dual personalities

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 Little Kidnappers (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.

You can read more about him here.

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.”

– Philippians 4:8