dual personalities

Tag: spring

April 16, 2024

What is all this juice and all this joy?*

by chuckofish

This is a beautiful time of year in flyover country. Everything is popping, the bugs are not omnipresent and the humidity has not set in yet. The grass is so green and plush!

But look what we have had across the street for going on three weeks!

I feel like we have an Imperial Walker parked in front of our house! It is quite alarming. And good grief this street “improvement” has been going on since before Christmas!

The view out my office window:

Lovely.

But we count it all joy, friends, don’t we? Well, we try to.

I thought that this was a good piece on the Christian response to cultural catastrophe.

You’ve got to take the bitter with the sweet.

*Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Spring”

3 Comments
April 4, 2023

The idle singer of an empty day*

by chuckofish

Well, spring has sprung here in flyover country, it would appear, although the daffodils have been blooming (and blooming) for weeks and weeks. It was warm enough to sit out on the patio this weekend and it was glorious. I am (slowly) cleaning up the Florida Room and am hopeful I will have all my plants out there etc by the end of the week. It is hard work for this creaking old body.

And, look, Don reports that the gnomes are back in his garden!

In other news, on TCM this month they are celebrating the 100th anniversary of Warner Brothers, so you can imagine there are some great movies being shown.

I love a good conversion story. Here is John Piper’s. “All I remember is believing. I’ve always believed, as far as I can remember. I’m sure that’s not true since we come into the world bent out of shape by sin, but whatever God did in my life to make me a believer, he did so early that I don’t remember it happening.”

As Holy Week continues, this is a meaningful read.

This is also excellent.

Also I will note that today is what would have been my father’s 101st birthday. We will toast you tonight, ANC III. From the distance of thirty-one years since your death, I can say, many thanks for being my father.

*From the poem “Prologue of the Earthly Paradise” by William Morris (1834-1896); the painting is “Interior of the Artist” by Léon De Smet (Belgium 1881 – 1966)

3 Comments
May 17, 2022

“And the little hills rejoice on every side”*

by chuckofish

Truly this is the most beautiful time of year to be in flyover country. Everything is blooming.

And the grass is green. However, pollen is also at a peak, but what ho, who am I to complain?

During the Covid lockdown, I started to “worship” via Zoom at the Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, Virginia and to follow their rector’s daily devotional. Even though I have since left that denomination for good, I still read Paul Walker’s daily devotional. Yesterday he had something interesting to say:

Unfortunately, I don’t think everyone has two journals. There are a lot of people (even people I am fairly close to) who are only concerned with their Clark journal. But time’s a-wasting! The night is far spent…we need to attend to our Lewis journal. Who are you? What do you believe?

This is helpful from the late great David Powlison. “Your true identity is who God says you are. You will never discover who you are by looking inside yourself or listening to what others say. The Lord gets the first word because he made you. He gets the daily word because you live before his face. He gets the last word because he will administer your final ‘comprehensive life review.’”

*Psalms 65: 12

5 Comments
May 4, 2021

Come, ye rains, then if ye will

by chuckofish

There is May in books forever;

May will part from Spenser never;

May’s in Milton, May’s in Prior,

May’s in Chaucer, Thomson, Dyer;

May’s in all the Italian books:—

She has old and modern nooks,

Where she sleeps with nymphs and elves,

In happy places they call shelves,

And will rise and dress your rooms

With a drapery thick with blooms.

Come, ye rains, then if ye will,

May’s at home, and with me still;

But come rather, thou, good weather,

And find us in the fields together.

–Leigh Hunt, May and the Poets

We are at peak lushness here in flyover country. Can’t wait for the Iris to pop!

I am back to reading Jorge Luis Borges:

That One 

Oh days devoted to the useless burden
of putting out of mind the biography
of a minor poet of the Southem Hemisphere,
to whom the fates or perhaps the stars have given
a body which will leave behind no child,
and blindness, which is semi-darkness and jail,
and old age, which is the dawn of death,
and fame, which absolutely nobody deserves,
and the practice of weaving hendecasyllables,
and an old love of encyclopedias
and fine handmade maps and smooth ivory,
and an incurable nostalgia for the Latin,
and bits of memories of Edinburgh and Geneva
and the loss of memory of names and dates,
and the cult of the East, which the varied peoples
of the teeming East do not themselves share,
and evening trembling with hope or expectation,
and the disease of entymology,
and the iron of Anglo-Saxon syllables,
and the moon, that always catches us by surprise,
and that worse of all bad habits, Buenos Aires,
and the subtle flavor of water, the taste of grapes,
and chocolate, oh Mexican delicacy,
and a few coins and an old hourglass,
and that an evening, like so many others,
be given over to these lines of verse.

5 Comments
April 12, 2021

“Let angels prostrate fall”*

by chuckofish

Did you have a lovely weekend? My pals Becky and Carla came over for Happy Hour in the Florida Room on Friday and so the weekend started off on the right foot. Now that we are all vaccinated, why the heck not?

Saturday was dark and stormy, but I did go out to the antique mall to wander around. I also went to TJ Maxx and bought a new shower curtain liner. Life in the fast. lane. The rest of the day I puttered around the old homestead, watched some of the Masters Golf Tournament, and caught up with my DP via phone and this nutball on FaceTime.

All the rain has had a positive effect on the flora.

Oh boy, spring has really sprung!

On Sunday I got up and went to church with the Presbyterians at 8:30 am for the second week in a row. It felt great. The service, compared with the liturgical Episcopalians, is plain, but it includes the Apostles’ Creed, the Gloria Patri, the Corporate Confession (almost the same as the General Confession), and the Doxology. The hymns (4) were all good standards, including What a Friend We Have in Jesus. The sermon was on Luke 24:13-35, the walk to Emmaus. I am so happy to have a church to attend.

After church I went and had an hour long facial, using the gift certificate that daughter #1 had given me for my birthday a year ago. It was awesome and I feel like a new woman. The wee babes came over later in the afternoon after attending a birthday party in a park. They were tired and Lottie was especially cranky. The OM made tacos, but Lottie’s mood never improved and they went home early. Sigh. Well, I wouldn’t want you to think my grandchildren were perfect angels or that we never get annoyed with their antics. But we “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (I Thessalonians 5:16-18)

I watched A Change of Habit (1969) the DVD of which daughter #1 had left at our house. You will recall that it is Elvis’s last movie and no wonder. I fell asleep and missed part of it. Oh darn.

Now it is Monday and back to the Zoom salt mine. Have a good week!

*All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name by Edward Perronet (1780)‎

5 Comments
February 22, 2021

Tout va bien

by chuckofish

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Well, my big errand of the weekend was loading up the Cooper and driving to the recycling center to unload boxes. Quite satisfying, but not very exciting to say the least. My hands got very cold. The OM and I also moved the 1000 piece partially finished jigsaw puzzle, which daughter #1 and I had started last weekend, off the coffee table in the living room onto a salvaged wooden dresser top to get it out of the way in anticipation of the wee babes coming over on Sunday night. Oh, the exhausting issues of our bourgeoisie life.

The babes did come over and we had tacos and they played (mostly) happily while the grownups talked.

Today starts our last full week of winter term classes at my flyover institute. March–and spring–are just around the corner, right? In fact, when tromping through our snowy yard yesterday, I came upon these in the southside forsythia bed…

…daffodils coming up! Zut alors! I can’t believe it. Spring will come, no matter what we do. Best to enjoy each day (and its weather) as it comes. We will endeavor to do the best we can and no more. It may not be enough, but so be it.

Labor with what zeal we will,
Something still remains undone,
Something uncompleted still
Waits the rising of the sun.
By the bedside, on the stair,
At the threshold, near the gates,
With its menace or its prayer,
Like a mendicant it waits;
Waits, and will not go away;
Waits, and will not be gainsaid;
By the cares of yesterday
Each to-day is heavier made;
Till at length the burden seems
Greater than our strength can bear,
Heavy as the weight of dreams,
Pressing on us everywhere.
And we stand from day to day,
Like the dwarfs of times gone by,
Who, as Northern legends say,
On their shoulders held the sky.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Something Left Undone”

The photo at the top is from Pinterest. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.

6 Comments
March 9, 2015

“It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.”*

by chuckofish

buds

Yes, those are daffodil shoots–right on schedule. Last weekend church services were canceled all over the area and this weekend we enjoyed 60-degree days! The flora and fauna responds accordingly. Pretty amazing.

I had a busy week so I took it kind of easy on the weekend. I finished some books that I had been reading and I read up on ol’ Charles Darwin, about whom I knew not a lot. He was an interesting fellow. I understand natural selection. It is logical. But it doesn’t explain why there are elephants. Seriously, there must be a God.

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I had lunch with my girlfriends. I went to Ted Drewes with the OM.

ted drewes

I watched the first chapter of that great old mini-series Shogun (1980) starring my cousin Richard as John Blackthorne.

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The Jesuits are the bad guys and Toshiro Mifune is in the cast as Lord Toranaga.

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What’s not to like? I will be watching the rest of it as the discs arrive from Netflix.

The boy and daughter #3 came over for Sunday night dinner. We barbequed!

Cute as ever

Cute as ever

Today daughter #2 takes her oral exams at the U. of Maryland. They were postponed from Friday because of the snow! Aaaargh. She has been handling the stress like the trouper that she is. Hopefully we will have good new for you tomorrow…

Have a great week!

*Rainer Maria Rilke

6 Comments
April 28, 2014

Oh me of little faith*

by chuckofish

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”.

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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.

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Art deco walls at the "Fountain"

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 barely visible behind of our Episcopal Cathedral

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.

the snow goose

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

2 Comments
April 24, 2014

For, lo, the winter is past

by chuckofish

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…

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Song of Solomon 2:12

Things are looking up in our flyover yard. And about time. Phew.

6 Comments
April 10, 2013

To-whit! To-who!—a merry note

by chuckofish

“How wonderful yellow is. It stands for the sun.”
– Vincent Van Gogh

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pansies

“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

6 Comments