We are really in the dog days of summer now, but on Friday it was still nice enough to sit outside and enjoy a glass of wine. Mr. Smith sat like a good dog with us and was not too distracted by the flora and fauna. As little Katie would say, “Mr. Smith is growin’ up!”
Earlier on Friday I met the boy down at the Link Auction Galleries and he picked up a glass-front bookcase for me and a large oriental rug for daughter #1 before rushing off to open his store. He came back on Sunday afternoon and moved the bookcase inside from the garage and the rug over to her house.
What would I do without him and his truck?
I watched Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 (2023) on my friend’s very large television and I enjoyed it, although it was much too long–2 hours and 30 minutes! It could easily have been edited to an hour and a half, but today’s moviemakers are so self-indulgent, they have no idea how to edit a movie.
It was very good to be back at church after missing for two weeks when I was out of town and then sick. We even sang my new favorite hymn:
Come, ye weary, heavy laden, lost and ruined by the fall; if you tarry till you’re better, you will never come at all.
And is this baby too cute or what?
Life is full of blessings. Be sure to count yours every day!
How was your weekend? Hope you managed to keep cool. We had more storms and this time the electricity at our house went out for an hour and a half! I was just packing a bag to go to daughter #1’s house, when it came back on. Such drama–these days we are lost without our precious electricity.
Poor daughter #2 and famille had their air conditioning go out on Saturday and had to wait all day to get it fixed. I am sympathetic, but back in my day, we didn’t have central air conditioning at all and we had to wait all summer for relief. We are very spoiled now, that’s for sure. We would go to the movies to sit for a few hours in the AC. Grocery shopping was also a diversion!
Anyway, c’est la vie. Saturday morning I went to a flower arranging workshop at church led by the floral director at Schnucks Markets. I learned a lot!
I like the fact that the flowers at our church are always done by volunteers. There is no “the flowers are given (i.e. paid for) to the glory of God and in thanksgiving for/in memory of by so-and-so” announcement in the bulletin. It is just an anonymous gift. But we in the flower guild do our best (for the glory of God) and every week the arrangements are very different.
After church on Sunday there was a reception for a lady who is retiring after working there for 24 years–one of those unsung women who make everything run smoothly in the office and, if they are lucky, are appreciated for being “hard-working” and “organized”. Lois was also lauded for her sincere faith. Well, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” (Colossians 3:23).
I watched a really good movie–Intruder in the Dust (1949) based on William Faulkner’s novel, which is basically a mystery story set in the deep South. It is the story of Lucas Beauchamp, an independent, land-owning black man, who is unjustly accused of the murder of a white man, Vinson Gowrie. Through the help of two teenage boys, the town lawyer and an elderly white lady, who figure out who the real murderer is, he is able to prove his innocence.
I had not seen this movie in many years. It held up. Shot entirely on location in Oxford, Mississippi, it has an air of authenticity that the backlot never would have achieved. The actors are all solid. The screenplay by Ben Maddow sticks to Faulkner’s book. The Director Clarence Brown, who grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee and apparently knew something about the South, was not even nominated for an Oscar for this movie, but he won the British Academy Film Award for it. (Brown holds the record for the most Academy Award for direction nominations–6–without a win.)
Not surprisingly, the film failed at the box office, not even earning back its negative costs according to studio records. There is, after all, no romance in this movie; there are no pretty girls. There is no real action to speak of–only the threat of action (a lynching). There are tense moments, to be sure, for our heroes as they ride around at night and dig up a dead body and, when they get the sheriff on board with their plan, dig the body up again. But American audiences were not interested.
It is said, however, that William Faulkner himself was pleased with the film and Ralph Ellison wrote that of the whole cycle of race-based movies released in 1949, Intruder in the Dust was “the only film that could be shown in Harlem without arousing unintended laughter, for it is the only one of the four in which Negroes can make complete identification with their screen image.”
Check it out. It’s worth a viewing. Then read the book!
“Some things you must always be unable to bear. Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame. No matter how young you are or how old you have got. Not for kudos and not for cash: your picture in the paper nor money in the bank either. Just refuse to bear them.”
I thought we were going to have a quiet weekend because the boy and his family were in Kansas City, but we had visitors Sunday night–my brother and his son, who passed through our flyover town on their way to Arizona where Foster is moving. Lots of excitement as you can imagine. Cousins…
…and oldsters…
Further excitement when our resident OT professor from Covenant Seminary gave the sermon on Sunday–all about the Assyrians coming down like a wolf on the fold, i.e. 2 Kings 19:35-37. My DP would have really enjoyed it. We sang “It Is Well With My Soul” and I missed the twins, because they would have loved the fact that they know it and would have sung with gusto.
And back in Maryland daughter #2 beat the heat with her little ones.
(And the OM enjoyed lots of quality time with Mr. Smith.)
How was your weekend? I redeemed a gift card from Mother’s Day and had an hour-long spa pedicure, which had me walking on air for quite some time. Wow.
We had a guest preacher in church and he preached on Daniel 6–the lion’s den! I love Daniel so I was pleased. We need reminders of heroes like Daniel to keep us on track. We also had interesting musical accompaniment to all our hymns–a harmonica. Not the usual for A Mighty Fortress is Our God, but not bad. The OM and I stayed for a luncheon with our “fold” after the service. They acknowledged his birthday (today) but refrained from singing Happy Birthday.
We celebrated the OM’s birthday later on Sunday when everyone came over for a barbecue and party. (Even Mr. Smith)
Good times…and presents!
We watched McClintock! (1963), one of my favorite movies extolling the Patriarchy. It is loosely based on The Taming of the Shrew. (And Maureen O’Hara is one helluva shrew.) It has a smart script which moves along at a brisk clip. I enjoyed it thoroughly. It has nothing good to say about bureaucrats, the government or college boys, but is very sympathetic to Native Americans and free enterprise.
Anyway, when you have had enough of our modern day BS, I recommend a good dose of John Wayne at his most John Wayne-ish. “I know, I know. I’m gonna use good judgement. I haven’t lost my temper in forty years, but pilgrim you caused a lot of trouble this morning might have got somebody killed. Somebody oughta belt you in the mouth but I won’t, I wont…the hell I won’t.“
In other news baby Ida got her first taste of solid food…
It was a big hit.
And ol’ Ricky Skaggs is nominated for several Dove Awards this year, including this song which is a favorite of mine…
…as well as this banger version of Go Tell It on the Mountain with Crowder (for a little Christmas in July):
I did the flowers for church this weekend and they were a rather humble offering–Hydrangeas–not too inspiring.
C’est la vie. Meanwhile the summer is flying by.
And just when you think the Anglican Church cannot dig itself any deeper into its hole, another Archbishop says something really, really stupid. As usual, Ann comments better than I am able.
Funnily enough our sermon this Sunday was all about God as our Father, since we are still working our way through Hosea: When Israel was a child, I loved him (Hosea 11:1). As J.I. Packer wrote, “‘Father’ is the Christian word for God. Our understanding of Christianity cannot be better than our grasp of adoption.”
“Christians don’t always see how disbelief in one thing affects belief in another.” This article talks about the ripple effects of not believing in hell.
And thanks to Tim Challies for this great snippet from De Witt Talmage (1832-1902). “In many of the churches of Christ in our day, the music is simply a mockery.” As he says, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”
The boy and his petite famille made it back safely from South Carolina and we look forward to hearing all about it soon!
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)
Did you have a good weekend? Mine was fairly quiet, the highlight being going to church with the wee twins at 8:30 a.m. so they could attend the children’s worship service and then going to daughter #1’s house for bagels afterwards.
Mr. Smith was living his best life, frolicking in the backyard with the twins…
…and everyone signed Lottie’s cast.
Meanwhile back in Maryland, Katiebelle started swimming lessons…
…and Idabelle watched the passing parade with vim and vigor.
I watched some PGA golf and read another D.E. Stevenson book. I went to an estate sale in a house that had once belonged to a family I went to church with growing up and whose daughters went to my school. It had since turned into Grey Gardens and was a wreck. Kind of Quite creepy. But daughter #1 got a book and her usual discount from Lamar.
I also watched Father Goose (1964), Cary Grant’s second-to-last movie. You remember–it’s about a guy during WWII who is forced to work as an airplane spotter on a remote Pacific island and then is saddled with a prim teacher and seven little girls to look after. It won an Oscar for best screenplay written directly for the screen.
It is nice to see Cary playing against type, scruffy and annoyed. I remember my mother took my little sister and me to see it when it was originally released, probably because she thought we would enjoy the little girl element and she got to see Cary Grant. I liked it then and I enjoyed it the other night. It is a good example of the kind of movie Hollywood was very good at making in the 1960s but cannot make now to save their lives.
Well, VBS was a timely reminder that it is a good thing to get out of one’s comfort zone every now and then.
And I have to say, being with all those smart kids kind of restores my confidence in the future somewhat. For example, I had a really engaging conversation with one of the boys in my group about his first name. I asked him if was Welsh and he said Gaelic. This led him to ask if I had ever heard of Tombstone, because he is a descendant of the McLaurys and I was able to jump in and say, why yes, they were participants in the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral. (I had, of course, already been wondering about his name.) He said ‘they’ (his family) hated the movie Tombstone because of the way the McLaurys are depicted. He admitted that the McLaurys were the bad guys, but argued that the movie was not fair. I said he should tell his father to get the movie My Darling Clementine, which is an old movie made in 1946 starring Henry Fonda and is a much better telling of the story. He nodded, and being an intelligent lad, I am hopeful he will pass this information on to his father.
He went on to tell me that his father is a pastor at a downtown church. Then the boy next to him chimed in and said he also went to this church where his mother is the Music Director. We had a good conversation about animals we have seen in our yards. They were impressed that I had seen a coyote.
Anyway, I was glad to meet a boy who is interested in his genealogy and who can talk about it intelligently.
It was also a joy to see my grandchildren in the thick of things and to get hugs throughout the morning when we met in passing. They did great and I think they had a lot of fun.
Can you see them in the front? It did my heart good to hear those babes singing “It Is Well With My Soul”!
I had hoped to see them in church on Sunday singing with the rest of the kids at the beginning of the service, but Lottie broke her arm on Saturday at a pool party. She spent the afternoon in the E.R. We FaceTimed later that evening and she told me, “I’m okay, Mamu!’
She goes back to get a cast (purple with pink sparkles bien sûr) next week.
And lest we forget: we wish a belated happy Father’s Day to all the wonderful fathers out there!
We had a quiet weekend. The twins came over with their dad on Saturday after their swimming lesson and they ran around wrecking some havoc. We ate bagels before they left to go to a birthday party. I watched our local auction house online auction, but didn’t make any rescues. When I suggested to the OM that we might go to dinner at the Cracker Barrel, he literally leapt out of his chair and was in the car before I could powder my nose.
We enjoyed our homestyle meals and were home by 6:00 pm. Such oldsters. I noticed later on Not the Bee that there has been some controversy surrounding Cracker Barrel and a boycott because they are too woke. That might explain why there were so few people there! (Note the empty tables above.)
In church the sermon was about Hosea as we have been delving into this book for the last month or so. Interestingly, Anne wrote about it too. “Just to recap, in case you haven’t cracked open ye olde holy scriptures recently, (paging Rick Warren…and basically everyone), Israel, upon settling into the Land that the Lord her God had given her, decided that worshiping the gods of the people who lived there was at least as interesting as offering sacrifices and praise to the Lord. It’s not that they didn’t “worship” God, it’s just that on the way home from the place God put his Name, it was expedient and sensible to also stop at various other shrines and sacrifice a child or two along with pouring libations on the ground and depositing other kinds of offerings in the nooks and crannies of their inheritance. The all-or-nothing nature of Temple worship didn’t really suit the people whom the Lord had called out from all the nations around, to worship him alone.” God just wants your steadfast love. Is that too much to ask?
After church I helped decorate for VBS. And, thank you Jesus, I now have a teenage helper assigned to me so I do not have to go it totally alone with the 4/5th grade girls this week. 🙌🙌🙌
I thought this was very interesting, especially considering my post last week about outlawing insult. Now Monty Python is in trouble (again)…Forty-four years later we’re certainly not allowed to laugh at this nonsense because it has become the truth:
I mean who would have guessed how spot on the Pythons were back in the day!
And just in time for VBS, Matt Mitchell has a new video about…VBS!
P.S. Look at the wee pup and how his training is going: Sit, boy!
The boy and the wee laddie went to the NASCAR race over in Illinois with his other Papaw on Sunday and had quite a day.
They saw all the cool stuff up close and personal.
The bud, who is, as you know, an experienced driver, even got to drive…
It was super hot, but they had super fun–perfect male bonding time.
On another note, this is a really interesting article/lecture about the cautionary tale of Alexander Hamilton and his late-blooming Christian faith. “God be merciful to me a sinner.”
dual personalities 