#hagar wilde

[addictivecontradiction]

Carefree, 1938

[fuckyeahvanhalen86-95]

Every artist has a few songs they refuse to touch. Despite earning significant revenue from performing these songs for years with their bands, there comes a point where they never want to hear them again. Sammy Hagar, renowned for his classics both solo and with Van Halen, struggled with one particular song from the David Lee Roth era for years.

Then again, Hagar had the unenviable task of taking over for a glorified cartoon character on Van Halen’s stage. Whenever a frontman compares themselves to Roth, it’s easy to come off as doing a parody of what he did naturally, owning the stage and holding court like he was the emcee of one of the greatest parties in the world.

Once the band started to go in different directions following the release of 1984, Roth didn’t want to have to get into Eddie’s demands anymore. Not liking the synthesised elements of the band’s work, Roth felt that the best way to work was without Eddie breathing down his neck, moving on to a solo career and getting another guitar superstar by his side with fretboard master Steve Vai.

While any band would have been lost in the woods without a guy like Roth, Hagar fit like a glove after having a few jam sessions. Since Eddie was already looking to try out new sounds with his keyboards, Hagar’s searing high voice actually lent itself fairly well to the band’s new sound, creating songs that would become anthems for Van Halen Mk. II like ‘Dreams’ and ‘Love Walks In’.

At the same time, no new singer gets out of playing the songs of those that preceded them. When working on their first major live shows with Hagar, the ‘Red Rocker’ had to deliver Roth’s songs with his own brand of swagger, putting his own spin without mimicking Roth.

Despite Hagar having a far more refined range compared to Roth, he admitted that ‘Jump’ always gave him trouble. Since Roth was always known for his signature talkative demeanour, the track is a deceptively hard song to sing, especially getting into the verses where he borderline stops singing just to mug for the listener.

After sticking around for the same amount of time as Roth, Hagar admitted that ‘Jump’ would follow him around, telling Steve-O, “People meet me [and go] ‘Oh, you’re the singer of Van Halen,’ and for somebody don’t know sh*t, and they think I sing f*cking ‘Jump,’ and I’m going, ‘Damn!’ That thing haunts me”.

For all of the misconceptions that Hagar gets about his status in the Van Halen camp, though, he has still carved out his own niche in rock history, like winning the hearts of millions of Power Rangers fans when ‘Dreams’ was used in the feature film of the action TV show. Roth may get the praise for starting Van Halen on their course, but if it weren’t for Hagar, even songs like ‘Jump’ would have been known as the epitaph of the band rather than the start of a new era.

[ultrachoppedpenguinbouquet]

Ishmael

[apoemaday]

The Marvelous Woman

by Mohja Kahf

All women speak two languages: the language of men and the language of silent suffering. Some women speak a third, the language of queens. They are marvelous and they are my friends.

My friends give me poetry. If it were not for them I’d be a seamstress out of work. They send me their dresses and I sew together poems, enormous sails for ocean journeys.

My marvelous friends, these women who are elegant and fix engines, who teach gynecology and literacy, and work in jails and sing and sculpt and paint the ninety-nine names, who keep each other’s secrets and pass on each other’s spirits like small packets of leavening,

it is from you I fashion poetry. I scoop up, in handfuls, glittering sequins that fall from your bodies as you fall in love, marry, divorce, get custody, get cats, enter supreme courts of justice, argue with God.

You rescuers on galloping steeds of the weak and the wounded -- Creatures of beauty and passion, powerful workers in love -- you are the poems. I am only your stenographer. I am the hungry transcriber of the conjuring recipes you hoard in the chests of your great-grandmothers.

My marvelous friends -- the women of brilliance in my life, who levitate my daughters, you are a coat of many colors in silk tie-dye so gossamer it can be crumpled in one hand. You houris, you mermaids, swimmers in dangerous waters, defiers of sharks --

My marvelous friends, thirsty Hagars and laughing Sarahs, you eloquent radio Aishas, Marys drinking the secret milkshakes of heaven, slinky Zuleikas of desire, gay Walladas, Harriets parting the sea, Esthers in the palace, Penelopes of patient scheming,

you are the last hope of the shrinking women. You are the last hand to the fallen knights You are the only epics left in the world

Come with me, come with poetry Jump on this wild chariot, hurry --

[misguidedasgardian]

Dragon's Mistress FINALE

MASTERLIST

Summary: Everything is coming to an end 

Warnings: cursing, mentions of war, mentions of death, humiliation, use of the word bastard and traitor, incest, childbirth, sickness, deaths of multiple characters, might miss some warnings

+18, MINORS DNI

Wordcount:  3 k

Notes: THIS IS IT PEOPLE! I’m wrapping this up, thank you all for being in this wild ride, it has been the most controversial piece I’ve ever written! jaja I fear that whatever I write next is not going to wake the same amount of sentiments jeje anyways, enjoy!

I really hope I can make it all justice jeje

Aemond often looked over at Blackwater bay, in the direction of Dragonstone and wondered how you were, what you were doing, if you were content.

He wanted to believe you weren’t, but deep inside of him he knew you were happy and content without him.

He also wanted to feel the baby moving within you

You only let him touch you when you were sleepy in his arms, and the dragonling restless in your belly, moving so much he was able to actually see him

It was a boy, he was certain, it was his heir

And he couldn’t wait to see him, for him to be born, he was going to dispose of Floris, send her away, he was going to keep his child.

He couldn't wait to sit the throne with his baby on his arms, to show the entire realm, his power and legacy

And he wanted to see his beautiful wife, be there by her side when she gave birth

But affairs of the realm kept him, from fulfilling his desire

Even if he had been acting as Prince Regent for years, now that he was actually King, things were incredibly different, now he was bothered with small and big affairs alike, the Kingdoms was settling after years and years of war

After losing half the treasury

People was growing restless, smallfolk who still support her half-sister the usurper, denied the increase in taxes and were not taking well to his own reign, even though he had reigned with a a hard for forgiving hand

But the way to hell was made with good intentions

And he meant well

Days after you left turned to weeks, and then to a coupe of months, and one day, he knew it, the day felt different from the others, an strange calmness to it, the birds had stopped singing and the sea was calm like a cup of wine

He only smiled faintly, looking out his balcony, he then retrieved himself to return to his Kingly duties for the day

A day after he received the raven

His Queen gave birth…

To a healthy baby girl

He frown upon hearing the news, dismissing the maester to keep with his duties of the day 

He wanted to see you, be there by your side

And when he was finally ready, he received other news

There has been a big fire in Harrenhal, ending the life of Lords loyal to his reign, and the one of Alys Rivers herself

Alys was dead 

In a rage, he called his master of whispers, the same one who had caused the fire that ended the life of his own father and brother

He didn’t want to believe what Corlys had insinuated, that Floris and Larrys were on it together to get rid of you, but now this?

He knew perfectly well that a palace like Harrenhal, with nothing to burn itself, only burned for the whims of men and not of those of ghosts

And when Larys Strong refused him an answer, that he didn’t know

Aemond didn’t believe him

The second most powerful men after him was against him, so he needed to get rid of him, the power Larys held with whispers and spies, it was too much to have against him 

But everything that he wanted to do, it was clouded by you

By his need to see you, but everytime he decided to go climb on hagar and travel to you

Something held him back

Something kept him away from you

Corlys front he shadows no doubt, not that he noticed 

Floris was held prisoner in her own room, still getting royal treatment because of the babe within her, but she was forbidden to interact with anyone…

And perhaps that is what spared her

When he decided to take to the skies in VHagar to go and see you… there had been a almost seamless interruption, within the chambers of the small council

The maester of laws started coughing

���I’m sorry your grace, I don’t feel well”, the maester took the liberty of placing his boney hand in the man’s forehead

“He is burning”, he whined, concerned

And chaos ensued all over the keep

The envoy from the North had come and with him, he brought the Winter fever

Aemond had never experienced fear like he did in those couple of months

He, as the King, had to remain secluded, fire everywhere around him to keep away the disease that infected the air. 

Seeing you was out of the question, he only received the ravens with tales of how Dragonstone was not accepting anyone from the exterior, and how they had remained spared from the wrath of the gods 

And Floris went into labor, just in time to receive the prince

And Aemond’s commands to the wetnurses were clear

Save the princeling

They shared concerned looks as they received a small, red, dark haired prince into the world 

Floris had a son, and so did Aemond

He held his newborn while sitting on the Iron throne, with a shy smile on his face, pedestals with fires lit up all over the room.

It was a small quiet boy, Aemond noticed, falling asleep immediately in his arms, against his chest

This is not what he expected

But fatherhood knocked on his door and he gladly answered

“The Gods are punishing us”, he raised his head to look at his mother

He had commanded her to stay in the tower of the hand for her own protection, and so far, the Queen had been safe from the fever, until now

Her face was red with temperature, he could see the sweat drops from here

“Mother”

“This is because of you, for marrying two Queens”, she whined, she took shaky steps towards her 

“Stay back”, he whined, having his son in his arms

“I want to see him”, she begged him, she was delusional, he could tell

“You have catched it”, he warned, standing up, ready to ran away from his own mother if needed be 

“The gods are angry with me”, she muttered, that twisted scowl on her face , “I failed them, I try to uphold the traditions, the faith the family, and i failed”

“You didn't”, he tried, to calm her, “You look unwell, I will fetch the maester”

“I don't need the maesters”, she said, and again, tried to come near him

“Don’t!”

“I just want to see him!”, she cried, “my grandson, the only one I have”

He had to call the guards to remove her from his space, he had to

He couldn’t risk himself of his son

Queen Alicent lasted seven days with the Winter fever before she perished, having thrown out all her green dresses, crying for her lost children

The fever also took half his small council, and Queen Floris.

The death of the later is still unknown, some say it was because of the childbed fever, others from the winter fever, and other that it was from neglect 

The last remnants of his past life were gone, he was now more alone than he ever was in his life, the court had been decimated, and he didn’t even knew who to trust

Corlys had fled, because of the scare of the fever, and he was faring well and everyone was on Driftmark and Dragonstone 

He stood alone

His only consolation is that you and his daughter were doing well, and not dying painfully of fever

. . .

You cradled your newborn daughter against your chest as she fed hungrily from you.

You had been so scared, and alone, but everything had gone perfectly, and after hard hours of labor, you heard a loud cry fill the room, besides yours anyways

A little silver haired girl

You shrieked of relief and happiness when the wet nurse placed a rosy-cheeked baby in your chest

She was so small and perfect, and as days passed you learned that she was so quiet, not at all fuzzy, she was a perfect baby, like she already knew she was a little princess

A girl

You giggled to yourself, fuck Aemond, but at the same time you felt fearful, but then you remembered you had Viserys, and Corlys, and the remains of your family to protect you, and you felt even better, everything was going to be alright

At least for your small family core 

You’d learn, by ravens and letters, that the Winter Fever has struck the capital

Civilians were dying by the hundreds, and it had struck the inside of the Keep as well, you received a personal letter from Aemond, expressing his concern for you and your daughter 

But you couldn’t be more relieved

Dragonstone was filled with life, the lords of the crownlands managed to send members of their families to make court in the castle, to be with you, you were getting to know them, and had dinners and interacted with all the ladies and lords, it was life fulfilling, you had never been able to do that before

And you found yourself happy one day

While the capital was submerged in chaos, you were dining in celebration of your beautifully perfect daughter, a princess to the Kingdoms, with your cousins, your grandfather, and all the lords 

You were happy

Or as much as you could

You didn’t even care that Aemond never took the time to visit you, perhaps he was sad you had given birth to a daughter and not a son, perhaps that is why he was keeping his distance.

The you received news

That Floris was dead after giving birth to a son

A Baratheon prince

Despite Corlys’ concern, you had none, you had your brother, your daughter, your dragon who had laid an egg for your child that hatched into a curiously looking pink little dragon

And then one day

Aemond was in Dragonstone

You could feel the court change, as the servants changed the banners of the red dragon for a green one.

The first thing Aemond did was held court and receive his subjects int he throne room, with you by his side, and then, after a long day, he dare to enter your chambers, while you were starting to feed your daughter

“Queens don’t do that, specially for a girl”, he whispered entering the room

“Is my child, and I will feed her from my chest if I chose to”, you said dismissively, he said nothing else, perhaps relieved you were actually responding to him

“Are you healed?”, he asked, you looked at him in wonder

“My King?”, you asked 

“Are you healed from giving birth?”, he asked, and you only looked at him sadly

You had the maids take your daughter away.

He served you wine, to relax you, and you had already surrender, you bathed him, as you offered him, like you used to do, but he grabbed you gently and dragged you inside the tub with you

“I’m so sorry for your losses My King”, you whispered as you massaged him, , straddling him, he only hummed

“I have children now, and nieces”, you can tell he was hurting, but didn’t want to show it, so you let it go. He looked at you with desire in his eye, as he took the sponge from your hand and he then cleaned you, specially in your breasts

“You look so beautiful”, he said huskily, you leaned in and kissed him, wanting to get it over with 

He took you in the tub, making you ride him sensually, it didn’t hurt, in fact, it was actually pleasurable.

“You are coming home with me”, he whispered in your ear, with him still inside, but after your both reached your peak

“I don’t think that is such a good idea”, you whispered, he sighed loudly, “the fever is still out there”

And that is how you convinced him to let you stay, you could tell he was hurting, you could tell that he was lonely, now more than ever, but he heard you, and left you in Dragonstone, after an entire month, he left alone

And for the first time, you felt him defeated, even though he was the king of the seven Kingdoms 

And that is how, weeks turns to months, turned to years

12 years later 

When you looked at your little brother Viserys you often wondered if he was also a son to Harwin Breakbones Strong

Your brother, at his eighteen years old he had the stature and built of the strongest Knight of the seven Kingdoms

You saw him practicing with his sword against Steffon, he was truly a great teacher, and Aerion was also a great student, quick on his feet despite his height, and strong in his movements. 

Your daughter giggled by your side as you walked together by the beach. and walked toward the Dragonmount for her dragon riding lessons, even though she and her dragon were connected in levels you were yet to understand yourself

“When is papa coming back?”, she asked, and you just shook your head

“I’m not sure my love”

Aemond visited often, he found reprieve in Dragonstone, in your arms and his daughter’s care, he took you like a vacation, and you saw him happy, but he soon left, he was the King he had duties, and even though he had refused to say something or share about his thoughts, 

Despite his very efforts, and yours, you had not been able to conceive another child, you couldn’t pass the first trimester before bleeding, and that was alright with you, but not with him, he was concerned. But you found reprieve in Dragonstone, and even though Corlys was getting very old, and he walked with a cane now, you still felt contented

Rhaena and Baela had married, one within her family, and the other with a Hightower from Oldtown, to your surprise, you were certain Daemon was twisting and turning in his grave 

But they were happy 

You found meaning, raising your daughter, and caring front he people in the Crownlands

Corlys had sent your way many Lords of the great families through the years, and you knew them all, and that was very strange

You could feel it

The air was changing

You could sense it 

And it all came to be, when Aemond drew his last breath 

He had been battling with an unknown disease for months, shortness of breath, coughs, spitting spots of blood 

He died, slowly and painfully, the servant found him in the morning, with blood dripping off his mouth.

He knew it was coming, the stranger was looming over him and he spent his last weeks weak, not being able to leave his bed, and there, he pondered, about how he was going to leave this life, with nobody by his side.

His son was scared of him, barely looked at him in the eyes, and his Queen was in Dragonstone, with no intention of coming to his side, shunned and threatened, his daughter, the apple of his eye, was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen, but so gentle and kind. he couldn’t force her to come to court, she was still to young and innocent

He laid alone, on his deathbed

A single tear escaped his eye, as tumultuous thoughts invaded his mind

The time he made Vhagar rip Lucerys front he skies, the time he defended Aegon and burned Rhaenys to a crisp, when he slayed all the Strongs he could get his hands on, when he burn to the ground all the castles and cities in the Riverlands…

 The first time he took you against your will, whe he humiliated you and made you kneel

Your tears

Your cries

Everything, installed on his chest like a knife, twisting and turning until he could no longer breathe

He died, coughing blood

Whispering how sorry he was, when Floris, his mother, Helaena, and Aegon came to collect him

 The day Corlys had been preparing for for years

As soon as his spies let him know of the dark news, he sent the ravens to all corners of the seven Kingdoms

From the Wall to Sunspear and Oldtown, all the great families but one, the Baratheons, started a long journey, but not to the Capital, but instead

To Dragonstone

As you, and our daughter mourned, dressed in black, you consoled your child, who only had known Aemond’s good side, she glung to your side as you kissed her head

“I’m sorry my love”, you whispered, as you were in the balcony, looking out at the seas

From one day to the other, ships with banners from all over the continent came to the island, to your amusement

Rickon Stark, now a young man, came to you, as did Edmund Tyrell, Robert Tully, Alyssa Arryn, Even the princes of Dorne came, not to surrender but to support

Corlys introduced them all, to the new King of the seven Kingdoms

Viserys Targaryen

They all bend the knee to him

And proclaimed him King with the crown of Jaehaerys 

“I love you, always”, you whispered to him, as you took his cheeks and made him lean in so you could kiss his forehead, he held you back, kissing your temple in turn

“My lovely sister, you kept me safe, you protected me, cared for me, now is time I do the same for you”, he whispered, “I will protect you now, you will be safe”

Happy tears rolled down your eyes, you knew it was going to be hard, and that your brother was going to be unsafe, but it was what it was 

It was his destiny

So you traveled with all the great families to King’s Landing, Corlys barely made the journey, but he did, and that is what he had been expecting for all his life.

But when you entered the Throne Room, you found a skimpy kid sitting in the Throne, his Baratheon family by his side, who paled when they saw the greatest commitive the world had ever seen. 

Viserys calmly walk up the stairs leading to the throne, the King’s guards did nothing to stop him, he only looked down at the boy and smirked

“You are in my seat”

The reign of King Visrys was long and fruitful, called Jahaerys come again, he married your daughter on her seventeenth name day, and together they had two princes and two princesses

You remarried, a man from a great house, you didn’t bare more children, but you were so happy, and contended, and lived in Dragonstone for the rest of your life

Corlys passed weeks after he put Viserys on the Throne, his life work was completed, thanks to him, the seven Kingdoms were now united under one rightful King, continuing your mother’s legacy, like it was supposed to be

THE END

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

The Story about Hagar and Ishmael

1-3 Abram and Sarai lived in that Canaan country, and after they were there for 10 years, they still had no kids. Sarai had a woman from Egypt working for her, called Hagar. She was Sarai’s slave. That means Sarai owned Hagar, and Hagar had to do everything that Sarai told her to do.

Sarai was sad because she had no kids, but she got an idea about how to get a baby for herself. So she said to Abram, “God has stopped me from having my own kids. But listen. I want you to sleep with Hagar, like she is your wife. You see, she belongs to me, so if she has a baby, that baby will really belong to me.” So Abram did that, just like Sarai said.

4 He slept with Hagar like she was his wife. Then Hagar found out that she was going to have a baby, so she started rubbishing Sarai all the time, because Sarai didn’t have any kids. 5 So Sarai said to Abram, “I blame you for this trouble. I gave Hagar to you, and now she is going to have a baby, and she is rubbishing me all the time. I reckon God knows that I am right, and you are wrong.”

6 But Abram said to Sarai, “Hagar belongs to you. You are her boss, so do whatever you want with her.” Then Sarai started to treat Hagar in a really bad way. So Hagar left Abram and Sarai’s camp and ran away.

7 Hagar started walking through the desert, along the road that went to a town called Shur, near Egypt. She sat down next to a water-hole there in the desert. God’s angel messenger went to her there. 8 He said, “Hagar, you belong to Sarai, so why are you sitting out here in the desert? Where are you going?”

Hagar said, “I’m running away from my boss, Sarai. She is too hard on me.”

9 God’s angel messenger said to her, “Don’t do that. Go back to your boss, and do what she says.” 10 And the angel also said, “God is going to give you a really big family. You will have a son, and later on lots of people will be born into his family, and they will be a real big family, so that nobody will be able to count all those people.” 11 The angel said, “You are going to have a baby boy, and you will name him Ishmael, because that name means God listens. You see, God listened to you. He heard about your trouble, and he will help you. 12 And Ishmael, your son, he will live like a wild donkey. He will go anywhere he wants to, and he will fight against everybody, and everybody will fight against him. He will not live close to his relatives.”

13 Then Hagar said to herself, “I have seen the God that sees me, and he looks after me.” So she gave God a name, she called him the God that sees me. 14 So that’s why people call that water-hole the water-hole that belongs to the one that is alive and sees me. That water-hole is between a place called Kadesh and a place called Bered.

15 Soon after that, Hagar had a baby boy, and Abram named him Ishmael. 16 Abram was 86 years old at the time when Ishmael was born. — Genesis 16 | Plain English Version (PEV) Plain English Version Bible © 2021 Wycliffe Bible Translators Australia. Cross References: Genesis 3:9; Genesis 11:30; Genesis 12:4; Genesis 12:16; Genesis 13:16; Genesis 14:7; Genesis 17:20; Genesis 17:25; Genesis 19:31; Genesis 20:1; Genesis 21:9; Genesis 21:17; Genesis 21:19; Genesis 25:12; Genesis 25:18; Genesis 29:32; Genesis 30:3-4; Genesis 31:53; Genesis 32:30; Genesis 37:25; Exodus 5:21; Exodus 24:11; Joshua 9:25; 1 Kings 19:9; Galatians 4:22

The LORD Has Listened

[tyrannoninja]

This is my portrait of Hagar, an enslaved woman of Egyptian descent who appears in Chapter 16 of the biblical Book of Genesis. She belonged to the patriarch Abraham and his wife Sarai, the latter of whom had Hagar act as a surrogate mother since she could not conceive a child herself. However, Sarai and Hagar did not get along, causing Hagar to flee into the wilderness. There, a messenger of Yahweh (the biblical God) told her to return to her owners and put up with their abuse, but then bear them a son named Ishmael who would be “a wild ass of a man”. Not my preferred form of divine justice, honestly speaking, but I suppose burdening your owners with an unruly child would be better than nothing.

I don’t know for certain what sort of clothing an enslaved Egyptian person serving Hebrew owners would wear, but here I went with more-or-less Hebrew-style clothing with an Egyptian color palette (blue and gold).

[walkswithmyfather]

Genesis 16:1-16 (NIV). “Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; so she said to Abram, “The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.” Abram agreed to what Sarai said. So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the LORD judge between you and me.” “Your slave is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her. The angel of the LORD found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” “I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered. Then the angel of the LORD told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.” The angel of the LORD also said to her: “You are now pregnant and you will give birth to a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the LORD has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.” She gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered. So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.”

“The Wisdom of Waiting” By Daniel Jongsma (Today Devotional):

“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead, he is patient with you.” —2 Peter 3:9 (NIV)

“Abraham struggled to wait for his and Sarai’s promised child to be born. It seemed to him that God was too slow in keeping his promises. Eventually Abraham and Sarai lost patience with God and tried to have a child in their own unsanctified way (through Sarai’s servant). In his foolishness, Abraham ran ahead of God—leaving a path of relational carnage in his wake.

Many of us can probably recall times when we have done something similar. We were unhappy with God’s timing and began doubting his reliability. Maybe we didn’t go as far as Abraham did, but we still charged ahead and tried to ­direct our own destiny.

Often we find it easier to work rather than wait, to try harder rather than to trust, to play God rather than to surrender to him. But Abraham learned the hard way that there is one thing worse than waiting for God—and that is wishing you had waited. Abraham spent the rest of his life regretting his lack of faith and the rashness of his actions.

God’s timing and ours are often not in sync, so we are called to wait. And yet the Lord is not slow in keeping his promises (2 Peter 3:9). From the perspective of eternity, God’s timing is perfect. Our calling is simply to trust God, giving him the time and space needed to work out his good plan.

Lord, it is a privilege to be part of your great plan to restore this world. Help us to step into that plan, waiting patiently to see what you will do in us and through us. Amen.”

[brookstonalmanac]

Birthdays 10.13

Beer Birthdays

George Younger, 1st Viscount Younger of Leckie (1851)

Megan Parisi (1969)

Will Meyers

Five Favorite Birthdays

Lenny Bruce; comedian (1925)

Robert Lamm; rock keyboardist (1944)

Fox Mulder; X-Files television character (1961)

Art Tatum; jazz pianist (1910)

Burr Tilstrom; puppeteer (1917)

Famous Birthdays

Ray Brown; jazz bassist (1926)

Chris Carter; screenwriter (1957)

Sacha Baron Cohen; English comedian (1971)

John Ford Coley; pop singer (1951)

Beverly Crusher; Star Trek character (2324)

Jacques de Molay; Grand Master of the Knights Templar (1162)

Sammy Hagar; rock singer (1947)

Beverly Johnson; model (1951)

Nancy Kerrigan; figure skater (1969)

Eddie Matthews; Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves 3B (1931)

Yves Montand; singer, actor (1921)

Nana Mouskouri; Greek singer (1934)

Marie Osmond; pop singer (1959)

Molly Pitcher; Revolutionary War hero (1754)

Kelly Preston; actor (1962)

Allan Ramsay; Scottish artist (1713)

Jerry Rice; San Francisco 49ers WR (1962)

Nipsey Russell; comedian, actor (1924)

Jim Samuels; comedian (1948)

Paul Simon; singer, songwriter (1941)

Cornel Wilde; actor (1915)

[addictivecontradiction]

Carefree, 1938

[the-rewatch-rewind]

New episode!

Script below the break

Hello and welcome back to the Rewatch Rewind! My name is Jane, and this is the podcast where I count down my top 40 most frequently rewatched movies in a 20-year period. Today I will be discussing number 22 on my list: RKO’s 1938 screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby, directed by Howard Hawks, written by Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde, based on a story by Hagar Wilde, and starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant.

Paleontologist David Huxley (Cary Grant) has a lot going on. He’s about to marry Alice Swallow (Virginia Walker). The final bone to complete the brontosaurus skeleton he’s been assembling for four years has just been found. And the wealthy Mrs. Carlton Random (May Robson) is considering a million-dollar donation to his museum. But while David is golfing with Mrs. Random’s lawyer, Alexander Peabody (George Irving), his ball gets mixed up with that of zany, scatterbrained Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn), who leads him on a series of misadventures involving wardrobe malfunctions, a thieving dog, trouble with the law, and two leopards.

When my mom was starting to introduce me to Old Hollywood, she got Bringing Up Baby from the library and said something along the lines of, “I don’t particularly like this one, but you probably will.” And, um…that was an understatement. I was obsessed with this movie in my early teens. Like, to an embarrassing degree. I quoted it constantly. For example, whenever there was a curb or other uneven surface, I had to walk along it with one leg higher than the other in reference to the part when Susan loses the heel of one of her shoes and says, “I was born on the side of a hill.” I’m pretty sure I had watched it a few times in 2002 before I started keeping track; then I saw it five times in 2003, twice in 2004, and three times in 2005. And then as I got older, I started to cringe about my initial enthusiasm, and to listen to people I knew who didn’t like it. I watched it once in 2008, once in 2013, once in 2014, once in 2016, and then I decided I liked it again, so I saw it twice in 2018, twice in 2021, and once in 2022.

This movie flopped in its initial release, but its reputation has grown over the years, and it’s now generally considered to be the definitive screwball comedy, one of the greatest comedic films ever made, and according to some, one of the greatest films of all time of any genre. And yet, many of the people I know in real life who have seen it don’t like it – apart from my brother; I could always count on him to watch it with me. I think a lot of people find it too unhinged and chaotic and frustrating – and, to be fair, they are correct in that assessment. But it happens to be unhinged and chaotic and frustrating in all the right ways for me. I totally get that it’s not for everyone, and I think it does tend to be over-praised now, perhaps to overcompensate for the lukewarm response it generated in 1938. Back then, Howard Hawks attributed the box office failure to the fact that there were no normal characters in the film, so there was nobody for the audience to identify with. And maybe that is the problem. Perhaps the people who don’t like this movie are too normal for it, and the reason I enjoy it is because I have never been normal.

I think especially when I was young, I saw a lot of myself in both David Huxley and Susan Vance, even though they are pretty much opposites. David is mild-mannered and socially awkward, which is how I tend to be around people I don’t know very well. He also has a fairly passive role in the story; lots of things happen to him, while he’s unwillingly along for the ride, and that was definitely how I perceived my life at the time when I was most into this movie. Susan, on the other hand, is outgoing and self-assured when she shouldn’t be, and she frequently prattles on to the point of obnoxiousness, which is how I tend to be around people I’m comfortable with – again, even more so when I was younger. The fact that I’m basically a combination of the two leading characters is not something I consciously noticed until recently, but I think it explains a lot. Like why I find this movie comforting when it seems like I should find it irritating. I truly cannot overemphasize how ridiculous this movie is. Nothing about it makes any sense, which normally would bother me, but the thing is, it’s clearly not supposed to make sense. David refers to his skeleton as a brontosaurus, when at the time most paleontologists considered them the same as an apatosaurus (although recently that’s been called into question again). The final bone he’s waiting for is the “intercostal clavicle” which would be a shoulder bone in between the ribs, which…is not a thing in any animal that I know of. And the main leopard, Baby, is introduced to the story because Susan’s brother sent him to her from Brazil, which means either the brother or the leopard was very lost, since leopards are native to Africa and Asia. These factual errors introduced early in the story help set the tone for the nonsense that’s about to ensue, and oh boy is there a lot of nonsense. I mean, not that there isn’t a story at all; there definitely is, and the plot is relatively easy to follow. It’s just absolutely bonkers. Nobody would wind up in jail for trying to get a leopard off a roof, after mistaking it for a different leopard. But it’s very funny to see what would happen if they did. Ultimately, this movie is just trying to be a comedy, and it very much succeeds at that. Most of the movie is witty dialogue between wacky characters in ridiculous situations – basically my favorite brand of humor. There is also excellent physical comedy, including lots of falling down, which normally I’m not a huge fan of, but for some reason this movie’s brand of falling humor works for me. It’s a fun silly movie that is clearly not meant to be taken seriously. And I would argue that its central romance isn’t meant to be taken seriously either.

Because this movie has a male and a female lead, predictably they end up together. But the thing is, I don’t believe that David and Susan truly have romantic feelings for each other. After they have run into each other a few times, Susan asks a psychiatrist she’s stumbled upon what he would say about a man who follows a woman around, and when she talks to him, he fights with her. Now, this is an extremely inaccurate representation of what has been happening – first she took over his golf ball, then she stole his car, then she dropped an olive causing him to slip and fall on his hat. He’s not just randomly picking fights with her; he has reasons to be upset with her. But based on what she said, the psychiatrist tells her, “The love impulse in men frequently reveals itself in terms of conflict.” That leads Susan to conclude that David must be in love with her, and she then decides that she is also in love with him. Which very much sounds like the behavior of someone who does not understand romantic attraction. Throughout the rest of the movie, Susan keeps coming up with ways to prevent David from leaving, which she thinks is because she’s in love with him, but comes across to me as a lonely person desperate for a friend. David spends most of the movie trying to get away from Susan. He does help her resolve some of the situations that she gets herself into, but mostly because she’s either tricked or trapped him. At one point, he tells her, “In moments of quiet, I’m strangely drawn toward you, but there haven’t been any quiet moments,” implying that he is not, in fact, drawn toward her at all. He does care about her wellbeing in spite of himself, but that doesn’t automatically imply romantic feelings. At the climax, when David is trying to fight off the wild leopard that has been mistaken for the tame Baby, he urges Susan to run, and she says, “No, I won’t leave you, I love you!” and he just responds with an unpleasantly shocked, “WHAT?!” Granted, at the end, David confesses to Susan that in hindsight, the time he spent with her was the most fun he’s had in his whole life, to which she replies, “That means you must like me a little bit,” and he says, “It’s more than that! I love you, I think!” But then she accidentally breaks the dinosaur skeleton that he’s spent four years working on, and before he recovers his power of speech, she says, “Oh, David can you ever forgive me? You do? And you still love me!” and she embraces him, and he just goes, “Oh dear,” and hugs her back, and then the movie ends without even remotely convincing me that they’re really in love. I think the psychiatrist’s suggestion combined with amatonormativity has convinced them that they were thrown together by fate and destined to fall in love, so they decided that that was what had happened without really feeling it. The characters strike me as being better suited for friendship than romance, and I hope they discover that after the events of the film. I can see them meeting up every once in a while for more absurd adventures, but I feel like they would destroy each other if they tried to live together.

Now, could this all be me projecting my aromanticism onto these characters so I could relate to them even more? Absolutely. But there’s something indisputably queer about this movie that is definitely not all in my head. These characters are just so fascinatingly quirky that they can’t possibly all be straight allos. Apparently the script had scenes of David and Susan declaring love for each other in the middle that Howard Hawks cut during production, which implies that the director agreed with me that the leads weren’t intended to be too into each other that way. And of course, there’s That One Line. If you’re at all familiar with this movie, you probably know the one I mean, but for those who don’t: after they take Baby the leopard to Susan’s aunt’s country house in Connecticut, Susan convinces David that he needs to take a shower before he can go back to New York to marry his fiancée, and while he’s bathing she takes his clothes and sends them into town to be cleaned, so David won’t be able to leave. When he gets out of the shower, he has nothing to put on but a frilly woman’s bathrobe. Then Susan’s aunt (who also happens to be Mrs. Carlton Random, but he doesn’t know that yet) enters the house and asks who he is, to which he replies, “I don’t know, I’m not quite myself today.” And then when she demands to know why he’s wearing the feminine robe, he can’t come up with a good explanation, so he bursts out, “Because I just went GAY, all of a sudden!” This was an ad-lib by Cary Grant that somehow made it into the film and is now probably its most famous line. At the time, the word “gay” was being used by the homosexual community to refer to themselves, but that use had not entered mainstream consciousness yet, obviously, or the censors wouldn’t have allowed it in the movie. Most uses of “gay” in old films were clearly meant in the “lighthearted, carefree” sense, or were at least ambiguous enough that they could mean that, but in this context, that definition doesn’t really make sense. I don’t like forcing labels onto real people, but it does seem like Cary Grant was probably bisexual, and therefore it’s reasonable to assume that he would have been familiar with the less common definition. Of course, David is saying this sarcastically; he’s wearing the feminine robe because that was the only thing available to wear when he got out of the shower – it has nothing to do with his sexuality or gender presentation. But the idea that the character would be familiar with that use of the word “gay” raises some interesting questions.

In addition to Cary Grant, it’s also been widely speculated that Katharine Hepburn was not straight. She certainly was at least somewhat gender-nonconforming, frequently wearing pants at a time when that wasn’t socially acceptable for women. Susan Vance is one of her more feminine-dressing characters, and she doesn’t say anything about being gay, but right after that scene, when she hears that David is looking for clothes in her brother’s old room, she cries, “If he gets some clothes, he’ll go away, and he’s the only man I’ve ever loved!” I’m told that making it to 30 without having loved someone of the opposite sex is not a typical straight, alloromantic experience. So even if my initial theory is wrong and David and Susan are attracted to each other romantically, that doesn’t rule out the possibility that they’re some form of queer. And as for David’s fiancée, Alice, she’s not in much of the movie, but she makes it clear that her marriage to David is going to be more of a business arrangement than a romance. She has no interest in a honeymoon or children, insisting that the dinosaur skeleton will be their child, and like, I know she was probably meant to be a stereotypically frigid geeky girl with glasses, and it’s harmful to imply that women can either have brains or heart, but at the same time “why would we need to have sex when we have a dinosaur skeleton” is such an iconic ace attitude that I can’t help but admire her. Anyway, she breaks up with David after Mrs. Carlton Random finds out who he is and decides not to donate her million dollars to a museum that employs someone as unhinged as him, but I hope Alice finds happiness, preferably with another asexual dinosaur enthusiast. Most of the other characters also seem at least somewhat queer – Constable Slocum and his assistant Elmer kind of seem like they’re in a relationship with each other, for instance, and Major Applegate doesn’t seem very straight either. All of this might have been completely unintentional, but what the heck, in honor of Pride month, I’m declaring that every character in this movie is somewhere under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella. This is my podcast and I make the rules.

Bringing Up Baby was reportedly very difficult to make. Production ended up taking 40 days longer than scheduled and costing $330,000 over budget. Part of that was because Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn kept cracking each other up and ruining takes, and because Howard Hawks had a fairly leisurely attitude on set, sometimes cancelling shooting early to take the cast to the races. They also had to deal with animals, which is always tricky. In modern films there are usually multiple animals playing the same character, but in this movie they only had one Leopard, named Nissa, who played both Baby and the vicious circus leopard. Katharine Hepburn seemed to enjoy working with the leopard, and she wasn’t afraid of it even though it did almost attack her at one point. But Cary Grant was terrified of Nissa, so most of his scenes with a leopard were either filmed with his stand-in, or his part and the leopard’s part were filmed separately. The visual effects were fairly advanced for 1938, and even though you can sometimes tell that the actors and the leopard weren’t actually together, it works well enough that you won’t really notice unless you’re watching for it. There’s also a dog named George who steals and buries the intercostal clavicle, and that dog was played by the famous Skippy, who had also played Asta in the first few Thin Man movies and appeared in a different Cary Grant movie called The Awful Truth. I haven’t heard any stories about how Skippy behaved on the Bringing Up Baby set, but I assume he was very professional.

Although the film’s box office failure did nothing to help Katharine Hepburn’s floundering film career in the late 1930s, I personally feel like it represents a significant turning point in her acting abilities. There’s a staggering difference between her pre-Bringing Up Baby performances and her post-Bringing Up Baby performances. Early in her career she was extremely overly dramatic, and while some of those films were still fairly good, many are painfully unwatchable. The story goes that initially, she wasn’t very good as Susan Vance either. She kept trying too hard to be funny, which ruined the comedy. Unable to get through to her himself, Howard Hawks asked Vaudeville veteran Walter Catlett to show her what she was doing wrong, and Hepburn found him so helpful that she asked Hawks to cast him in the movie so he’d be around to give her more pointers. So Walter Catlett played Constable Slocum, and Katharine Hepburn learned how to do comedy. Her character is relentlessly annoying and over-the-top ridiculous, but Hepburn commits. The knowledge that she needed help to get there in no way detracts from the brilliance of her performance. She plays everything Susan does as if it’s the most logical, natural thing in the world, and that’s what makes the movie work. If Susan was aware of how silly she was, the whole thing would have fallen apart. We all know that I love Cary Grant, and I do greatly enjoy his performance here, too, and I think they play off each other very well, but I feel like it’s mainly Hepburn’s performance that has compelled me to keep revisiting this film. As a young person, I related to certain things about Susan and wished I could be as carefree and self-assured as she was, although maybe a little less obnoxious. Now I relate to her less – I wish I had half her energy – but I still find her antics amusing. And it’s also fun to see how much better her acting got after this movie. Clearly she took Catlett’s lessons to heart, and combined them with her natural talent and determination and hard-working spirit to fully become the force to be reckoned with that she’s remembered as.

There is so much more I could say about Bringing Up Baby, like how much I love the scene when Susan pretends to be a gangster to get out of jail, but I’m worried I would just end up quoting the whole movie if I kept going, so I think I’ll wrap it up here. Thank you so much for listening, whether you love this movie, hate this movie, don’t have a strong opinion about this movie, or have never seen this movie. I appreciate you all so much! This will be my last solo episode for a while, as I have guests lined up for the next three episodes, so stay tuned for some fun conversations. Next up is the fifth and final film I watched 19 times while keeping track. As always I will leave you with a quote from that next movie: “A date! What’s a date?”

[fuckyeahvanhalen86-95]

Eddie and Alex Van Halen had the closest musical relationship imaginable, playing together for nearly six decades — even in Van Halen’s most fallow periods, when the band was between singers, the brothers would rehearse at Eddie’s 5150 Studios to rehearse just about every day. Alex, Van Halen’s drummer, has been almost entirely silent since Eddie’s death from cancer in October 2020, sharing only a brief statement: “Hey, Ed. Love you. See you on the other side. Your brother, Al.”

Alex Van Halen has a lot more to say about his late brother, though, and it’ll all come out in his new memoir Brothers, due out Oct. 22. “I was with him from day one,” Alex writes. “We shared the experience of coming to this country and figuring out how to fit in. We shared a record player, an 800-square-foot house, a mom and dad, and a work ethic. Later, we shared the back of a tour bus, alcoholism, the experience of becoming successful, of becoming fathers and uncles, and of spending more hours in the studio than I’ve spent doing anything else in this life. We shared a depth of understanding that most people can only hope to achieve in a lifetime.”

The book’s editor, Sara Nelson of HarperCollins, calls the memoir “a chronicle of family and talent and the passion to create … the definitive take on Edward Van Halen’s life and death from the one who knew and loved him best.”

Van Halen singers David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar have both released memoirs over the years, and there has been no shortage of other Van Halen books, including early manager Noel Monk’s memoir Runnin’ With the Devil: A Backstage Pass to the Wild Times, Loud Rock, and the Down and Dirty Truth Behind the Making of Van Halen and Greg Renoff’s impeccably researched Van Halen Rising: How a Southern California Backyard Party Band Saved Heavy Metal. But Alex apparently isn’t a fan of any of them. “All these people are writing books about the band, and they know nothing about the inner workings of this band,” Alex told Modern Drummer in August 2020. “And Ed and I don’t say anything because we’re not in the business of bullshitting on the internet and books and all that kind of crap. We just want to play. It’s that simple.”

Read Rolling Stone‘s own deep-dive cover story on the life and music of Eddie Van Halen here.

[freebiblestudies]

Line Upon Line Lesson 016: Three Sinners and One Redeemer

Genesis 16:9 - The Angel of the Lord said to her, “Return to your mistress, and submit yourself under her hand.”

Why would Jesus tell a runaway slave to return to her master who had been mistreating her?  In order to understand this verse, we need to study the entire passage.

Let’s read together Genesis 16:1-3; Deuteronomy 6:16; and Psalm 19:13.

Sarah and Abraham were unable to conceive and have a child.  Abraham began to consider Eliezer, a trusted servant born in his household, to be his heir.  However, Sarah remembered God’s promise to Abraham

In ancient times, it was legal for a woman to give her female slave to her husband to conceive a child.  That child would legally be the child of the woman.  The slave would be considered a wife of the man, but she would not have the same rights as the original wife.

Sarah was trying to fulfill God’s promise on human terms.  Remember, God promised Abraham would be the father of a great nation.  God did not ask Abraham to do anything to achieve this promise.  All Abraham had to do was believe God would fulfill this promise.

In a sense, Sarah was trying to play God in this situation.  Despite her good intentions, Sarah was actually usurping God’s authority.  While human work and effort may be required in certain things, we have to have faith in God’s promises to let Him do what He said He would do.

Let’s read together Genesis 16:4-6; Isaiah 8:20; Matthew 19:4-6; and 1 Timothy 3:2-4.

While Sarah’s scheme succeeded, friction developed in Abraham’s household.  Hagar began to look down upon Sarah since she conceived an heir for Abraham and Sarah had not.  Sarah blamed Abraham for this and he allowed her to mistreat Hagar.

Abraham failed at least three times in this passage.  First of all, Abraham should not have heeded Sarah’s suggestion.  It may have been culturally acceptable, but it went against the word of God.  Furthermore, Sarah’s suggestion introduced the sin of polygamy into Abraham’s household. 

Let’s read together Psalm 123:2; Ephesians 6:9; and Colossians 4:1.

Secondly, Abraham did not say anything to Hagar when she continued to look down on Sarah.  Lastly, Abraham then allowed Sarah to mistreat Hagar so harshly that she ran away.  Abraham should have restrained Sarah’s hand.  Even though she was a slave, Hagar should have been treated with more dignity and respect than she was given.  Abraham chose to appease his wife rather than stand up for what was right.

Let’s read together Genesis 12:16 and  Proverbs 16:18.

Let us be clear.  Hagar was a victim in this story.  As a slave (likely given to Abraham and Sarah as a gift from Pharaoh), Hagar was in a vulnerable position.  She did not have much say in the matter when Sarah decided to give her to Abaham as a wife.  

However, Hagar was also a sinner.  She allowed the sin of pride to fester in her heart.  She looked upon Sarah who couldn’t conceive, while she birthed an heir to Abraham.

Let’s read together Genesis 16:9: Deuteronomy 32:39; and Colossians 1:15-20.

So, why did Jesus tell Hagar to go back to Sarah knowing this whole situation?  First of all, Hagar was a runaway slave.  The penalties for catching fugitive slaves were rather harsh in those days, including death.  Also, Hagar had no idea where she was going.  She could have found herself in another dangerous situation (raiders, wild animals, etc.).  Going back to Sarah may have been the safest option for Hagar.

Let’s read together Genesis 16:10-16;  Numbers 11:23; and James 5:11.

Finally, Jesus is a Redeemer.  This situation was not of God’s devising - it was caused by sinful human beings.  Nevertheless, God heard the cries of a lowly slave girl and answered her.  Jesus was going to redeem this situation.

Friend, no matter how messed up things are in your life, will you believe that Jesus can redeem the situation and you?

[nordleuchten]

25 Days of La Fayette: December 5th - John E. Hagey

(A short notice before we begin; I really enjoyed researching Hagey - although he drove me crazy once or twice. First of all, everybody spelled his name differently. While Hagey is the most common spelling, there is also Hague, Hagar, Haguy, Hagie and what not all.

I first came across Hagey when I stumbled over his entry in the databank of the Valley Forge Muster Rolls. The muster rolls describe him as an aide-de-camp and a member of La Fayette’s lifeguard. While some other men we have looked at thus far had only served for a very short time as La Fayette’s aide-de-camps, Hagey might have served the shortest – if at all. I thought I had a pretty clear picture of the man’s life and the life of his descendants until I found his application for a pension – that document was a wild ride.)

John E. Hagey was born in 1748 in Strasburg and died on July 13, 1841 in Nashville where he was laid to rest in the Nashville cemetery. His grave is marked with a headstone bearing a short summary of his long and eventful life:

The Nashville City Cemetery Association, Inc., Hagey, John E., Section 28.4, ID # 280352. (08/22/2022)

John E. Hagey

1748 – 1841

Born in Strasburg, Alsace, went to France 1777. Came

to America with Genera Lafayette. Chosen as a companion

and later a body guard for the General. Served in the

French Light Horse and became famous in the Battle

Of White Plains and the Siege of Yorktown and was dis-

charged at Newcastle, N. Y. Went to Harrisburg, Pa.

Became a U.S. Citizen. Married Catherine Ault. Migrated

to Greensboro, N.C. Moved to Knoxville, Tenn. and

then to Nashville where he lived the remainder of

his life. In 1825, his work took him to Huntsville, Ala.

for a short period. While there he learned his old

General was to visit Nashville. He walked over 100

Miles to see Gen. Lafayette 44 years after his dis-

charge. He was 77 at the time. Arrived at Nashville

while the parade was in progress. Placing himself

Properly as the General approached, Mr. Hagey

bowed before him. Arose and was recognized and

emotionally embraced by Lafayette. The crowd was

moved to tears. John Hagey was member of

McKendree M. E. Church.  A devout Christian. He died

In the Faith July 13, 1841. Was given a military

funeral attended by 5000 people. Laid to rest

4 p.m. 7-14-1841.

Asleep in Jesus

The Nashville City Cemetery Association, Inc., Hagey, John E., Section 28.4, ID # 280352. (08/22/2022)

This marker was erected by Hagey’s great-great-great grandson Dwight Bennett. The homepage of the cemetery also mentions that the current marker is a replacement marker. It underwent restoration in 2008.

There are a few things I would like to mention concerning this stone. First, you see the spellings Catherine and Catharine equally often in official documents. For the sake of this post, I will go with the spelling that is inscribed on the marker. Second, I could not find any primary record of La Fayette and Hagey meeting again in Nashville. There is nothing in La Fayette’s correspondences nor in Auguste Levasseur’s journals. There are however a number of secondary sources mentioning and describing such a reunion.

John and Catherine had ten children, Mary (married Steven H. Cheek), Catherine (married Joseph Baker), Elizabeth (married Nicolas Becker), Susan (married Hiram W. Martin), John (never married), Sary (married James Nealy), Margaret (married Odle B. Thrift), Nancy (married John E. Wilson), George W. (never married) and Mariah (married “Jenkins”). It appears as if there were still some more children who sadly died young. The application for a pension mentions the name of the children listed above along with their spouses and ages. As, going from the given ages, some children have died prior to the pension application and some are still alive, these ages can not be linked to a certain date and are therefore rather unhelpful.

Some of John E. Hagey’s descendants however made quite a name for themselves and we find them and the family referenced in several, more local, history books. The following is written about the Reverend James Columbus Petrie:

The History of Union County, Kentucky, Courier Co., 1886, p. 848-850.

Then there is this piece about the Honourable William Brown of the firm Brown & Bruner, bankers from Metropolis in Illinois:

The Biographical Review of Johnson, Massac, Pope and Hardin Counties, Illinois, Chicago Biographical Publishing Co., 1893, p. 560-562.

All of these leads us to John E. Hagey’s application for a pension. His record has been transcribed and revised in 2015 and can be found along with many, many other pension records in various archives. The typed document is seven pages long, so while I will not include it in full, here is the link to the PDF document for everybody who wants to read it.

The record starts with a statement by Hagey himself, made on August 1, 1832 and then two affidavits. The first statement was made by Daniel McCoy (made on October 24, 1837) and the second statement was from Peter Jennings (also made on October 24, 1837). Next in the records is a letter from George W. Hagey from May 14, 1841 on behalf of his mother who was recently widowed and also an official statement from George, given on July 8, 1859. It follows an obituary for John E. Hagey, a letter form the Department of the Interior, dated November 2, 1859 and lastly an official document from the Senate of the United States.

Hagey’s claim for a pension was initially denied in 1832 because it was concluded that he was part of the French troops and not a regular member of the Continental Army. He was therefore not entitled to a pension from the United States. After his death in 1841, his widow Catherine (who lived to the ripe age of 106) applied for a widow’s pension and was in the end denied as well and on the same terms.

To make matters short, Hagey’s statements contradict with themselves and with the history of both La Fayette’s life and the American War of Independence. He claims to have been with La Fayette in places where La Fayette had not been at the stated date, he claimed to have been with La Fayette when he had been wounded – in a battle that the Marquis actually never participated in and so on and so forth. While some of these discrepancies can be attributed to old age and a failing memory (La Fayette himself confused some events from the War for Independence during his tour in 1824/25), others are a bit more confusing.

The whole application can be summoned up by this report, written by J. Thompson, Secretary in the Department of the Interior on November 2, 1859:

Sir [Hon. George C. Whiting, Comm’r. of Pensions],

I have carefully considered the claim of Catharine Hagie, widow of John Hagie, for bounty land under Act of March 3d 1855, &c, and also for pension under Acts of June 7th 1832, and July 7th 1838,upon which an appeal has been taken from your decision.

The soldier in the application he made in 1832 declares that he came over to this country with La Fayette, as a volunteer to assist the Americans in the Revolutionary war, and that he served as a private in the regiment of Light Horse under Col. Polorotski and Capt. Escaline, to the end of the war. His claim under the Act of June 7th 1832 was rejected, and since his death the widow has renewed it, and asserted in her own behalf her title to bounty-land and pension.

To justify the allowance of either of the claims for pension it is necessary that the soldier should have “served in the Continental line or State troops, volunteers or militia,” And to obtain bounty-land under the Act of 1855, that he should have been regularly mustered or paid by the United States.

His own statement shows that he could have come under neither of these conditions, for he served (if, indeed, he rendered any service) in the French Troops, and was paid by the King of France.

I am of the opinion, therefore, that these claims are bad, and accordingly affirm your rejection of them.

The papers which accompanied your report are herewith returned to your office.

I am, very respectfully,/ Your Obd’t. Serv’t.. J. Thompson, Secretary

Interesting, is it not? I started this research by think that John E. Hagey was, maybe only for a very, very short period of time, one of General La Fayette’s aide-de-camps and otherwise served as a lifeguard – a fascinating aspect of army life in and on itself and one that I have never really looked into. There were quite some interesting sources relating to Hagey and his case seemed to be a very simple one at first. Now, at the end of this post however, I am no longer entirely sure if Hagey truly served under La Fayette in the way that he had stated. I do believe however that he had been acquainted with La Fayette one way or another.

Opinions anybody?

[cleopatrachampagne]

not to be all theological on a pretty non-theological blog but i do find a deep comfort in the fact that the abrahamic god was named by a runaway slave (hagar), who found god in the wilderness away from the society of oppression built by humans, in a part of genesis that is written as a very purposeful juxtaposition between nature (the realm of god) and society (the realm of humans), and she called god

“the one who sees me”

i’m a scientist and was raised atheist so i view the bible as allegory, of course, not historical fact, and the holy spirit ain’t got a pen to write a book with, but looking at a religion and story that has existed for centuries, there’s a comfort in knowing that humans have always felt like they don’t fit in the artificial society we built and that it’s not just me who feels like being surrounded by nature is the only time i feel like things make sense. from the beginning, it seems like all humans have really wanted is to feel the rhythm or the wilds away from little boxes and to be seen for who we truly are; not who we’re told to be.

that’s religion to me (and apparently plenty of generations who came before me translating this tale again and again). the chaotic embrace of nature and the knowledge that someone, anyone, not only sees me for who i am rather than as the labels stuck to me or my role in my culture’s society, but deeply loves me for it too.

[byneddiedingo]

Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938)

Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Charles Ruggles, Walter Catlett, Barry Fitzgerald, May Robson, Fritz Feld. Screenplay: Dudley Nichols, Hagar Wilde. Cinematography:  Russell Metty. Art direction: Van Nest Polglase. Film editing: George Hively. Music: Roy Webb.

Although it's sometimes called the greatest of all screwball comedies, to my mind Bringing Up Baby transcends that label: It's the finest example I know of a nonsense comedy. Screwball comedies like My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava, 1936) and Nothing Sacred (William A. Wellman, 1937) usually have one foot in the real world -- the Depression and its Hoovervilles in the case of the former, exploitation journalism in the latter. Bringing Up Baby exists only in a universe where an impossible thing like an "intercostal clavicle"* could exist. Its world is a place where nobody listens to anyone else and everyone seems to be marching to their own drummer. It's what puts Bringing Up Baby in the sublime company of Lewis Carroll's works or James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Fortunately it's more accessible than the latter and at least as much fun as the former. Nonsense is harder to bring off on film than in literature. Cinema by nature is a documentary medium -- one that's assumed to be recording reality -- and has less flexibility than words do. It's also a collaborative medium, which means that everyone involved in writing, directing, and acting in it has to be on the same wave length, or the whole thing will collapse like a soufflé with too many cooks. That's why Bringing Up Baby is almost sui generis: The only other movies that approach the sublimity of its nonsense are some of the ones with the Marx Brothers or W.C. Fields. Even Howard Hawks once admitted that he thought he had gone too far in crafting a comedy with "no normal people in it." Nevertheless, the soufflé rose, thanks in very large part to Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, whose four movies together -- the other three were directed by George Cukor: Sylvia Scarlett (1935), Holiday (1938), and The Philadelphia Story (1940) -- seem to me to demonstrate a more potent teaming than the more iconic one of Hepburn with Spencer Tracy. And then there's the sine qua non of the screwball comedy, a supporting cast of character players like Charles Ruggles, Walter Catlett, Barry Fitzgerald, May Robson, and Fritz Feld. The screenplay was put together by Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde, from a magazine story by Wilde that Hawks bought and then with their help -- and doubtless much ad-libbing from the cast -- revised out of all recognition. I only hope that whoever came up with the phrase "intercostal clavicle," which Grant delivers with such delight in its rhythms, received a bonus. *In case you've never thought to look it up, "intercostal" means "between the ribs" and usually refers to the muscles and spaces in the ribcage. The clavicle, or collarbone, sits atop the ribs and therefore can't be between them.