those who have cared about us all along the way. One silent minute.

Whomever you’ve been thinking about, imagine how grateful they must be that during your silent times you remember how important they are to you. It’s not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It’s the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our lives from which we make our choices is very good stuff.

Good stuff, indeed!

P.S. I found this YouTube treasure on the wonderful SouleMama blog. Check it out here.

2 Comments
June 21, 2012

That’s My King

by chuckofish

Shadrach Meshach Lockridge (1913—2000) was the pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, a prominent African-American congregation located in San Diego, California, from 1953 to 1993. He was known for his preaching across the United States and around the world.

I never hear anything like this in my church. I wish I did.

Do you know Him?

6 Comments
June 18, 2012

Why I love Raymond Chandler

by chuckofish

“On the right the great fat solid Pacific trudging into shore like a scrubwoman going home. No moon, no fuss, hardly a sound of the surf. No smell. None of the harsh wild smell of the sea. A California ocean. California, the department-store state. The most of everything and the best of nothing. Here we go again. You’re not human tonight, Marlowe.

—The Little Sister

It’s been awhile since we’ve heard from ol’ Raymond Chandler. Such a way with words. Don’t we all feel better now?

3 Comments
June 14, 2012

When all the sky is clear and blue

by chuckofish

“In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.
I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people’s feet
Still going past me in the street.
And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?”

– Robert Louis Stevenson, Bed in Summer

I remember this so well–going to bed when it was still light outside! The days are long in June in this flyover state!

5 Comments
June 11, 2012

Tout va bien

by chuckofish

“I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.”

–Kahlil Gibran

2 Comments
June 6, 2012

This is the day

by chuckofish

“Today is the day which the Lord has made,” says the 118th Psalm. “Let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Or weep and be sad in it for that matter. The point is to see it for what it is because it will be gone before you know it. If you waste it, it is your life that you’re wasting. If you look the other way, it may be the moment you’ve been waiting for always, that you’re missing.

All other days have either disappeared into darkness and oblivion or not yet emerged from them. Today is the only day there is.”

–Frederick Buechner “Whistling in the Dark”

2 Comments
June 4, 2012

Not a gentleman born

by chuckofish

Well, I have finished Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel’s sequel to Wolf Hall and book two in her trilogy about Thomas Cromwell. It is, no surprise, wonderful.

You remember that Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex (c. 1485 – 28 July 1540) was an English statesman who served King Henry VIII of England from 1532 to 1540 in many capacities and was his right hand man. He facilitated his marriage to Anne Boleyn and then arranged the annulment of that marriage. Oftentimes throughout history (and in historical fiction) he has been portrayed as a villain and hatchetman, but we know he indeed was not.

Here is a wonderful description by Cromwell of one of his friends, which really is a perfect description of him:

“He does not talk simply to hear his own voice, or pick arguments just to win them. He is not like George Boleyn: he does not write verses to six women in the hope of bundling one of them into a dark corner where he can slip his cock into her. He writes to warn and to chastise, and not to confess his need but to conceal it. He understands honour but does not boast of his own. He is perfectly equipped as a courtier, but he knows the small value of that. He has studied the world without despising it. He understands the world without rejecting it. He has no illusions but he has hopes. He does not sleepwalk through his life. His eyes are open, and his ears for sounds others miss.”

This is the kind of book I want to start over and read again right away. I think I will read Wolf Hall again. Hilary Mantel is brilliant, and as a writer reading her, I could weep for her brilliance. Brava, Hilary–you’ve done it again.

6 Comments