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Sunday Gratitude – 2.VIII.2026
Boy, has it been busy the last couple of weeks! More appointments than I could shake a stick at, and a couple of weekend events as well. I’m very grateful that things pretty much went off without a hitch, and appointments were met, things a t home have been pretty quiet, and events were enjoyable.
One of the events that I went to last Sunday was German Fest in Milwaukee. I had toyed with the idea of biking the 16 or so miles up to church, and then continuing on the eight from church to the fest, but I’m happy that I didn’t do that. Instead, I put my bike in the car and drove up to church, changed quickly afterwards in the bathroom, then biked the 8 up to German Fest. I had never biked along the Lakefront Path before, and it was really beautiful, albeit busy with people, making it impossible to go very fast. For me, one of the draws is that I get to see people I know, and so that was really fun. (I just wish my German dress still fit me.)
I biked the 8 miles back to the car, and at the end I was tired, and I was grateful I didn’t have 16 more to go, but I didn’t feel terrible either. Last year, I parked in a place where it was a four mile ride from my car to the fest, and on the way back, I felt like I was dying. However, I probably hadn’t even been on a bike in at least 2-3 years before then. And now, well, between the Thursday afternoon before German Fest and the following Friday afternoon, I biked over fifty miles, and it was challenging, but fun. 🙂 I’m grateful for the opportunity to be working on my health.
Silly thing, but my older son was looking for 32 gigabyte SD cards for something. I figured that that was easy enough; as long as I can remember, those things aren’t wildly expensive. Imagine my shock when I walked into Best Buy to get one, and they all seemed to be over $45. Insane. I told him to hold off on buying one, and though I often have miscellaneous extra memory cards and such around, there was nothing that would help him in this instance. Mind you, though, that I haven’t purchased any of these in at least 3 years. The next day, he and his sister went to the gym, and I decided to check out WalMart. Wouldn’t you know, but the price was almost as bad. However, there were two associates who came up right by me, one of them holding a plastic case. Wouldn’t you know, but there were two 32GB SD cards in it. They seemed to be confused about where they wanted to put the item, as it had originally come from the outdoor section, as these two were marketed for trail cams. Nobody is looking for SD cards in the outdoor section! I’m sure this is why this was marked down to $8.50. I proceeded to ask if I could buy it, and they were happy to oblige me, as that also meant that they didn’t have to find a place to put them in the case. I am very grateful I didn’t have to shell out three times as much for the same item.
After German Fest, I went over to my church’s church picnic. That was fun, too. The location is great, and it’s nice to hang out with good people. Summer days are beautiful like that.
Speaking of summer days, we finally got some rain. I don’t think it rained at all in July until the 27th and it was kind of sad seeing everybody’s lawns turning brown. I had mowed right around the last week of June, and I had meant to a couple of weeks after that, and I actually started to, but after about 10 minutes of mowing, I twisted my ankle and it hurt too much to keep going. By the next day already, I didn’t know if it was safe to mow, but it was interesting to see how those strips that I did mow turned very, very brown, and I’m grateful I didn’t cut the whole lawn and have it looking like that.
On the weather front, we had strong storms that came through on the 27th. Friends of mine in Milwaukee had power knocked out, but here, thankfully, we kept power, there was no hail, etc. Unfortunately, this was not the case in all of Wisconsin, and the town of Menasha, in particular, got hit badly. My kids and I signed up for an event months ago that takes place in this area; once I heard that there was a tornado, I checked back to see if the event had been cancelled. It didn’t seem to be, so we drove up to the area and just happened to end up on the street here that this man is driving on in the first 3 minutes of the video here.
How did I end up in Menasha? Well, our first destination was in a small town called Combined Locks. The driving on the interstate had been miserable due to rain, and at a certain point, I couldn’t take it any more, and looked for the first exit off, knowing I could come up the western side of Lake Winnebago to get to where I wanted to go. It just happens that Menasha is pretty much on the western side of the tip of Lake Winnebago, so by getting off the interstate, it pretty much meant going through Menasha. It was weird, too, because at first, I just noticed that there were a lot of tree branches and stuff on the sides of the road, and it kind of dawned on me that that must have been a result of the storm. I did not know that within about 15 minutes, we’d be driving through a disaster zone like this. The crazy thing is, though, that once I got through Menasha, my destination was about six miles down the road, and over there, things looked completely normal. For as bad as the tornado was though, it’s amazing that not a single person was killed – certainly something to be grateful for.
The event that the little kids and I went to was a bike ride/music festival called “Bike to the Beat“. The event took place on Saturday, but the four of us made a little mini-vacation out of it, and it was an awful lot of fun. The drive up was absolutely horrendous, lasting 4 hours when 2.5 is more normal. It rained the whole time and there were accidents and road construction in the Milwaukee area. I was so incredibly grateful both to get off the interstate and to actually arrive at the hotel.
BIke to the Beat was amazing, even apart from a couple of wrinkles in the day, and I am grateful that there were no mechanical issues with the bikes, we had all the tools, I didn’t forget any pedals or anything, etc. More than that though, the kids enjoyed the hotel a lot and we took a little detour through Manitowoc on the way back, and it was really a good trip. I’m the type of person who is always trying to anticipate what might go wrong in order to avoid any pitfalls, and when things go off with no major issues, I am grateful.
I’m grateful, too, that after far too long, I got to video chat with a dear friend. I’m grateful, too that through everything, the friendship holds.
Wow, it’s been a full couple of weeks! Thank you all for your patience with me! I am certainly grateful for all of you!
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Saturday on Substack 20.V.2023
I managed to post this on Substack while it was still Saturday, despite falling asleep on a pile of unmatched socks. However, I wasn’t so lucky with the repost over here, but I’m getting to that now.
https://breathofhallelujah.substack.com/p/saturday-on-substack-20v2023
Love to you all!
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I Never Knew You
The Avett Brothers have a song called “I Never Knew You” that has a tendency to worm its way into my brain and not let go for several hours at a time. Since I’m a sharing person, here it is:
Although some of the lyrics are almost nonsensical, the chorus is probably more profound than even intended:
So I guess it's kind of funny how I loved you so way back when You say I wouldn't know you now Well, I didn't even know you then
I’ve thought about those lines a lot, though mainly in the context of people moving on and changing. Then, about a week ago, I was listening to Jordan Peterson’s series on Genesis. In the talk about Genesis chapter 1, he started talking about betrayal, and how Dante considered betrayal to be the deepest level of hell. The whole 2.5 hours is worth listening to, but this particular point can be found right around minute 26. However, it’s what came next that gave me chills (28:07 in the video):
But then, if that trust is betrayed, then all the snakes come forth very, very rapidly. All of you, I suspect, have been betrayed in one way or another. If you’re in a relationship with someone and you trust them, then you make certain assumptions about the past, and you make certain assumptions about the present, and you make certain assumptions about the future, and everything’s stable. You’re standing on solid ground and the chaos—it’s like you’re standing on thin ice. The chaos is hidden; the shark beneath the waves isn’t there. You’re safe; you’re in the lifeboat. But the instant the person betrays you…If you’re in a intimate relationship and the person has an affair, and you find out about it, one moment you’re in one place where everything is secure, because you predicated your perception of the world on the axiom of trust, and the next second—really, the next second—you’re in a completely different place. Not only is that place different right now, but the place you were years ago is different, and the place you’re gonna be in the future years hence is different.
All of that certainty, that strange certainty that you inhabit, can collapse into incredible complexity. If someone betrays you, you think, well, ok, who were you? Because you aren’t who I thought you were, and I thought I knew you. But I didn’t know you at all, and I never knew you. All the things we did together, those weren’t the things that I thought were happening. Something else was happening, and you are someone else, and that means I’m someone else, because I thought I knew what was going on, and clearly I don’t. I’m some sort of blind sucker, or the victim of a psychopath, or someone who’s so naive that they can barely live. I don’t understand anything about human beings, and I don’t understand anything about myself, and I have no idea where I am now. I thought I was at home, but I’m not. I’m in a house, and it’s full of strangers. I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow, or next week, or next year. All of that certainty, that habitable certainty, collapses right back into the potential from which it emerged. That’s a terrifying thing. That’s a journey to the underworld, from a mythological perspective.
Jordan Peterson https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/transcripts/biblical-series-ii/It makes complete sense. Sure, in the song, there certainly was a growing apart, but the reason that there is such an estrangement is that there was an element of betrayal there as well. It’s no wonder that the singer has no interest in getting back together with the person he’s singing to! Peterson describes the thought process here in paragraphs, but it’s something the song captures in four little lines, which reflect back to the title of the song.
“You say I wouldn’t know you now, but I didn’t even know you then…”
There is, of course, an even more famous occurrence of the phrase “I never knew you,” and that is Matthew 7.
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’
Matthew 7:21-23 (NKJV)In this context, “I never knew you” also fits. In the context of the chapter, there is admonishment toward those who try to use God as a means to their own ends, for their own glory, like ravenous wolves in sheep’s clothing. That certainly is betrayal there, isn’t it? To say “I never knew you” lets it be known that as much as others may have been fooled or impressed or dumb about someone’s show of supposed righteousness, it does nothing to fool or impress God.
And while I know that I probably overthink things quite a lot, but it’s interesting to me to see the stained glass and that it looks like they may have been recording in an old church. On one hand, probably totally unintentional, on the other, a very interesting coincidence, if it was.
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Spring of Cary: Operation Petticoat
Promotional poster Thank you, Lisa (over at Boondock Ramblings) for suggesting this film! I was a little hesitant at first – I think watching Das Boot in high school “3scarred” me for life. (The sadder thing is, I don’t even remember if I watched it for my US History class or German class! I tend to think it was US History, but I do remember that it ran in German with English subtitles.)
Erin from Cracker Crumb Life is always instrumental in these as well.
At its core, Operation Petticoat is a comedy. That being said the backdrop to the movie is deadly serious, but the juxtaposition works.
The movie is told as a memory, and the present day frames the beginning and the end. Grant plays Captain Sherman (later Lt. Commander Sherman) who can’t stand seeing an almost new vessel get scrapped due to it not being near a facility with the ability to fix it. If that weren’t bad enough, from that point on, it seems that everything that can go wrong, does, and then some, starting with Lieutenant (junior grade) Nick Holden (Tony Curtis) getting assigned to the ship. Sherman is a Navy man, does everything by the book, and Holden, despite his rank, hasn’t even been on a ship. Sherman regards him at first as being a pretty boy who has made his rank by kissing up to the right people, but it turns out that Holden has talent for a lot of things, some of which may even be legal.
One of the things I appreciated were the shots that really demonstrated how tight the spaces are on a sub. I’ve toured a couple in my life, and the captain’s quarters always look so nice, but a submarine really is the definition of “close quarters”.
Of course, for the men, it’s not a big deal, as they’re used to it, but then they take on a group of five nurses who have been stranded by a Japanese raid that destroyed the airstrip needed to leave the island where they were. And then the space feels so much tighter!
From there, things get even weirder, and that’s the crux of the comedy here. I have the feeling like the film could have been a disaster, had they gone the route of trying to make it more of a Gilligan’s Island type comedy, but Grant was masterful in his role, and as implausible as the whole scenario got to be, he was the pillar that really kept the film from being a circus.
Looking up information about the film, it was the 3rd biggest movie of 1959. At that time, a lot of people still remembered WWII well, and even with the fantastical elements, had they done this poorly, I don’t think it would have been nearly this popular.
One thing, though… Among the nurses, there is one who is older, and who I would have guessed to maybe be pushing 50, and at one point, she says that she’s 38… 38!!! Crazy!
I’m in the middle of getting ready for another visit from the electrician tomorrow, so this is probably shorter than most of the film reviews I’ve posted. I liked this an awful lot, though, and I’m glad Lisa suggested it.
(I watched this movie using Pluto.tv, which is free, but had a couple commercials every ten minutes or so. It wasn’t too bad, but I think I might actually get this DVD because I liked the film so much.)
Update: I just watched it for a second time – wow – a lot of the lines are great! And Dick Sargent (of Betwitched! fame).
Lisa’s review can be found here: https://lisahoweler.com/2023/05/18/spring-of-cary-operation-petticoat/ and Erin’s take can be found here: https://crackercrumblife.com/2023/05/22/the-spring-of-cary-grant-operation-petticoat/
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Wordless Wednesday #30 – Tiny Life
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Sunday Gratitude – 14.V.2023 – Mother’s Day
Christ is Risen!
Happy Mother’s Day! I hope it was a beautiful day for all.
I remember looking forward for the school year to start so that I’d have “more time” to get stuff done. Now I’m looking forward to the end of the school year for the same reason. It’s amazing how much time and energy “just” getting the kids ready in the morning is. Will the kids sleep in during the summer? I certainly hope so!
Mr. Hollands Home Services, which is local here, had a fantastic Mother’s Day ad, and I wish they would have put it up on their website or youtube because I would have liked to have shared it.
In the meantime, there’s a flurry of end-of-year events, competitions, field trips, and appointments. Just a few more days until the “finish line”, so to speak. I think two will be taking the bus next year, and hopefully that cuts down on the number of morning fights about who is making whom late.
I am grateful that the electricity in the family room has been fixed. I’m glad to be able to pay for that.
I am grateful that I could get the new Zelda game for the kids. I’m grateful that on Mother’s Day, I got to actually play it a little.
I’m grateful that a neighbor volunteers to mow my grass with his riding mower.
I’m grateful that although my three-year-old fell out of a Costco cart and hit her head, it doesn’t seem like it is anything more than a bump. She’s getting so reckless in general, if this is a reminder to her not to get so crazy, I’m grateful for that too, painful as it is.
I am grateful for my kids, to know them, and for all the growing they make me do.
I’m grateful to have gotten two “big” things finished this week.
As always, I am grateful for each one of you reading, and for your prayers.
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Saturday on Substack 13.V.2023
If you’re interested in seeing a selection of things I’ve been reading or listening to recently, click on over to my Substack account for those kind of things:
https://breathofhallelujah.substack.com/p/saturday-on-substack-13v2023
Love to you all!
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Wordless Wednesday #29 – Sacred Heart/St. Jude the Apostle Church, Oshkosh
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Sunday Gratitude – 5.V.2023
Christ is Risen!
I had this post ready to go last night except for the pictures. I nearly fell asleep on the computer (again) so I figured that I would wait until this morning to get the photos in order. Of course, nothing worked out quite the way it was supposed to, so here we are just after 11pm posting what should have been posted yesterday. Oh well, we roll with it, don’t we?
I am soooo tired! It’s made getting through the week harder than normal.
I am grateful that I got to get away for a few hours of frivolity. 🙂 That’s important.
I am grateful that I got to spend some time with a couple of women from church who are very shy people – and we had a blast! 🙂
I’m grateful that the school year is almost over and the neighbors are back from vacation.
The new ‘neighbors’! (But not the ones just back from vacation!) As always, I am grateful for each one of you reading, and for your prayers.
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Saturday on Substack – 6.V.2023
As it seems to be the case a lot of the time, I’m behind with this (and pretty much everything else as well).
Check me out over at Substack for a bit of a weekly roundup! https://breathofhallelujah.substack.com/p/saturday-on-substack-6v2023
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Spring of Cary: Holiday
Lisa over at Boondock Ramblings nudged me a bit to join in with the “Spring of Cary” a couple of weeks ago. Since my library had both An Affair to Remember and Holiday, I figured “Why not?”. Last week’s discussion wit her and Erin from Cracker Crumb Life was a lot of fun, so here I am. 🙂
As usual, I knew nothing about the movie to start out with other than it came out in 1938. The plot of the movie revolves around Johnny Case, a young but “self-made” man, who meets a young woman named Julia while on vacation, and the two decide to get married. What he doesn’t know is that not only is she super-rich, her family is part of New York’s upper-crust society. As the film progresses, it becomes more and more clear that their vision for a shared life isn’t nearly the same. At the same time, Johnny meets Julia’s siblings, older sister Linda and younger brother Ned. Linda, coincidentally, was a student of one of Johnny’s mentor-friends.
Now, I kept believing that at some point, everybody was going to pack up and go “on holiday” or something, but, the spoiler alert is that they really don’t. There’s “Holiday” in the sense that this film takes place more or less over the “Holiday” of New Year, and then there’s the “holiday” that Johnny dreams of but it still seems like it’s an odd name for the movie. I read later that it was adapted from a play, which does a lot to explain the limited number of settings in the film.
As for the movie itself, Grant and Hepburn certainly were the stars. The 1930s “high style” was amazing – tails to church? Yes! – but it certainly does seem to belong to an era much, much earlier than the 1950s.
I’m not sure, though, what the movie was trying to say. I suppose the best I can come up with is Ace of Base’s age-old question – “Is enough enough?”
Obviously, the person that the audience is supposed to feel for is Johnny. He’s a man who, despite losing his parents early and having no money to depend on, started working at ten in order to make a life for himself. He’s done well, too – he’s got a good career, he’s educated (went to Harvard), and he wants more in life than what money can buy him. Above all else, he doesn’t want to wait until he’s retired to have a little “holiday”, he wants to get to a point where he can take some time off from the rat race and enjoy some time of his youth. He’d like to get married and Julia looks to be part of his plans.
However, Julia neglects to tell him that she’s from “old money” and he neglects to tell her about his dreams for a “holiday”. At the beginning of the movie, the viewer sees Johnny enter her house through the staff entrance because he doesn’t suppose that she does anything but work there. As the two meet, the issue about asking Julia’s father for her hand in marriage presents itself. At this time as well, Johnny meets Julia’s sister Linda and her brother Edward (called “Ned” by his family) and it becomes apparent that there’s quite a lot of dysfunctionality amongst the siblings.
While I am sure that Julia was happy to find someone who didn’t love her for her money or for her social circle, assuming someone would be happy to marry into that is a pretty big assumption. Johnny’s thoughts that there’s more to life than work and amassing wealth are admirable, but considering that this version of the film came out in the 1930s – the Great Depression – it smacks of being elitist and out of touch. Oh, poor Johnny! He can’t see himself working in business with a big house and servants because he needs a holiday first!
Obviously, one of the “lessons” of the story is that selling one’s soul to the gods of business and riches is awful. However, neither Johnny or Linda or Ned seem like they know the “better way” out, to not lose one’s soul in the middle of all of this. A lot of the film is Johnny and Linda (Katharine Hepburn’s character) going back and forth with these issues, and it’s obvious that the two of them start falling for each other.
Which makes me really wonder if this song was written after someone watched this movie:
I’m not going to spoil the ending here, so I won’t go into the end of the film, but I just wanted to note two small things that were interesting to me, at least.
In Julia’s family’s world (the Setons), there’s incredible formality. Yet Johnny is always called “Johnny” – I don’t know if it was unintentional or a thing to remind the viewer that he doesn’t inhabit the same social class as they do, but it got to be annoying. He’s a grown man in the 1930s – I’m sure that he’s “John” to all but his closest friends. What kind of drove this home was the switch between “Ned” and “Edward”.
Secondly, the writer gave Johnny the last name “Case”. Now, I don’t know about you, but “Case” at one point was one of the biggest names in American “royalty”, thanks to Jerome I Case, founder of Case threshers. However, he was king of Racine, Wisconsin, (even before S.C. Johnson) and that doesn’t count for much, apparently, with the who’s who in New York. It was probably just a coincidence, but part of me kept thinking that even the play’s writer couldn’t get past a real “New York” bias.
The other thing that was kind of interesting is that there is a little bit of “political” talk among the Seton siblings and their cousins, and I wonder if they’re referring to the communism or fascism (or both) sweeping across Europe in the 1930s. At one point, a number of the characters do something similar to a Hitler salute, but it’s with their left hands. Some people realized the dangers of both philosophies in the 1930s, but many were enamored of them as well.
I had fun with this movie; I realize that I probably over-analyze a lot! Thanks to Lisa for recommending it, and now to hop over here to see what she’s written https://lisahoweler.com/2023/05/04/spring-of-cary-holiday/ and I’ll post Erin’s review when I see it.
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Breath of Hallelujah 