Hobe Sound Blogs

Mothers-in-law and fathers-in-law become the blessing they choose to be.
Grandchildren are far more than just grand!
Character is a mixture of sweat, change, and purposefulness!
 Measure others with a flexible stick.
What you do for others is a translation of what you believe about your faith.

John Ford's two favorite actors were John Wayne and Henry Fonda. Essential to being a Ford favorite on screen was being a Ford favorite off screen as well. Fonda once quipped that Ford cast actors based on their card-playing ability! There was a practical reason for this -- a Ford film set was a small community and Ford cast people he would enjoy hanging out with when the cameras weren't rolling. When Ford's stock company headed out to Monument Valley to shoot a picture, away from meddling producers and the bright lights of Hollywood, in many respects they lived the romanticized frontier life they were portraying on screen.

All this is recounted in Scott Eyman's fine Ford bio Print the Legend, which I continue to enjoy. Both Wayne and Fonda fit in well to the director's macho inner circle in which membership required an appetite for lots of "boys will be boys" carousing and letting Ford win at cards, much of which took place on Ford's beloved yacht The Araner. Below is a poor quality shot of Ford flanked by Wayne and Fonda, with another regular member of the Ford entourage Ward Bond at far right.


Being a friend of Ford's off the set was a mixed blessing though, since one had to endure Ford's incessant ribbing which sometimes crossed the line into outright cruelty. Duke Wayne especially was a regular victim of the deeply insecure Ford's mania for control over those around him. Perhaps this stemmed from the fact that Ford made Wayne into a star, and he was never going to let Duke forget it. Fonda, on the other hand, was already an established star when Ford cast him as Abe Lincoln in 1939. The relationship between the two men more resembled one between equals. Young Mr. Lincoln began a run of three films in which Ford and Fonda collaborated -- the other two being Drums Along the Mohawk and The Grapes of Wrath -- a trio that went a long way toward raising John Ford to the pinnacle of American filmmaking.

After the war the Ford/Fonda relationship continued to be fruitful in films like My Darling Clementine and Fort Apache. Fonda and Wayne both brought a natural ease to the screen, but the characters they played for Ford were quite different. Eyman explains:

Ford would use Fonda in a very different way than he would John Wayne. Wayne's characters were earthy and warm, brawlers by temperament, capable of love and rage. Fonda's characters burned with a cold fire—they displayed strength, but a removed, abstracted, rather asexual strength, tempered by the actor's instinctive austerity.

This contrast in set in stark relief in Fort Apache (1948): the first installment of Ford's great Cavalry Trilogy. Fonda's Colonel Thursday and Wayne's Captain York display contrasting qualities that Ford admired -- the "by the book" mentality of Thursday that would rather charge headlong into an Apache massacre than admit weakness, and the easy intuitive intelligence of York who is willing to meet the Indians as equals to avoid bloodshed. Ford had room for both kinds of men in his American mythology. He once described Custer as "great" and "stupid"...just like Thursday in Fort Apache.

Eyman writes: "Ford's work embraces deliberate contradictions. . . . Ford is a realist as well as a romantic poet." The complementary talents of John Wayne and Henry Fonda were the perfect tools for this American master to play out his dueling sensibilities.


Quotes from pp. 211 & 341 of Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999)

A marriage with imagination grows until death do they part.
A kind marriage is the right kind of marriage.
Children are a gift that can keep on giving.
For love, miles apart is no distance at all.
The more you love your husband/wife the freer you become.

God’s insight, beats your hind’s sight!

Jesus paid a debt that He had not accumulated.

The “second mile” is often the most difficult, meaningful, and rewarding mile.

The capitol of your life is what you have invested in others for the Kingdom of God.

Love others more than you ought and you will be loved more than you would have been.

Happy Mother's Day 2012!

I wanted to share a blog in your honor as my "Mother's Day card" to you this year.  Partly b/c I was running too fast to get a card in the mail in time (Truth hurts sometimes=) but mostly b/c I thought that I could maybe give you some verbal flowers for more people to see than just you and daddy!  "Kind of like showing you off a tad maybe!"  I could have come up with a picture that would be more beautiful of you, no doubt, but as this was the one taken just last weekend, I chose to use it!
With that said, I'll start my ramblings....
 I'll always associate the smell of yeast bread rising with you, Moma.  Today each time I mix up my own homemade bread I can still see in my mind eye your set of antique different colored bowls, the largest being yellow (if I remember correctly) filled with the makings of homemade yeast bread. (Other times you would use your antique wooden bowl to mix up bread by hand... these were the days long before bread machines!=)  Probably b/c I was about "nose level" with that bowl, I still remember taking a big whiff of the smell that I knew would soon be mouth-watering, warm, crusty, homemade bread.  Thanks, Moma for passing along to me your love for baking!  Thank you for allowing me to "mess up" your kitchen any time.  And for teaching me to clean it up afterwards! Thanks for the many times you used what you had on hands to make delicious meals... thus teaching me that any substitution was fine and would most likely work, as long as I never tried to ever substitute anything or anyone for Jesus in my life! Little could I have known how often I would use those substitutions on the mission fields in which the Lord has led us to minister.

Thank you for always being willing to "make do" with what you had, in other words, thank you for being so frugal.  I never knew growing up that we were "poor" for you always were so cheerful and made life so fun.  I remember many a night going to sleep to the sound of the hum of your sewing machine making me some much needed new bloomers or maybe it was Christmas for one of us.  And later as you taught me to sew, thanks for the lessons in patience that you taught me... "Laura, rip out that seam, it's crocked" , or "You caught an extra stitch here, you need to rip that out and re-sew it" Thus teaching me that only the best quality would work.  And though I teasingly tell you today that your sewing would be good enough for Dillards or Nordstroms and mine would sell at Walmart, I'm still VERY thankful that you taught me to sew. 

I never remember hearing you complain about anything.  I knew that you didn't have life easy, maybe, but you were never down-in-the-mouth about it.  And NEVER did you EVER speak DOWN or bad of Daddy!  That I LOVE about you! Thanks for standing by daddy through thick and thin... (mostly the thin ($)times) and for doing it cheerfully!  What an example you have been to me that I could be HAPPY anywhere the Lord led my man, and I would follow cheerfully and with Jesus we would make it and make it just fine!





As the above picture portrays you always made life fun!  I never remember being embarrassed to be around you, even in my teenage years, you were just as fun to have around as any of my friends!  Thanks for building that kind of relationship with me!  I want to thank you for MAKING ME come out of my shell.  As you well remember I was too backward to look at myself in the mirror, well almost.(did I get my ability to exaggerate from you too?!=)   I well remember you MAKING me to go out and "MAKE FRIENDS", when I would have been perfectly content to just sit back and listen to you chat with your friends. On another occasion,  I remember you MAKING me walk by and at least say "Hello" , You walked with me as moral support and I well remember being SO grateful for it was all I could do to walk straight, my knees were knocking so hard!  Years later when we landed on the mission field and I had to speak another language, I remembered that lesson to be friendly, even if my language limitations could only say my "Hello" with a smile!
Thank you for always loving Daddy and flirting with him in front of us kids!   I'll always be grateful for the healthy relationship that I watched you and Daddy exemplify in front of us!  We, by God's Help, want to live our lives pleasing Jesus first and then our mates!!
Another lesson that you taught me by example, was to never go to town in your cleanin' duds!(my choice of words, not yours!)  "Always dress up, when going to town!" were your words as I recall. As I've grown up, I've never forgotten that we are examples to the world around us of our Savior and how we dress is the 1st impression they may see of our Jesus!!
So today, I honor You, Moma and thank you for teaching me the "tricks of the trade"... giving me the confidence that I needed to try out new recipes, or to make a new dress, the ability to see "quality" in something old, and to make it look like new.
Thanks to you, Moma I was very well prepared for married life and today I "Rise up and called you Blessed!" Prov 31: 28  I love you so much and am so grateful to the Lord for the Godly heritage that you have passed on to me!  I'll always thank Jesus for choosing YOU to be my Moma! I love you! ~Laura

Happy Mother's Day, Mom 2012!

Dad and Mom Hausman and the Grandkids!

Thanks for the fun memories that our kids have of you!  They love you and Dad as much as they do my parents and that's just how I want it to always be!  Thanks for your fun-loving-ways.  You always make us laugh.  Another thing that I love about you, is your love for your husband still!!! Thanks for sticking with him.  Thanks for STILL LAUGHING AT HIS SILLY JOKES even after all of these years, the love that I see in your eyes when he's teasing you makes my heart skip a beat!  I want to be that kind of wife for years to come too!
Thanks for your TENDER heart!  I love the times we have gotten to cry together, to pray together, to share recipes together, to laugh together, and just to share "life lessons" together.  God has truly blessed me by giving  YOU to me as my Dearest Mother-in-law!
As our children get older, my prayer is that the Lord will prepare my heart to be as good of a mother-in-law, as you have been to me!  Hope your day today was as special as you deserve!   You are a dear and I love you VERY MUCH!  ~Laura

Flowers and cards from my men.

 Happy Mother's Day! I'm so very thankful for the three very unique individuals who call me "mommy".

With Stephen

With Daniel

With Allan

This is as good as it gets when you're getting ready to walk out the door to church.

We're not quite all put together yet....but we did make it to church on time (and re-buttoned Allan's coat :o)

The church is becoming the enemy of The Church.

Mom and Daniel - 2007

I've written before about my belated appreciation of Flannery O'Connor. Recently I've been reading my way through this handsome collection of all her short stories. I appreciate the fact that they're arranged in chronological order which allows the reader to experience the development of O'Connor as a writer. In a nice bit of symmetry the last story "Judgment Day", which was part of a collection published after her death at age 39,  is a reworking of the first "The Geranium". The fact that these sometimes violent and surreal tales emerged from the imagination of this rather odd and unassuming young Southern woman makes them all the more fascinating. Does Flannery O'Connor deserve to be mentioned in the same breath with literary giants like Faulkner, Hemingway and Fitzgerald? It's arguable, but I think she does.

The eleventh story in the collection is "A Good Man is Hard to Find". O'Connor had hit her stride by the time this was published. The story begins as a bickering family sets out on a road trip to Florida and ends with them shot execution style by a trio of escaped convicts. What comes between is as random and shocking as it sounds. "A Good Man is Hard to Find" features two typical contrasting O'Connor characters: a smug cantankerous grandmother and a psychopathic criminal dubbed "The Misfit". Their confrontation is the centerpiece of the story's final act, and each provokes a moment of crisis in the other.

Alone with The Misfit, the grandmother found that she had lost her voice. There was not a cloud in the sky nor any sun. There was nothing around her but woods. She wanted to tell him that he must pray. She opened and closed her mouth several times before anything came out. Finally she found herself saying, "Jesus. Jesus," meaning, Jesus will help you, but the way she was saying it, it sounded as if she might be cursing.

 "Yes'm," The Misfit said as if he agreed. "Jesus thown everything off balance. It was the same case with Him as with me except He hadn't committed any crime and they could prove I had committed one because they had the papers on me. Of course," he said, "they never shown me my papers. That's why I sign myself now. I said long ago, you get you a signature and sign everything you do and keep a copy of it. Then you'll know what you done and you can hold up the crime to the punishment and see do they match and in the end you'll have something to prove you ain't been treated right. I call myself The Misfit," he said, "because I can't make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment." 

There was a piercing scream from the woods, followed closely by a pistol report. "Does it seem right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and another ain't punished at all?" 

"Jesus!" the old lady cried. "You've got good blood! I know you wouldn't shoot a lady! I know you come from nice people! Pray! Jesus, you ought not to shoot a lady. I'll give you all the money I've got!" 

"Lady," The Misfit said, looking beyond her far into the woods, "there never was a body that give the undertaker a tip."*

I'm probably not giving too much away by telling you this scene ends badly for the grandmother. And in the end The Misfit has one of the all time best punchlines -- a line both mordantly funny and profound.

"She was a talker, wasn't she?" Bobby Lee said, sliding down the ditch with a yodel.

"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."*

Critics more astute than me have tried to explain the meaning of O'Connor's fiction. I think it's pretty clear she meant to pierce through the complacency that keeps us from recognizing our need for divine grace -- the kind that's "thown everything off balance." Her stories are parables aimed at those who trust in themselves that they are righteous, and treat others with contempt. Or, I don't know, maybe they're just massively entertaining, brilliant and funny. Whatever the case I'm always eager to step into Flannery O'Connor's world.


*Excerpts from "A Good Man is Hard to Find" (1953)

We thus can see that there are two kinds of human economy. There is the kind of economy that exists to protect the "right" of profit, as does our present public economy; this sort of economy will inevitably gravitate toward protection of the "rights" of those who profit most. Our present public economy is really a political system that safeguards the private exploitation of the public health and wealth. The other kind of economy exists for the protection of gifts, beginning with the "giving in marriage," and this is the economy of community, which now has been nearly destroyed by the public economy.

There are two kinds of sexuality that correspond to the two kinds of economy. The sexuality of community life, whatever its inevitable vagaries, is centered on marriage, which joins two living souls as closely as, in this world, they can be joined. This joining of two who know, love, and trust one another brings them in the same breath into the freedom of sexual consent and into the fullest earthly realization of the image of God. From their joining, other living souls come into being, and with them great responsibilities that are unending, fearful, and joyful. The marriage of two lovers joins them to one another, to forebears, to descendants, to the community, to Heaven and earth. It is the fundamental connection without which nothing holds, and trust is its necessity.

Our present sexual conduct, on the other hand, having "liberated" itself from the several trusts of community life, is public, like our present economy. It has forsaken trust, for it rests on the easy giving and breaking of promises. And having forsaken trust, it has predictably become political. . . .

This quote from Wendell Berry points up the incongruity that many of those who defend the traditional definition of marriage are full-throated cheerleaders for a libertarianist "public economy" (as described by Berry) that by its logic inexorably undermines traditional marriage. As I commented on another blog, once we adopt the language of "rights" and "self-fulfillment" to talk about marriage the battle is already lost. And I fear it was lost long ago.


Quote from pp. 138-9 of Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community (Pantheon Books, 1993)