dual personalities

Tag: reading

May 29, 2026

It’s Friday again. Can you believe it?

by chuckofish

The week is almost over and so is the month of May. Time, like an ever-rolling stream, and all that.

I don’t have many plans for the weekend, which is kind of nice. I have the new Walt Longmire mystery, which was released on Tuesday, so I am already back in Absaroka County.

I am 70 pages in and Henry has not appeared, so I am a bit dubious, but we shall see.

I liked this post about “the beauty of the unnamed and the unnoticed…the glory of mundane faithfulness.”

And let’s not forget to toast Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957), one of the most influential composers in Hollywood history, on his birthday. Winner of two Academy Awards–for Anthony Adverse (1936) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)–his scores were brilliant and influential (think Star Wars, entirely derivative).

Have a terrific weekend!

3 Comments
May 20, 2026

“Write what should not be forgotten”*

by chuckofish

A blog I read recently asked the question Have you ever met an author in person? That got me thinking. The answer is not many, but, yes, a few come to mind. And by “met”, I mean “shaken their hand”.

I met Frederick Buechner when he preached at Christ Church Cathedral here in town. He came at the invitation of his old friend Hays Rockwell, the Bishop. I shook his hand after the service and he shook my children’s hands as well.

I heard John Updike speak at my flyover university one afternoon in the “chapel”. And I sat behind Marilyn Robinson when she spoke at my university. I could have reached out and touched her mass of frizzy hair, but I restrained myself. I had a good view of her when she spoke to the relatively small audience (at least compared to Updike).

I met Nancy Willard when she was a speaker at my old high school and I was the alumna representative of the writing contest back in the ’90s. I drove her to and from the event and ate dinner with her. She was very nice.

Madeleine L’Engle spoke at my church 35+ years ago and I exchanged a few words with her afterwards. I went to the Ethical Society to hear Nathaniel Philbrick and he signed my copy of Blind Ambition. Amor Towles came to town, but I had to see him on Zoom.

All of these sightings meant something at the time, but I don’t remember much about them now. Words of great wisdom were not imparted that I recall. The best was Buechner and half the people there were shocked when he asked the people (and children) in the back of the church to be quiet. But his message was always pay attention!, wasn’t it?

The lesson I think is that authors are much less interesting than their books are. Most of them just want to be left alone to work–traveling and speaking is something they do to please their publishers and sell books. If you have the good luck to actually know a writer, more power to you, but meeting them randomly at an event isn’t much.

So read a book!

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.”

–J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

*Isabel Allende

6 Comments
May 8, 2026

Safely through another week

by chuckofish

It’s Friday again–can you believe it? I have a busy day ahead of me with multiple things to do. The weekend will be pretty busy as well. Unfortunately it is supposed to rain, but we had a lovely, cool week, so I can’t really complain.

Don’t forget that Sunday is Mother’s Day! If you are lucky enough to still have a mother, give her a call or take her out to lunch after church. If you don’t, think about your mother and all that you owe her. Even if she wasn’t a paragon of maternal virtue, she gave you life. And remember all those women–sisters, wives, aunts, old ladies who sit in your pew and wonder where you are when you’re not there–who have helped and nurtured and supported you through the years.

In the meantime here are some good things to read…

This is a helpful essay about raising children to be “reality respecters”: “If we believe God made the world and our children, we’ll teach them that the only way to be in touch with reality is to look at the world the way God looks at it. As a believing parent, I have a duty to teach my children to question whether their feelings fit the way things are.”

This is interesting: At the recent World Architecture Festival—an annual international gathering of leading figures where prestigious prizes are awarded—the biggest prize of all was awarded to a church. But what a hideous structure! “It looks like a prison chapel designed by Screwtape to cause all who enter in to abandon hope. I do believe it would make Soviet atheist architects proud. Most of all, here is what a church should look like if Christ never rose from the dead.” It’s almost as ugly as this.

And here’s a poem by John Newton, “Saturday Evening”.

Safely through another week,
God has brought us on our way;
Let us now a blessing seek,
On th’ approaching Sabbath-day:
Day of all the week the best,
Emblem of eternal rest.

4 Comments
May 1, 2026

“People always clap for the wrong things.”*

by chuckofish

The other day when I was perusing the shelves at the local public library I found this book published back in 2013, which I had missed at the time.

I like reading about old J.D. so I checked it out. His experiences in WWII are really terrifying–not that they are different or worse than a lot of men’s–but to be reminded of what they went through at Utah Beach and then in the Battle of the Bulge–especially in the Hürtgen Forest campaign in the September-December of ’44 is terrifying. He won five battle stars. To have survived all that and then to move on to liberating concentration camps where the emaciated dead bodies were piled like cord wood…how did any of those men expect to lead “normal” lives when they returned to their homes in the U.S.? I think J.D. did pretty well considering. No wonder he wanted to disappear in Cornish, NH and be the anonymous man at the Congregational Church roast beef dinners.

I am also re-reading Jan de Hartog’s novel The Little Ark, published in 1953 about two Dutch children who survive the catastrophic North Sea flooding of the dykes in the Netherlands during 1953. (It was the worst natural disaster of the 20th century in the United Kingdom and the worst in the Netherlands since the Middle Ages.) Powerful stuff, to say the least.

I’m glad I have some good reading material, since daughter #1 is driving up to visit her prairie sister et al today. Mr. Smith is going to the kennel/spa to hang out with the boyz and get a makeover. He kinda needs it. (#rude)

I’ll pick him up on Sunday for some therapy time.

Have a good weekend! Read a book, pet a nice dog, go to church!

*Holden Caulfield

1 Comment
April 28, 2026

Flyover weather ‘n such

by chuckofish

We had quite a noisy Midwest thunderstorm Sunday night/early morning. Then we waited around on Monday for part II which was billed as much more serious…

The tornado sirens did go off in the afternoon and the view got a little dicey…

It was a drama-filled day. Some schools let out early! A second wave did come through in the evening. The boy reported hail in Wildwood.

And we had 60-70 mile an hour winds. But no rotation, so I am thankful. Phew. The sky was an insane golden-green when it was over. Midwest weather!

In the meantime I puttered around doing things like cleaning my refrigerator and watering my indoor plants. I also read some Conrad Richter, including his short story “As It Was in the Beginning”, written back in 1935 for the Saturday Evening Post. I was especially interested in it as it is one of his Southwest stories, based in part in Bent’s Fort and dealing with a Sante Fe trail trader. He is such a good writer ! But he was hardly ever on any best seller list. Times sure have changed in nearly 100 years! To think that nowadays we have to be careful not to buy AI generated slop from Amazon! I’ll stick to the old books, thank you.

I have a lot of books on my bedside bench…

…which I work at in a haphazard way. Frequently I fall asleep at 9:30 pm only to wake up at 3:00 am. Reading Dominion by Tom Holland is a lot at that time of night, so I keep the latest issue of Tabletalk magazine handy. When the prairie girls were visiting the weekend before last they each loaded a tote bag full of Tabletalks to take home. They love paging through them and “pretend reading” them. They are just the right size for little hands.

(Tabletalk is an outreach ministry of Ligonier Ministries.)

Well, just another day in flyover country! Happy Tuesday!

3 Comments
February 18, 2026

Ten thousand charms

by chuckofish

Have you been watching the Olympics? Me neither. Every night I try, but it is just so uninspiring, and, I’m sorry, I do not want to watch women’s curling! No one does, outside Canada. Ugh. If they showed a replay of the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid, I would watch that…or the ones in Lillehammer–they were great! I have no doubt that the ratings would be much better. Well, I’ll just keep watching Lonesome Dove from back in 1989.

Meanwhile I am reading this biography of William Tecumseh Sherman…

It is “popular” history and therefore quite readable, and I am enjoying it. The author understands context and does not judge his subject by 21st century standards. I have always liked Sherman. He hated politicians and journalists and he was fiercely loyal. I can relate to that.

I am also reading this…

…which is also very interesting. The emphasis is on Sarah Edwards, the “godly wife”. By all evidence, Jonathan and Sarah Edwards had a very happy marriage and 11 children, all of whom lived to at least young adulthood–an amazing thing in the early 18th century. Noel Piper wrote this long article about the book and the impressive couple.

I couldn’t have said this better: “The church has always lived in changing times, even if today’s changes might feel more aggressive and chaotic than before. But our hope has never rested in the stability of society. It rests in the stability of God: ‘I the Lord do not change'(Mal. 3:6). The world may reinvent itself every decade, but God does not evolve, and His truth does not expire. It does not need updating. It does not need rebranding. Truth that shifts with the culture isn’t truth at all—it’s marketing.”

And here’s a new rendition of one of my favorite hymns:

Read some history and stand fast.

2 Comments
January 13, 2026

Avoiding the myth

by chuckofish

Today we toast the great American writer A.B. Guthrie, Jr. on his birthday (1901-1991). He wrote the western series featuring Dick Summers, who I maintain is one of the great characters of fiction, winning the Pulitzer Prize for The Way West in 1950. ”I don’t write ‘gun-and-gallop’ jobs that promote the myth of the West,” Mr. Guthrie said in an interview. ”I avoid the myth. I have a sense of morality about it–I want to talk about real people in real times. For every Wyatt Earp or Billy the Kid, you see, there were thousands of people trying to get along–not ready with a gun or ready to spill blood. And that story has been obscured.” His books are well worth reading.

Last week John Piper celebrated his 80th birthday. As you know, he is considered quite the guy in reformed circles. He has been a wonderful help to me on my spiritual journey. He has taught me a lot. “In his second year as a pastor, Piper noted that the mercy of God and the sovereignty of God were the twin pillars of his life: ‘They are the hope of my future, the energy of my service, the center of my theology, the bond of my marriage, the best medicine in all my sickness, the remedy of all my discouragements. And when I come to die (whether soon or late) these two truths will stand by my bed and with infinitely strong and infinitely tender hands lift me up to God.’”

Here’s the audio transcript of his latest Ask Pastor John podcast. “[Public] faithfulness becomes public performance when we fail to hope that God will be glorified more than we will be glorified. We just fail to want that; we don’t want it. That’s a failure. Which brings us back to where we started: Is God real for us? Is he a precious Father to us? Is the promise of his reward far more desirable to us than the rewards of human admiration?”

Have a good Tuesday!

And remember: “If you do not worship God seven days a week, you do not worship Him on one day a week. There is no such thing known in heaven as Sunday worship unless it is accompanied by Monday worship and Tuesday worship and so on.” (A.W. Tozer)

1 Comment
December 17, 2025

Taste and see that the Lord is good

by chuckofish

Since I did not need to go to the County Courthouse for another day of Jury Duty yesterday, it felt like a free day. Wonderful. I mailed a couple of packages. I went to the grocery store. I organized all my Christmas presents and wrapped many of them. I was cookin’ with gas. I didn’t finish, but I made a good dent.

I had a second cup of coffee and caught up on my reading.

This is good advice for anyone going through something hard. “Do the next thing.”

Well, whoduh thunk? “I took our six kids overseas — and saw a ‘family-friendly’ nation in joyous action”. Indeed, children are not carbon-emitting inconveniences, but the clearest sign that a society believes in its future. (I will say that there are great swaths of our country that are still family-friendly, including the great Midwest.)

And this is great–watch this two and a half minute clip of John Piper Asking ChatGPT to Write a Prayer:

Brilliant. What are you feeling this Christmas season? The universe is created for people made in the image of God who feel the worth of Grace…I hope you are feeling what Scrooge feels at the end of A Christmas Carol. This is why the 1951 version with Alistair Sim is the best version–because the actor gets it. He feels the joy in his heart and he is giddy with happiness. There are many other versions featuring great actors, but nobody gets it like Alistair Sim.

Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!
    Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!

–Psalm 34:8

1 Comment
November 24, 2025

Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven

by chuckofish

How was your weekend? Mine was pleasantly uneventful. Daughter #1 and I were moderately successful at an estate sale run by our favorite company–and by that I mean we got quite a few books and DVDs for an amazing Lamar discount.

The highlight of the weekend was going to church and seeing the boy and his family stand up in front of the congregation and be welcomed as new members. When the wee bud returned to our pew he said, “That was the best moment I’ve ever had!” They have been attending for four years, so I don’t think the twins really understood what was happening, but something clicked. We sang good hymns and, I must say, it melts my heart to hear little Lottie singing in her sweet falsetto “Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe; sin had left a crimson stain, he washed it white as snow” from memory beside me.

We also had a great sermon on the final verses of Philippians–4:10-23–and an in-context explanation of I can do all things through him who strengthens me. Ah, the secret of Christian contentment: you may not get what you want, but you will get what you need.

My adult ed class was a panel of elders talking about various topics, including stewardship, and it was very instructive and so incredibly different from my experience in the various Episcopal churches I have attended over the years. At Covenant the session sets a budget and trusts the Lord will provide. There is no lengthy Every Member Canvas, no fund-raising, no talk of gross vs. net pay. This continues to blow my mind. When there is an opportunity to preach about giving from the Gospel lesson, as there was on Sunday, the pastor talks about giving: And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

We went to the Sunny Street Cafe after church to celebrate and daughter #1 met us there. We gobbled down our food and talked about her business trip to Wyoming and Devil’s Tower and giant coal-mining equipment much to the twins’ amazement. The bud already knew all about Devil’s Tower and the legend of the two Indian sisters and the bear, because he is a whiz on landmarks. Speaking of bears, did you know they are wrecking havoc in Japan? Neither twin knew there were bears in Japan and were skeptical when I told them.

I am re-reading Shane by Jack Schaefer and enjoying it. It is interesting to see how it is different from the movie and how the screenplay (in the hands of the great A.B. Guthrie) changes some things and emphasizes others to make a truly great film. I can’t wait to watch it again soon.

Have a great week–be thankful for your many blessings! Be content, give generously, rejoice. Greet every saint in Christ Jesus.

(And pet a nice dog.)

Praise, my soul, the King of heaven;
to his feet your tribute bring.
Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven,
evermore his praises sing.
Alleluia, alleluia!
Praise the everlasting King!

–Henry F. Lyte, 1834

5 Comments
October 9, 2025

What are you reading?

by chuckofish

My copy of Jan Karon’s 15th Mitford novel arrived on Tuesday and I jumped right in.

Jan Karon is 88 years old and when I heard that a new book was coming out, I was a little surprised. I mean it’s been eight years since To Be Where You Are was published. I thought she was retiring at that point–at 80 years old! But, my goodness, on she goes. Having just finished a vaguely Christian novel with a cutesy title (The Bitter End Birding Society) written in that grating style we see so much in modern fiction–the type seemingly aiming to impress someone’s 8th grade English teacher–I can say Karon’s novel is a welcome relief.

Here’s a review in the Gospel Coalition.

As the kettle burst into its chosen key of C, he felt relief flow in.

‘Soli Deo gloria!’ he exclaimed to the four walls. Gus jumped off the sofa and ran to the kitchen to look him in the eye. The little guy was grinning.

8 Comments