Here is a vintage photo of my DP (on top) and me (middle, right) with our cousins at their house on Lake Damariscotta in Maine, circa 1964. I don’t know where my brother is–off fishing with Bunker? Our Uncle George is in the back, holding up the pyramid. We had super fun that summer as you can imagine.
Indeed, I am thinking of those cool Maine breezes as we bear up through a mid-summer heat wave in flyover country. Heat waves are nothing out of the ordinary here–despite what HC may say–but they are no fun. In the summer of 1936, for instance, St. Louis endured an unbroken 37-day stretch of 100-degree–plus temperatures. I remember one old lady from my flyover institute telling me how in the 1930s they would escape the heat of their un-airconditioned city apartment by sleeping in Forest Park! The whole family. It was a thing people did (and were allowed to do). As a child, she had great fun. Maybe not as much fun as a lake house in Maine, but fun.
Fun is what you make it after all. So keep a merry heart and be thankful for air-conditioning. Pray for the electric grid.
A merry heart does good, like medicine, But a broken spirit dries the bones.
We have had more storms and more storms. What started out as a very dry spring, has turned into a very wet summer. Our Florida Room has flooded several times now, but hopefully we have that figured out. Fingers crossed. It has also been a particularly windy year all around. This is beginning to be a familiar sight:
(KMOV photo of damage in Ferguson, MO)
God is our refuge and strength, A very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, Even though the earth be removed, And though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; Though its waters roar and be troubled, Though the mountains shake with its swelling. Selah (Psalm 46: 1-3)
Meanwhile I am working on getting everything ready to send off to the printer for the next KHS Review. Life goes on between outbursts of bad weather.
This seems really obvious to me, but clearly it is not. “Reading doesn’t begin as an activity your child does by himself. It begins with fathers and mothers. It begins with us reading aloud. We increase our kid’s appetite by narrating books that they enjoy and understand. These books are not the books you would choose to read in your alone time, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy them together.”
It’s pretty quiet around here since the boy and his family are in Hilton Head for the week.
Before they left early Saturday morning, daughter #3 brought the wee twins over after soccer camp on Friday to have lunch and hang out with Mr. Smith.
Daughter #1 has a new chuck-it throwing toy which is great and wears Mr. Smith out with fetching.
Five stars for sure! The best part is you don’t have to pick up the slobbery ball with your hand. Of course, getting Mr. Smith to release the ball is an ongoing issue.
We had some wild weather over the weekend with a lot of downed trees and detritus everywhere.
Unfortunately, people were actually killed this time around in crushed cars and houses.
(Photos from KMOV4)
In church on Sunday we heard more from the prophet Hosea. His message, as our pastor put it, is “harrowing and brutal”–but maybe we need that.
“Do not rejoice, O Israel, with joy like other peoples, For you have played the harlot against your God.” (Hosea 9:1)
Food for thought.
Tomorrow, of course, is the 4th of July and we send happy birthday wishes to my older brother. He was always a hit with the ladies.
The little girl in the picture was a neighbor of whom my mother was particularly fond. (Her name was Katie.) Anyway, here’s hoping he does something fun tomorrow.
And here’s a song–the boy introduced me to this rendition:
*”Know that the LORD, He is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.” (Psalm 100:3)
Well, the local weather-casters are pretty excited about a possible weather event today. They have been predicting snow, wind and freezing temps and will be very disappointed if nothing happens. We have all been to the store to stock up on food and daughter #1 came home a day early to avoid the bad weather. The OM is working from home.
As long as the furnace holds out and the electricity stays on, I am happy to hunker down at home.
Meanwhile my BFFs and I toasted the fact that daughter #1 has a new job and is moving back to St. Louis…
…little did I know this was causing consternation with Katiebelle…
Oh, modern life.
In other news, Marty Stuart is just the best. Look what he’s done now!
Daughter #1 shared this Q&A interview with Bob Dylan. “I’m not a fan of packaged programs, or news shows, so I don’t watch them. I never watch anything foul smelling or evil. Nothing disgusting… I’m a religious person. I read the scriptures a lot, meditate and pray, light candles in church. I believe in damnation and salvation, as well as predestination.”
Yes, Marty and Bob and I are on the same page. Marty is rescuing antiques and Bob is reading scripture. That is comforting.
“In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth — only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair.”
Well, we had quite a storm earlier this week. We even broke a record for inches rained in a 24 hour period–9.04 inches! There was lots of scary flash flooding, as you can imagine, and people were forced out of their homes and apartments.
STL Post Dispatch photo
Of course, the OM had made an appointment to get his oil changed that day, so he drove off in the middle of the downpour at 6:30 in the morning. He made it there and to work afterwards, but good grief, Charlie Brown!
In other news I am enjoying spending time in the library of my local historical society. It is a pleasure to escape into the archives and read about another world where people were not confused about their pronouns. I am committed to volunteering, so we’ll see where this leads.
I love the #AskLigonier videos! You can learn a lot in these short clips! For instance, What would we be missing if our Bibles lacked the book of Galatians?
This is a good article about wrestling with the hard questions. “When we ask questions, we engage with what we say we believe. It is natural, normal, and understandable to have questions about our faith. The very essence of faith is believing in what we can’t see (Hebrews 11:6). That’s not easy to do!”
Well, all this rain makes me want to settle in with a Kurosawa movie where the driving rain or snow frequently adds a heightened tension to the action. Seven Samurai (1954), anyone?
Well, on last Thursday night we had quite a thunderstorm, which actually was a EF0 tornado two blocks away. I’m not kidding. I was standing in the front door watching when the straight line wind came through (80 mph!) but it didn’t seem like a really big deal or anything.
But I guess it was.
(photo from KSDK.com)
On Saturday morning the OM and I went to my friend Nicki’s memorial service which had been postponed since January. We had to drive there in a thunderous gulley-washer, arriving, like everyone else, rather wet and bedraggled from the hike from our car. (This church–with the largest Episcopal congregation in the diocese–has no parking lot and you have to find parking spots on a residential street the best you can–zut alors!)
As you know, I have always loved the Episcopal Burial Office, Rite I, especially the procession–
I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.
I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger.
For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. For if we live, we live unto the Lord. and if we die, we die unto the Lord. Whether we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s.
Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; even so saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labors.
The semi-professional choir (wearing masks) sang it, however, as they did the psalms, and so it seemed like a theater production. This is how they like it at this church. So be it.
We skipped the reception at the St. Louis Country Club and came home so we could go to the high school graduation party of our neighbor across the street. I have always had a soft spot in my heart for this cute boy because he reminds me of DN. He is going to Montana State so he can hike and fish and ski. I said, you know you have to go to class too, right? He chuckled. But really. Why do people go to college nowadays? Anyway, it was a lot of socializing for one day. I watched the PGA tournament thereafter.
On Sunday it was good to be back in our own church alongside the wee babes. We had brunch afterwards and then they all went home and the weekend wound down.
Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise, Thou mine Inheritance, now and always: Thou and Thou only, first in my heart, High King of Heaven, my Treasure Thou art.
Hymn #642
P.S. This was cool about a unique Cardinals-Giants baseball game played last week. “We tend to think of life as a game to be won rather than a game to be enjoyed. We feel the pressure to determine the outcome. But what if we already know the outcome? We no longer need to worry about whether we will win or lose because those of us who are in Christ have both lost and won. Because he died and now lives, we have also died with him, and we will live with him (2 Tim 2:11). So if that’s the case, what do we have to lose?”
I am glad to see that Paul Zahl is back with his recommendations for TCM films to watch in June. “The Hoodlum Priest is the kind of movie that was popular and successful when it came out, but the critical “establishment” would like it to stay in a memory hole forever. Please don’t let that happen. Stay up and watch The Hoodlum Priest on June the 11th!”
Another hot one! In fact, we broke a record yesterday with a high of 94 degrees. Back in the day, we would still have been at school on May 12–where there was no air-conditioning! How ever did we survive? Well, we did somehow. For several years in high school, I had long, waist-length hair which I wore in braids in order to stay cool.
Even after it cooled off, I still wore the braids, because they were practical. I can’t remember if anyone else at my school wore braids. It was probably just nerds like me and Judy Hensler on Leave It to Beaver…
and Willie Nelson…
C’est la vie.
Well, I seem to have once again gone down a rabbit hole in my brain. Mea culpa. Here’s the poem by Sara Teasdale I was going to share before I went off the track. It’s called “Sunset: St. Louis”…
Here’s a photo of the riverfront in 1938, taken a few years after she wrote the poem, but you get the idea.
It is a totally different riverfront than we have today.
Well, daughter #1 is driving in from Jeff City this morning and we are picking up daughter #2 and the precocious Katiebelle at the airport this afternoon.
Stay tuned for super fun. In the meantime here are a couple of links which I enjoyed. Read them or not; I leave that up to you.
5 1/2 Habits of Remarkably Ineffective People. “Today, many of the institutions and ideas that have shaped our culture are on life-support. And it has been “successful” people who have led us to this place. This “post-everything” moment offers us an opportunity to question what seems unquestionable, to study our values — and maybe even reconsider Jesus’ upside-down approach.”
Stop Praying “Be With” Prayers. “All that matters may be brought before God, but we must always bring before God those things that matter most.”
Well, the world is apparently going to hell in a hand-basket, but the weather has been nothing to complain about here in flyover country. Yesterday the temperature soared to over 80 degrees. In fact, we broke the record high on Wednesday of 79 from 1992. (Temperatures are expected to be about 30 degrees cooler today, but yesterday was beautiful.)
(Don’t you feel better after watching ol’ Gordon MacRae? Truly, I did.)
I felt moved to get out of the house and I walked around the pond at our local park. A breath of fresh air and the sun on your face does wonders for your spirit.
Yes, the ice is gone. The crocus (croci?) are blooming in Don’s yard…
…but they have just barely poked through in mine. However, the Christmas cactus is blooming anew. How about that?
Well, Ash Wednesday has come and gone. There were no pancakes for moi this year. No ashes. I did receive a letter from the Bishop of the diocese of Missouri asking for money. It was addressed to “Dear Siblings in Christ,” because, you know, we don’t have brothers and sisters in this diocese anymore. That would be too gender normative. The bishop needs money to “accomplish positive change.” Good luck with that.
I am very grateful for Anne Kennedy and her blog posts. She reads the New York Times so I don’t have to and she responds to their articles so I don’t have to. Here she is responding to their article about Ash Wednesday and Lent. “I’m so sorry, but I must say it once more with tears—you are not a Christian if you don’t believe in Jesus, and one of the markers of your belief, the fruit, if you will, is that you earnestly desire to be in church with other people who believe. There is no ‘unchurched Christian faithful.’ That is not a thing…” Read the whole post.
I watched a good movie (which I had never seen) on TCM–The Naked City (1948). It is an American film noir directed by Jules Dassin, starring Barry Fitzgerald and Don Taylor as police detectives in the 10th precinct of New York City. Shot entirely on location in NYC, it depicts the police investigation that follows the murder of a young model.
After years of devotion to NYPDBlue and Law and Order, it was fascinating to watch this movie, which certainly blazed the trail for later TV crime dramas. It won the Academy Award for black and white cinematography and for editing, and rightly so. It was very well done and the final scenes leading up to the denouement on the Williamsburg Bridge are very exciting. For anyone who has spent any time in NYC, it is a fascinating picture. Here’s a blog post that shows all the film locations and what they look like currently. It was also fun to notice several actors in uncredited parts who later came to prominence in movies and on TV: Paul Ford, James Gregory, Arthur O’Connell, David Opatoshu, John Randolph, as well as Yiddish icon Molly Picon.
Well, it’s back to Leviticus for me. Enjoy your Thursday!
For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us.
Well, we got about 6-7 inches of snow last week in our neck of the woods. It took us awhile to dig out–we had to get our driveway plowed–and so I was home until Saturday.
In the meantime I managed to shovel the front walk and felt pretty darn good about it.
No one lost their electricity and we had plenty of food and the house wine, so I kind of enjoyed it. Here’s a couple of pictures my friend Don took of the Frank Lloyd Wright house in his neighborhood in our flyover town.
Look at that unbroken stretch of white–just some deer tracks. So beautiful.
On Sunday the OM and I officially joined our new church along with fifteen or so other new members. We attended both morning services so people could get a look at us as we said our “I do’s” in response to the five vows in front of the church body (Do you acknowledge yourselves to be sinners in the sight of God, justly deserving His displeasure, and without hope save in His sovereign mercy?…). I like this old hymn by Martin Luther we sang (even with piano, guitar and drums), but the boy was offended that someone had turned it into a “praise song” with a new tune.
Well, you can’t please all the people all the time. Anyway, we are Presbyterians now! Our Scottish ancestors were all non-conforming Baptists, but our Irish ancestors were Presbyterians (until one married my namesake Catherine Rand, an Episcopalian.) We are back in the fold.
Recently I was reading something written by James Muilenburg, who taught at Union Theological Seminary back when Frederick Buechner was a student there in the 1950s (and back when it was a seminary worth going to.) It seems rather apropos to today and the misdirection of so many to the self.
This is a good interview with the Very Rev. Dr. Paul Zahl about the last third of life. “Where it becomes deeply Christian is, you get to a point when you realize that engagement with the world is sort of a joke, in that the world really is passing away. You can’t tell someone who’s in the midst of life at 35 years old, or 45 years old, that that’s true, because at that time it doesn’t feel like it is. This is why I’m speaking empirically, not prescriptively. But then they’ll get to a stage when they’ll see that a tremendous amount of what felt important simply is passing away.” Amen, brother.
I also liked this article, especially because I, too, am reading Job. “The thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me.” (Job 3:25) We all deal with this one. “If atomic bombs or Chaldeans or tornados or illness or accidents or injury or our worst-case scenario finds us, let it find us living — not curled up in a ball in the corner.”
I was contemplating daughter #1’s thought-provoking post from yesterday and I was struck by something George Meyer said in the New Yorker article: “I say this to people and they think I’m kidding, but I didn’t realize that ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’ was supposed to be funny. I thought you just watched it.”
I remembered how I use to watch syndicated episodes of “I Love Lucy” back in the 1960s when I was in elementary school. I thought it was kind of a sad show about poor people who lived in a tiny apartment. Lucy and her friend Ethel did really stupid things and their eye-rolling husbands were constantly exasperated. I had no clue it was supposed to be funny.
Well, I guess George and I figured out what was funny along the way. But I think it is safe to say, since the mid-20th century, parents have allowed their children to watch way too much television without much supervision and the cost to civilization has been great.
This reminded me that I did watch Greyfriars Bobby (1961) last week and was, once again, very touched by it. This Disney movie is child-appropriate and teaches some valuable lessons about kindness. It also shows what real poverty is in a very subtle way. Most twenty-first century Americans have little idea what real poverty is–when tenement-dwelling children can be shocked that the wee dog is fed chicken broth. “Chicken for the dog? I’ve never tasted it.” Only one of the children can read and write. But their hearts are warmed by the wee dog and the tavern keeper learns kindness and generosity. This lovely story led me to watch The LittleKidnappers (1953), a J. Arthur Rank production, about two wee Scottish-Canadian boys who go to live with their strict Calvinist grandparents in Nova Scotia when their parents die. The five and eight-year old actors who portray these boys are wonderful (the five-year old later appears in Greyfriars Bobby and Thomasina) and it is a wonderful story about forgiveness and learning to love one’s neighbor. It is available to watch on Youtube:
Anyway, as you may have heard, we are in the middle of a winter snowpocalypse which, in reality, affects me very little as I am retired and was not planning to travel anywhere. My bible study group is meeting via Zoom today–my first Zoom meeting since retiring last year. Well, the whole region is on hold again, which just goes to prove, if it’s not one thing, it’s another.
Meanwhile, I am reading this classic of Puritan writing by Stephen Charnock: Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God.
Here is comfort in afflictions. As a sovereign, he is the author of afflictions, as a sovereign, he is the remover of them; he can command the waters of affliction to go so far, and no farther. If he speaks the word, a disease shall depart, as soon as a servant shall from your presence with a nod. If we are banished from one place, he can command a shelter for us from another. If he orders Moab, a nation that had no great kindness for his people, to let his outcasts dwell with them, they shall entertain them, and afford them sanctuary. (Is. 16:4) Again, God chasteneth as a sovereign, but teacheth as a father (Ps 90:12).
I think this antique wooden model that I rescued at the auction last weekend is so my ascetic:
And there’s this:
I am definitely going to start wearing sunglasses more often.
“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”
dual personalities 