A Kind of Dream Farm

VINTAGE EGGS & SAMPLERS
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

Long ago at Easter I had a looking-egg. Peering in a little porthole at the end, I saw a lovely little farm, a kind of dream farm, and on the farmhouse chimney a stork sitting on a nest. I regarded this as a fairy-tale farm as surely imagined as gnomes sitting under toadstools. And then in Denmark I saw that farm or its brother, and it was true, just as it had been in the looking-egg. And in Salinas, California, where I grew up, although we had some frost the climate was cool and foggy. When we saw colored pictures of a Vermont autumn forest it was another fairy thing and we frankly didn't believe it. In school we memorized "Snowbound" and little poems about Old Jack Frost and his paintbrush, but the only thing Jack Frost did for us was put a thin skin of ice on the watering trough, and that rarely. To find not only that this bedlam of color was true but that the pictures were pale and inaccurate translations, was to me startling. I can't even imagine the forest colors when I am not seeing them. I wondered whether constant association could cause inattention, and asked a native New Hampshire woman about it. She said the autumn never failed to amaze her; to elate. "It is a glory," she said, "and can't be remembered, so that it always comes as a surprise."

~by John Steinbeck
~from Travels With Charley (36 - 37, emphasis added)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The rutted drive was filled with rainwater. Every leaf and blade of grass was shining. Once we turned we quieted down. The towering woods to our left, the white clapboard house with blue shutters up ahead, the gentle hills of fruit trees to the right that spread out behind the house past where we could see -- it looked like a sampler stitched by an eighteenth-century girl. . . .

It wasn't as if I'd grown up in Los Angeles. I'd seen plenty of farms in my day, but never had I seen a place that made the tightness in my chest relax. The order in the rows of trees and the dark green of the lush grass beneath them soothed me like a hand brushing across my forehead.

. . . So often my mind went back to that day at the Nelsons' farm . . . "Maybe we can all go back to the Nelsons' farm," I said, thinking I could get another chance. We could live the entire day again!

[Just as in Our Town when Emily says:
"Oh, I want the whole day."]
. . . Generations of Nelsons had cleared the trees and planed the boards and pulled out the roots and the enormous rocks and planted the orchard. They looked after the cherries and the apples, the peaches and pears.

~by Ann Patchett
~from Tom Lake (160, 246-47, 305-06, emphasis added)

Notice how Patchett hints at the idea that the farm hasn't taken on this dreamy appearance spontaneously. The soothing sense of order derives not in accordance with the mysterious workings of Nature but from generations of clearing, weeding, planting, and planing -- as in "to make smooth or even" -- weeding out what is already there naturally, planting something deemed more desirable by humankind. Left to its own devices, Nature would most likely have taken another direction altogether.

Episcopal priest, author, and anthropologist Miranda K. Hassett refers to this human intervention as putting the land under disclipine. A few weeks ago, she wrote:

"My Lenten discipline this year is to spend a little time outdoors, with attention and intention, every day, if possible. Today it was just a short walk in our neighborhood with the dog. I started out thinking faintly sulky thoughts about how our immediate neighborhood isn't very interesting, nature-wise, and it's a very unprepossessing time of year -- all gray snow and mud. Then I started thinking about how this land is under discipline - flattened and cleared for a neighborhood, sculpted for water runoff, managed to mostly grow only grass where it's not paved or built on. Then I walked past the place where a freak August flood took a life in 2018, less than a block from our house, and thought about that for a while. I've never quite been able to figure out how to integrate that into my relationship with my neighborhood. THEN I noticed that the weird old apple tree in the neighborhood park has half-fallen, probably in that very heavy snow a few weeks back. The city will probably take it down this year, and I'll miss its witchy, unruly presence. Our dog would sometimes eat its wormy green apples off the ground.

"This is, I suppose, lesson one: Tuning in to the land, to the non-human created world around me, is not about going outside to 'enjoy' or 'appreciate' nature. Nature does not owe me beauty or enjoyment. Paying attention to the land can bring all kinds of uncomfortable feelings - grief, confusion, curiosity - not just 'look how pretty the trees are against the sky.'" (emphasis added)

Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, May 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

To the Literary Battle Fronts

INSTILLING DIGNITY, CHANGING STORIES
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

Mural by
The Graffiti Girls Kenya

Journalist Elizabeth Okwach: "In Kenya, a group of fearless women are finding ways to express themselves by painting graffiti. In the process, these women are challenging stereotypes by visualizing civic issues that are impacting their community.

"Working in Kenya’s capital Nairobi — and major surrounding cities — Graffiti Girls Kenya are painting murals that are gracing the walls of creative hubs and community centers. Even though the murals are bright with color, the themes of these works cover a wide range of societal ills."

Graffiti Girls "sees public art as a crucial venue to address"
the problem of Gender Based Violence.

Artist Nelly Bradbury: “Our messaging through graffiti is bold and clear. When people are passing by they are able to see it and even guide them . . . I believe that public art is changing the social conditions of our community and instilling a deep sense of dignity. It is also changing peoples’ stories that have been ignored or overlooked.

~from OkayAfrica, June 2, 2022

While the artists' collective raises awareness visually, the AMKA writers' collective takes a verbal approach. Director Lydia W. Gaitirira expresss concern that while "written works form a good basis for analyzing perceptions on important social, political, economic and other issues . . . a lot of the creative literature available to young women . . . is designed primarily to entertain . . . [and] often ignores the pertinent issues."

The Fresh Paint literature project offers a corrective to fill that gap. Through prose and poetry, numerous serious writers are telling their stories of personal and political revolution from "the literary battle fronts."

Featured recently on
Kitti's Book List and The Quotidian Kit

~ Volume 1 available on amazon ~
~ Title story available on wordpress ~

This post will focus on a few more selections
from the Fresh Paint collections.
In the following poems, a trio of poets
raise their voices and our consciousness.

1.
The first is a saga of birth, suffering, and as yet unrealized potential, somewhat reminiscent of Walt Whitman's Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, except -- instead of bird, boy, and sea -- the dominant motifs are mother, child, and earth (see also Yeats's "The Second Coming"). This is a long poem; here are the first five stanzas:

The Day the Cradle Gave Birth
~ by Kingwa Kamenchu (in volume 1, 108 - 112)

I know the story of how
She had once been
The cradle of all mankind,
The genesis of all living and breathing,
The birth ground of all empire.
But then in time,
Things had fallen apart

But I've been watching and waiting
And reading the signs
And they all tell me
That the cradle is once again pregnant
Heavy.
Ready to deliver
Any time soon

I see it in the way
Those children inside her stir,
Move, foment, and seethe,
With the pain of being inside
In that watery dark for far too long
A watery dark they have been stuck into
Pegged in, enclosed around, hemmed into,
Trapped down in, shoved upon, condemned to,
Misled, misinformed, and
Hoodwinked is their destiny
For far too long.

They know they must get out now,
Get away from the suffocation and bleakness inside.
These days, you see,
They have their learning; they have seen other worlds
Sniffed the tangy possibility of new vistas
They know who they are
What they want
And they will take no less

I see it in the way
Those children kick,
Jerk about, lash out, and thrust against,
Refuse, demur, dissent
To the condemnation; hit against the inner
enemies as well,
Refuse to be stifled,
After all these years
After numerous struggles
From the war trenches to the academies,
To the literary battle fronts,
They have never given up . . .


The sixth stanza describes Mother Africa's 50 - year pregnancy: "abnormal, surreal, absurd." While the other six continents "Dance, sashay and flourish" and "rule the world," she is restricted by her so - called "condition." In the seventh and eighth stanzas, "Her body has been one big war zone . . . Such a torturous existence" of labor pains, birth pangs, loss of blood.

Then for a brief moment, seven short stanzas, the poet is graced with a vision of hope. Africa has delivered the "home grown . . . fruit of her womb":


Fat, gurgling, cherub-cheeked babies,
Round and luscious, black skins satedly gleaming.
Long gone were the pathetic skin and bone wasted tots
Staring out of wide vacant eyes, flies nibbling at their corners
BBC, CNN, long packd up and trotted off to the
wildebeest great migration
in search of the new exotic; Real African picture. . . .

But I blinked
And when I opened my eyes,
She was still pregnant
Flailing her arms and legs
Rolling her neck from side to side
Moaning in pain and anguish
Like before

And it made me sit and wonder,
What will it take?
For this glorious, blessed cradle,
To give birth once again?


2.
The second poem, like the first, is rich in literary allusion and geography -- the Nile, the streets of Harlem, the "belly of the Sahara . . . a thousand lands." Jallow writes with hope that the world is wide and scorn may be supplanted by song. However, many wrongs remain to redress:

From Shame and Fantasy I Rise
~ by Maimouna Jallow (in Volume 2, 26 - 27)

I too, I dance and I rise
With diamonds at the meeting between my thighs,
Reclaimed the names that you gave me,
And found in them some things that might surprise.

Too many details remained buried under the cloak of the past,
Even if slavery never did lay its hands on my brown skin.
Shame and fantasy reduced my tribe to just half of a caste
Only the walls murmuring whispers of the original sin.

You called me Zero Point Five,
Mathematically drawing a decimal into my existence,
As though in those numbers did not lie
Thousands of years of resistance.

You called me IN-FER-TILE,
Supported by false tales of scientific evolution.
But I flow through man-made boundaries, a child of the NILE,
And my name is written in stone, engraved in the memory of revolution.

Now, just like then, Mule-atta dances off your tongue,
Insult camouflaged by exoticism,
An eroticism splattered on big screens uncensored.
Darwinism dons past colonialism and has just met commercialism.

But under the glow of Harlem streetlights, I too was reborn.
Invoked my sisters of the cowrie crowns,
We rose and danced away your scorn.
Cleaned away the bruises and beneath found mud brown.

And from the belly of the Sahara, we prayed to Orishas.
Baptised ourselves: half of a yellow sun, half of a full moon.
Journeyed a thousand lands learning the wisdom of philosophers
And found that God put a prayer and song in our mouths too.


3.
The third poem personifies and addresses Nairobi directly. The poet calls on the city to account for an unfair history and provide for an equitable future. All three poems share themes of revolution and rebirth. All three ask the reader to question the power of location and the significance of placenames. What will it take? Are you that place?

Are you that place?
~ by Nebila Abdulmelik (in Volume 2, 7)

Are you that concrete jungle
Crumbling under the weight of
Manoeuvring, manipulative matatus
Where passengers are shuka'd at whim?
Are you where darkness whispers sweet lullabies
Or where lights play dirty tricks
Where money is mobile
And glass ceilings tower as high as KICC?
Where freedom is plastered on bus stops
And injustice deeply rooted
Into territorial boundaries
Where few attest their tribe is indeed Kenyan
Where Tusker runs like maji
Where unga is revolutionised
And revolutions are most definitely not televised
Where radios relentlessly relay well kept secrets
Where the rain commands the city
And payday drives traffic
Where the likes of Kibera & Sinai make way
For the likes of Karen & Spring Valley?
Are you the capital of thieves and robbers
Or a megapolis of IT geeks, business gurus and self-made men
Where every pocket is packed with dreams
But not every dream packs pockets
Tell me, Nairobi, are you that place?

Tumutumu Mission Station,
Kenya, ca.1910-1930,
about 2 hours north of Nairobi

***************

Tumutumu Presbytery,
a few decades later.
My friend Mumbi says:
"This is not what it looked like
when I was baptized there at age 12."

Next Fortnightly Post
Sunday, April 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Esther of a Thousand Ideas

GOOD QUEEN ESTHER
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

~ Esther and Mordechai ~
Early 3rd century (244 CE) Roman Painting / Wood Panel
Dura-Europos Synagogue, Syria

Should you need a refresher course
on Esther's complicated dilemma,
please check out my daily blog from a year ago:

Don't Mess With Esther

. . . including the story as I learned it,
as depicted in my mother's childhood Bible storybooks.

You can also Click here for a helpful retelling of the conflict,
and here for an explanation of Esther's
role in the celebration of Purim.

****************

Artistic portrayals of Esther [and Vashti]

Both of the following
by Rembrandt (1606 - 69)

Ahasuerus and Haman at the Feast of Esther, 1660

Haman Begging the Mercy of Esther, 1660

****************

Poetic portrayals of Esther and Vashti

Both of the following
by Stacey Zisook Robinson

Book of Esther: A Poem

That blush on my cheek?
It's paint,
And I have glittered my eyes
And robed myself in the finery
of silk and gossamer,
lapis and gold--
And whored myself for your salvation.

You asked for no thoughts.
You merely offered my body
to the king--
My life forfeit
If my beauty failed.

You asked for no ideas
And I gave you none,
Though I had a thousand,
And ten thousand more. [emphasis added]

Diplomacy was played on the field of my body,
The battle won in the curve of my hip
And the satin of my skin,
Fevered dreams of lust
And redemption.

That blush on my cheeks?
It is the stain of victory
And of my shame.

&

Vashti: A Poem for Purim

I remember when he crooned,
Come, dance for me!
And I would,
just for him.

And Oh! It was
glorious, all silk and
heat and lithesome.
I moved like fire
I moved like water

And later, he moved
with me, a different kind
of heat, and he called me
his queen.

When did crooning
turn to calling,
and calling to demand?

Dance, he says,
Dance for me, and move
your hips,
and wet your lips
and come - as if I were
his pet, a bitch to lap up
praise from her master,
kept on a collar and leash.

But I am queen.
I am fire,
and water,
and lithe.

I will not dance
when you call.

****************

Further intriguing connections include

1. a sci - fi character named Vashti
in E. M. Forster's 1909 story "The Machine Stops"

&

2. a three - part poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox,
produced on Broadway in 1906 as The Drama of Mizpah:

"The Revolt of Vashti"
"The Choosing of Esther"
"Honeymoon Scene"
[you can read the poems under Comments]

Next Fortnightly Post
Sunday, April 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Memento Mori

REMEMBER, OH THOU MAN
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

An important reminder for both Lent and the Ides of March,
"Memento mori" translates as "Remember you must die."

For this Fortnightly, I am recycling the following timely concepts because we are halfway through Lent and I need to remind myself. As I've said before, I remain perpetually perplexed by the inadequacy with which I have seen many elders approach their end - of - life, even though they've had a lifetime of eight decades or more leading up to it. I'm never quite sure how a bad diagnosis or a health calamity can come to anyone -- aside from the very young amongst us -- "as a total shock" or "a complete surprise" (those cliched phrases of denial). "It came out of nowhere" or "I didn't see it coming." Really? I mean, haven't we always seen it coming? -- especially once we surpass that biblical estimate of threescore years and ten.

One of the best ways to prepare, it seems to me, is read a book or two, watch some movies. The concept does not require excessive sophistication: you could start with Little Women, Old Yeller, Jesus Christ Superstar. So many characters dying all the time, right? Reading -- and contemplating what you have read -- will greatly enchance your comprehension of mortality, both your own and that of others. The following passages, each taken from a previous blogpost, serve as reminders that our days are numbered.


1. From Dust Thou Art

A a deep thought by Jack Handey
from The Lost Deep Thoughts
"Life is a constant battle
between the heart and the brain.
But guess who wins.
The skeleton."


2. Writerly

Death in the Afternoon
by Ernest Hemingway
". . . all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and . . . no true-story teller . . . would keep that from you" (from Chapter 9).

Foreword to the Second Edition of
Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley
"And the prevailing philosophy of life would be a kind of Higher Utilitarianism, in which the Greatest Happiness principle would be secondary to the Final End principle -- the first question to be asked and answered in every contingency of life being: 'How will this thought or action contribute to, or interfere with, the achievement, by me and the greatest possible number of other individuals, of our Final End?' "


3. One Hundred Years From Now

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
from The American Scholar [See more.]:
An Oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge,
August 31, 1837
"So is there no fact, no event, in our private history, which shall not, sooner or later, lose its adhesive, inert form, and astonish us by soaring from our body into the empyrean. Cradle and infancy, school and playground, the fear of boys, and dogs, and ferules, the love of little maids and berries, and many another fact that once filled the whole sky, are gone already; friend and relative, profession and party, town and country, nation and world, must also soar and sing."

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011)
CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios
from A Commencement Address delivered at Stanford University,
June 12, 2005
"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."


4. Life or Death Matter

"Something is going to get all of us. We will all die. Healing involves our response to this certainty -- our understanding of our place in the universe and our purpose in this life." ~ Dick Wall


5. Altering Events " . . . years of
Sleepless nights and months of uneasy
Days will be rolled into
An altering event called the
'Good old days.' And you will not
Be able to visit them even with an invitation
Since that is so you must face your presence""
~ Maya Angelou ~

6. Michael Lipsey

"There is no ego too large to fit into a standard grave."

Repeated thanks to dear Michael
for so generously allowing me to share his
artistry, witticisms, and wisdom on my blogs:
Quotidian, Fortnightly, Kitti's List

7. Duo Dickinson

from "Ash Wednesday and the Baby Boomer"
February 12, 2024
"As the death toll of our generation keeps climbing, the debate, conversation, and all other distractions from our mortality are coming to an end, our end."

[In keeping with my continued theme of Connection & Coincidence, you should also check out what my friend Duo has to say about Incidence & Coincidence]


8. Nadia Bolz - Weber

from "You're going to die: A sermon for All Saints in a time of war.
November 6, 2023 [intended for All Saints, but fits right in with Lent]
"But while the false promises of immortality through self-improvement might sell product, they do nothing for us in any real way other than to make us feel like we can avoid the most inevitable thing in the world: That you will die."


9. And a closing thought from Henri Nouwen

Did I offer peace today?
Did I bring a smile to someone's face?
Did I say words of healing?
Did I let go of my anger and resentment?
Did I forgive? Did I love?
These are the real questions.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One more directive that I would add to Nouwen's list:

Did I contemplate my mortality today?

"Cold, indeed: and labor lost . . . "

Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, March 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Leap Day Wizard Dreams

THE ONCE AND FUTURE WIZARD STORE
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

Chetopa, Kansas

Bissextile Day is here -- February 29th, the Leap Day of our Leap Year! A day for lords a leaping, and leaping lizards and leaping wizards, and leaping across the U.S.A.

Across Kansas

My family slept those level miles
but like a bell rung deep till dawn
I drove down an aisle of sound,
nothing real but in the bell,
past the town where I was born.

Once you cross a land like that
you own your face more: what the light
struck told a self; every rock
denied all the rest of the world.
We stopped at Sharon Springs and ate—

My state still dark, my dream too long to tell.

by Kansas - born poet William Stafford
I wonder if Stafford and his family ever drove through Chetopa and stopped by Wizzard of Odds? I like the way that he concludes his poem with a reference to his "state" (of mind? or State of Kansas?) and also with a recollection of a "dream too long to tell."

Another connection:

Driving Through Kansas
~for Garry Ritzky

One knoll:
a handful of mourners
crying somebody's dream.

Beyond:
a distance too blue to see.

The road slices wheat
stunned with crows
here for more than kill.

you know the crow
can caw his soul
into or out of any hell,

know too the tumbleweed
you bang into will roll
as long as mourners
bruise the hill.

The wind letters every mailbox,
and solid gray holds in trust
the farmer's good last name.

by Oklahoma - born poet Jim Barnes [more poems]

This poem takes place not in the dark of night but on a day of endless, distant blue. Like Stafford's "Kansas," it yields a dream. Driving past a roadside cemetery where a funeral is in progress, Barnes describes "mourners crying somebody's dream." Somebody else's, the deceased, the mourners, but not his own, or is it?

Like Stafford and Barnes, I too have driven and dreamed my way across Kansas.

Getting our Kicks on 166

My siblings and I remember this place, not from our childhood years, but from recent visits, although it seemed to be closed down the last time we passed through (May 2021). Not long after that, I had the strangest dream that I had to share with them. The store itself wasn't in the dream, but we kids were sitting all sitting around in a good mood (in some unspecified setting -- like maybe the outdoor lounge in my brother Dave's backyard. Our Grandpa Lindsey was there -- my mother's father -- and he was saying, "Aaron used to drive me over to Chetopa to the Wizard Store all the time to have my fortune told."

That was the whole dream, just the frame of us all sitting there and Grandpa making that one remark. A strange and interesting dream, but very un-Grandpa like! I had to ask my brother Aaron if it was true! Of course, I knew it wasn't because, in fact, the Wizzard of Odds didn't even exist (or contained some other business) until at least a decade after our grandfather had died.

I usually forget every single dream, but I think this one is going to stay with me! Oddly enough, this is not the first Wizard Store dream that I have had -- and been able to remember. Around the same time that we discoverd Wizzard of Odds in Kansas, my sister Peg and my nephew Dan used to take me to a gift store in Maryland that we called The Wizard Store, even though its proper name was Flights of Fancy. In the dream, I was distraught, trying to catch a bus on a dark rainy night and repeating over and over to anyone who would listen, "Im trying to get to the Wizard Store," where I knew that Peg and Dan were waiting for me. What is it about these Wizard Stores leading to such wacky dreams?

Talking about our many drives through Chetopa over the years led to a conversation about the various family station wagons. How accurately could we remember?

The Pink Dodge

The Green Pontiac

The Silver Buick

Another Connection:
Our Grandma Lindsey's Map of Kansas Handkerchief

Too bad Chetopa got left out,
but Coffeyville and Independence made the map!

The Big Floor Map
at the State Line Rest Stop

My brother and I have a joke about this one:
Kit: Look! I'm standing in three states at once!
Four actually, since I'm also in a state of crippling despair . . .
Bruce: No fair counting Kansas twice!

Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, March 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Classic Cinema, 1924 - 1945

KEYWORDS ARE YOUR FRIEND
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

New York Movie (1939)
Edward Hopper (1882 - 1967)

This post serves as a memory prompt and a keyword search for the growing list of movie classics that Gerry and I have been watching recently. Not to be lazy, but my goal here is modest, no reviews -- just a list of titles and stars.

It turns out that we were watching so many old-time classics that we couldn't keep them all straight in our heads. Thus, I have compiled these lists in an attempt to prevent all of our recent viewing from merging into one huge indiscernible dramatic mishmash.

Here are the movies we've been watching, loosely organized by year, with a few cross references and connections of interest thrown in for good measure.

For the specific day - month - year of every release,
try this website: The Numbers
1924 Battleship Potemkin

1927 Metropolis

1930 Anna Christie ~ Greta Garbo

1931 Susan Lenox ~ Greta Garbo & Clark Gable

1933 Baby Face ~ Barbara Stanwyck, John Wayne

1933 Duck Soup ~ Marx Brothers: Chico, Groucho, Harpo, Zeppo


1934 The Thin Man ~ William Powell, Myrna Loy, Maureen O'Sullivan

1934 The Barretts of Wimpole Street ~ Norma Shearer & Frederic March & Charles Laughton & Maureen O'Sullivan

1934 Babes in Toyland ~ Laurel & Hardy
[see also 1998 The Impostors ~ a tribute of sorts to L & H with Stanley Tucci, Oliver Platt, Alfred Molina, Tony Shalhoub, Steve Buscemi, Billy Connolly]

1934 It Happened One Night ~ Claudette Colbert & Clark Gable

1934 Imitation of Life ~ Claudette Colbert
[see also 1959 Lana Turner]

1934 Of Human Bondage ~ Bette Davis & Leslie Howard


1935 Top Hat ~ Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers

1935 The 39 Steps ~ Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll

1936 Modern Times ~ Charlie Chaplin & Paulette Goddard


1939 Goodbye, Mr. Chips ~ Robert Donat & Greer Garson
[see also 1969 with Peter O'Toole & Petula Clark]

1939 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

1939 Wuthering Heights ~ Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier and David Niven [and many more versions]

1939 The Women ~ Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, Joan Fontaine, Lucile Watson, Mary Boland, Florence Nash, Virginia Grey, Marjorie Main, Phyllis Povah, Ruth Hussey, Virginia Weidler, Butterfly McQueen, Theresa Harris, Hedda Hopper

And this isn't even the complete list!
Film scholar Victoria Amador refers to The Women as a
"gay camp classic film . . . an estrogen-soaked comic souffle . . . "
So many women!

1940 The Shop Around the Corner ~ Jimmy Stewart & Margaret Sullavan

1940 The Great Dictator ~ Charlie Chaplin & Paulette Goddard

1940 His Girl Friday ~ Rosalind Russell & Cary Grant

1940 The Philadelphia Story ~ Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart

1940 The Letter ~ Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson


1941 The Lady Eve ~ Barbara Stanwyck & Henry Fonda & Charles Coburn

1941 The Maltese Falcon ~ Humphrey Bogard & Mary Astor

1942 Mrs. Miniver ~ Greer Garson & Walter Pidgeon

1942 The Magnificent Ambersons ~ Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter, Tim Holt, Agnes Moorehead

1942 Now, Voyager ~ Bette Davis

The title derives from this brief poem by Walt Whitman:

"The untold want by life and land ne’er granted,
Now voyager sail thou forth to seek and find."

Thanks again to Victoria Amaddor, Ph.D.
for additional insights & witty repartee

1943 Casablanca ~ Humphrey Bogart & Ingrid Bergman

1943 Shadow of a Doubt ~ Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotton, Macdonald Carey


1944 Laura ~ Gene Tierney, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price

1944 Arsenic and Old Lace ~ Cary Grant

1944 Double Indemnity ~ Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, Edward G. Robinson

1944 Meet Me in St. Louis ~ Judy Garland


1945 Blithe Spirit ~ Rex Harrison, Constance Cummings, Kay Hammond, Margaret Rutherford

1945 Christmas in Connecticut ~ Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan, Sydney Greenstreet, S.Z. Sakall

1945 Leave Her to Heaven ~ Cornel Wilde & Gene Tierney

1945 The Valley of Decision ~ Gregory Peck & Greer Garson, Jessica Tandy, Lionel Barrymore, Reginald Owen

1945 Mildred Pierce ~ Joan Crawford
[also 2011 ~ Kate Winslet]

For a continuation of the above list:
Classic Cinema, 1946 - 1986

For a list of current suggestions:
Barb Reviews the Movies
We always read and follow - up on these lively suggestions!

For a comprehensive contemporary list:
Joan Tollifson's Recommended Movie List
Thanks to my friend Diane Cox for sharing Joan's master list!

Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, February 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com