Month: April 2020

Laugh, and the World Laughs With You

“Laughter reduces pain, increases job performance, connects people emotionally, and improves the flow of oxygen to the heart and brain. Laughter, it’s said, is the best medicine. … And all the health benefits of laughter may simply result from the social support that laughter stimulates.”

—Psychology Today, 2005

As the coronavirus crisis drags on, and the number of deaths in only 3 months approaches the total of American lives lost in the Vietnam War over 14 years (58,000 from 1961 to 1975), we may have to work hard to keep our sense of humor. I know it’s difficult, but as the quote above indicates, there are actual physical, emotional, and psychological benefits to joking and laughing. If you think about it, this entire situation is funny in an absurd sort of way. Did any of us, just two months ago, envision a world in which we would be confined to our homes, wearing face masks in public, and washing our hands until our skin was raw? I guess what I’m saying is, as difficult as it might be at times, look for reasons to laugh. If you need something funny to read, try a Christopher Moore novel. I strongly suggest Lamb, Fool, or Noir; in each of those, he takes a familiar genre and turns it on its head. Laugh-out-loud funny.

It seems like a year ago, but as St. Patrick’s day approached, I heard a joke that I liked. Since we had reservations at a casino in Biloxi for March 17th, I thought perhaps I could casually throw it into a conversation at a blackjack table while the dealer was re-shuffling the deck. Then, of course, I never got the chance. So here it is:

A man walked into a neighborhood pub in Dublin, Ireland and ordered three Guinness Stouts. The bartender, who took his Guinness seriously, carefully poured three beautiful beers. In each glass, the dark brown, almost black, Stout was topped by nearly an inch of tan-colored foam. He placed them in front of the patron. Only then did he notice that the man was alone and planned on drinking all three beers by himself. “You know,” he said, “Guinness is best when it is freshly poured. If you ordered each of these separately, I think you’d enjoy it more.”

               The man smiled and said, “Technically, friend, these are not all for me. See, a few weeks ago, my mother died and my brothers and I lost the farm we had rented since my dear, departed father passed. One brother moved to Sydney, Australia, and the other went to Chicago, in America. I moved from the countryside to Dublin and found a job. Before we parted, though, we three boys made a promise that we would go to our local pub every Wednesday and have a beer with our brothers living far away. So I plan to drink these three stouts and reminisce about my family—those dead, and those who have moved away.”

               The bartender was touched by the story, and he left the man alone as he quietly sipped his dark beers. When the stranger left the pub, the barkeep related the story to the other patrons, all of whom were equally moved. From that day on, the ritual was repeated every week. The other men in the pub respected the ceremony, and the room grew silent until the stranger finished his three beers and left.

               Several months later, the man came in and said, “I’ll have two Guinness Stouts.” A hush fell over the room as the bartender and the other patrons assumed the worst. The bartender silently poured the beer and brought them to the bar. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said quietly.

               “What do you mean?” the man asked.

               “You only ordered two beers today, so I thought that one of your brothers must have passed.”

               “No, that’s not it,” the stranger said. “Today is Ash Wednesday, and I’ve given up beer for Lent.”

In this current type of a crisis, though, normal humor often takes a back seat to “Black Humor” or “Dark Humor.” This is a type of humor where a morbid slant on things is combined with comedy in order to give a disturbing effect or to point out the absurdity of life. Many times, the topics discussed under this genre are serious, but the approach towards it is very light and humorous. Some of my favorite films use dark humor to great comic effect. Dr. Strangelove, Harold & Maude, Heathers, Monty Python films or, more recently Pulp Fiction (or anything else by Quentin Tarantino) and Fargo (or anything else by the Coen Brothers) all used this technique. This type of humor is not for everyone. These are the sort of films that make you laugh aloud, but then you glance around to see if anyone noticed that you found those disturbing images humorous.

My family always dealt with loss or tragedy by resorting to the dark-sense-of-humor defense. On the morning my father died, my brother Mark was at the house while the Hospice people were still there, packing up their supplies. Mark asked, “So is this like a rainout, and you get to go home early?”

Kathleen and I went to Chicago for that funeral. My other brother, Dan, showed me a T-shirt that he had bought for me. It was from a local business and read “Chicago Jack” on the back. He tossed it to me from across the room and said, “I was gonna mail this to you, but luckily dad died and saved me the postage.”

I used a variation of that line later when I was sick and missed a month of teaching. Upon my return, colleagues were discussing a particularly lengthy and time-wasting faculty meeting that had occurred in my absence. I said, “That sounds brutal; thank God I had cancer and got to miss it.”

The point is that humor can get you through anything. If your kids are making you lose your temper during your first foray into home-schooling, get a T-shirt that says, “Good Moms Use Bad Words” (I saw that one recently). If watching the news and the gloomy predictions and statistics from doctors is getting you down, turn to the President’s daily press conference for a laugh. That’s right: even the Clown-in-Chief can be funny at times, albeit unintentionally. You can’t help but laugh as he staggers like a drunken sailor from one position to another, claiming dictatorial power one day, and throwing everything back to the states the next.

It is especially laughable to watch him try to shift the blame for his many mistakes. While President Harry Truman famously had a plaque on his Oval Office desk that read “The Buck Stops Here,” Trump refuses to take responsibility for any of his numerous blunders and flings blame around like confetti. In recent days, he has pointed fingers at the World Health Organization, governors of individual states (Democrats only, of course), and even former President Obama, who left office with a plan in place for possible ways to deal with a pandemic (that plan was scrapped by Trump in 2018). Yesterday, instead of providing any semblance of leadership, he touted miracle cures, such as hydroxychloroquine, sunshine, or—wait for it—injecting disinfectant. This puts our country in the bizarre position of having the FDA, CDC, and other government organizations warning people that they should ignore the snake-oil salesman we call a President. Yes, Trump’s antics would indeed be comical if all of this weren’t so damned serious. It is safe to say that no president in history, with the possible exceptions of James Buchanan, Herbert Hoover, or George W. Bush, was so ineffective in dealing with a national crisis. In each case, moreover, many people died because of their ineptitude.

My opening quote today refers to the old saying, “Laughter is the best medicine.” I did some research and found that the origin of that quote is probably the Bible, specifically, a proverb from the Wisdom of Solomon.:“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.”

Laughter may not be the best medicine, but it beats the hell out of drinking Lysol.

Hygiene is the 1st Thing to Go

First, a quick quiz. Without looking it up, What day of the week is it?

The calendar, or at least our instinctive sense of what day it is at any particular time, has probably been another victim of the Covid crisis. Our daily routines have been dramatically altered, we are out of our usual rhythm, and many of us have slacked off a bit. With millions of people working remotely or affected by the stay-at-home orders, my guess is that many people are taking advantage of the chance to sleep in a little later and ease into their day at a slower pace. During the days when Kathleen was retired, and I was still working, she loved illustrating the difference in our personalities by describing the start of our summer. As soon as school ended, I knew that I had only two months to get a year’s worth of work and house maintenance accomplished. So I made lists. There was a master list, weekly lists, and daily lists. Kathleen always got a chuckle out of my master list that had things like “Run 400 miles,” “10,000 push-ups,” “Write two chapters,” “Paint two bedrooms,” “Read 20 Books,” “Re-Surface the driveway,” “Stain the back deck,” etc. etc. She would roll her eyes at my ambitious plans and say, “My only goal is to be out of my pajamas by noon.” I think a lot of people have that same attitude these days.

Living in a duplex/condo now, there is not nearly as much work to do, so my lists are more modest. I still get up at 5:00 most mornings and do some writing or reading for three hours before I feel as if I’ve done enough to have “earned” breakfast. It’s still dark up here until almost 7:00, so I can’t really get motivated to go outside anyway until mid-morning. Plus, it’s still cold most days, and we had snow flurries early on Thursday. My run, walk, or some combination of the two takes place about 9:30 or 10:00, and I try to get 5 or 6 miles in. So, not until after 11:00 do I finally take a shower. After six decades of showering before the sun is up each morning, it feels like a real luxury to shower that late in the day. I suppose that some people don’t shower at all; without regular social encounters, appearance has diminished in importance.

I also shave my face and head while in the shower. That’s where my slacking off comes in. After many years of shaving on a daily basis (except those times when I grew an ill-advised beard), I now shave only every other day. I figure, I’m not going to see anyone, so who really cares? There are some problems with this. After running, pulling a sweaty, nylon shirt off over my bristly head on the second day is difficult. My head grabs that shirt like Velcro and won’t let go. Still, at least once every 48 hours my head is gleaming like a freshly shaven, silent shroud of skull. (I believe Simon and Garfunkel first said that in their alliterative way; I’m not sure if the words are exactly right, or if, indeed, they were talking about my head.)

My step-daughter, Kristin, works at NASA, so she has been working at home for nearly a month. Someone in Huntsville created a tongue-in-cheek quiz to see how everyone was adjusting to their new work situation. Each question that received an affirmative response was rewarded with one point. They included such things as, Did you brush your teeth?  Did you take a shower? Are you wearing shoes?  Are you wearing pants? Did you get up at your regular time? There were twenty such questions and an accompanying scale with which to grade yourself. Kristin was awake and working, but she scored a “one.” Apparently, she received a point for logging onto an online conference of some sort. Aside from that, she might as well have been lying in bed.

A lot of the stuff happening around the country is so weird that it’s fascinating. Our lives have definitely been altered in both good and bad ways. I do think it’s important, though, to try to maintain a routine of sorts. After all, when this finally ends, I envision a rush to public places like we haven’t seen since the end of Prohibition in 1933. If I’m hanging out at the Nutty Squirrel that day, arm around some stranger, warbling a slurred version of “Happy Days are Here Again,” I want to make sure they don’t stink.

He Was in Heaven Before He Died

Yesterday was a bad day. We in Wisconsin were forced to leave our homes amid this pandemic in order to practice that most basic right of American citizenship: voting. That is only remarkable because the Republican majority in the state house, in a blatant case of voter repression, insisted that there be no delays because they wanted to keep the turnout low and prevent people from voting who are more likely to support Democrats. Our President gave another farcical press conference marked by outrageous statements and a refusal to answer legitimate questions from the media. That conference came after he had dismissed the non-partisan head of the oversight committee whose job it was to see that the $2 Trillion allotted by Congress last week will be disbursed fairly and impartially. Trump, who has never done anything fairly and impartially in his life, will now oversee those funds personally in still another power grab designed to remove all restraints on his runaway authority. All of this occurred on a day when more Americans died from Covid19 than on any previous day. To top it all off, as I opened my newspaper at 5:00 this morning, I saw that one of those who died of the virus was singer and songwriter, John Prine.

I saw Prine perform many times. At one of those shows in Boulder, Colorado in 1978, he was explaining the idea behind a song of his called Bruised Orange. He recalled walking to church one dark morning to serve mass as an altar boy. There was a big commotion because a young kid, another altar boy or paper-delivery boy presumably, had been hit by a train and killed. A crowd gathered near the tracks and eleven terrified mothers waited to find out if the boy was their son. The Police finally revealed who the boy was, and, as Prine told it, “Everyone stared at the boy’s mother to see her reaction. But,” he added, “I’ll never forget the expressions on the faces of those other ten mothers.” That was the secret of his songs: he always saw the world from a slightly different angle.

I first became aware of John Prine in 1971 when his eponymous debut album came out. I was still in high-school and had only listened to pop music to that point. Something new was happening in music at that time, however. It was called “FM Radio,” and new stations were popping up that were not constrained by the limitations of Top Forty song lists. Prine was a Chicago guy, so many of these so-called “underground” disc jockeys saw him at area coffee houses and clubs and played his songs. From the first time I heard him, I was blown away. His songs told stories about ordinary people and their lives. And always, they came at you from a new angle that helped you understand the world and the people in it a little better. Somewhere, in the recesses of my mind, the thought registered that I, too, wanted to be a folk-singer. It would take a few more years before I acted on that thought, but when I moved to Austin, Texas to learn to play guitar in 1977, more than anything else, I wanted to write songs like John Prine.

Prine was not overtly political. Still, many of his songs hinted at political issues in subtle ways. In Sam Stone, he touched on the emotional and psychological battles being fought by returning veterans, long before anyone had used the term “Vietnam Veteran Stress Syndrome” (today called PTSD). That song still brings tears to my eyes. He addressed, in a humorous way, false patriotism in the form of people who put decals of the US flag on their cars, but hate most actual Americans (Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore). Six-o’clock News dealt with family secrets and unwanted children. As recently as 2005, he took a shot at our unjustified invasion of Iraq in Some Humans Ain’t Human. I can’t help thinking that he would have written another verse to that song if he saw our current president using a terrible human tragedy to advance his own political agenda.

Like Guy Clark and Steve Goodman, Prine never fit neatly into any commercially obvious categories, so record companies and radio stations didn’t know what to do with him. Rather than give up, though, he started his own record company where he was able to be himself, rather than some executive’s idea of what he should be. Performers such as Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and Roger Waters of Pink Floyd listed him among their favorite songwriters. Everyone from George Strait (I Just Wanna Dance With You), to Miranda Lambert (That’s the Way the World Goes ‘Round), to David Allan Coe (You Never Even Called Me by my Name) had hits covering Prine songs. In addition to numerous Americana music awards, he won two Grammys and, earlier this year, a Lifetime Achievement Award. So, while he was never a commercial success personally, he managed to find his own niche and earn the respect of writers and singers throughout the industry.

Prine could use words in an incredibly clever fashion, and he had a whimsical sense of humor. If you need a reason to smile today—and we all do—listen to Jesus: The Missing Years, Let’s Talk Dirty in Hawaiian, In Spite of Ourselves, The Other Side of Town, or Dear Abby. He was also a great performer, especially when he was young. Almost every time I saw Steve Goodman, John Prine would show up and do a couple of songs with him, and vice versa. They clearly had a ball performing together, and the enthusiasm was contagious. When I finally sang on the tiny stage at the Earl of Old Town, where both Goodman and Prine got their start, I felt as if I were in some sort of holy shrine. I got chills, and, as I often did, I forgot the lyrics to my own songs.

In 1975, for his Common Sense album, Prine wrote a song about his dad in which he said, “He was in heaven before he died.” I think the sentiment applies here as well. I once heard him talk about singing at an annual family reunion in Kentucky, where his parents were from. He said, “I always have to play the song Paradise about a thousand times; if I only play it nine-hundred times, they think I’m getting a big head.”  

Still, I’d love to hear it one more time, John.

Take a Hike

On Wednesday of this week, I filled my gas tank. That may not sound like a big deal to you, but I last put gas in my car in November, over four months ago. That was good gas, though. It must have been, because it was that high-priced, $2.54 a gallon stuff. This time, I filled up with that cheap, $1.79 gas, so I’m sure it won’t last as long. This morning I read that gas is under a dollar a gallon in some places in Minnesota. I don’t want any part of that crappy petroleum, though. It might ruin my car. While I was at the gas station, I took my car through the car wash. When you are as proud of your vehicle as I am of my 15-year-old Ford Focus, you try to keep it looking good. So I wash it every other year, whether it needs it or not.

Like many other people, I have been trying to find ways to stay busy during this period of enforced captivity. More than anything else, I have used the time to write every day. My friend Bruce recently read a draft of my first novel, Forest Primeval, and made some excellent suggestions. So I have been working on incorporating those ideas. (I think this is about the 14th or 15th draft.)

I’ve also been working on another novel, tentatively called A Million to One, that centers around golf. One sporting event that we watch religiously each year is the Masters, which usually takes place in mid-April. Kathleen and I often put down a small bet on a golfer with relatively long odds. It gives us someone to cheer for, and, with a little luck, we could win four or five hundred dollars for our $20 bet. We have never actually won these bets, mind you, but it gave me the premise for this new book. In this story, a guy bets on a journeyman golfer to win all four major tournaments in the same year. As the golfer catches fire and wins the first few majors, the man with the bet stands to win an enormous amount of money and becomes a national celebrity. The title indicates the odds he received in Vegas for his $100 bet.

As the weather has warmed up, I have also enjoyed going out for a 4-6-mile run or walk each day. The need to go outside is especially powerful up here, where people have been cooped up all winter due to the cold temperatures. When it finally warmed up, the stay-at-home orders kicked in. Because of that, I thought that the Kinnickinnic State Park would be crowded with hikers when I went there earlier this week.

The park is less than 10 miles from my home, and it covers the last mile of the Kinnickinnic River before it empties into the St. Croix River. This was my first trip to the park, and I thoroughly enjoyed it on a warm and sunny day. To my surprise, I did not encounter anyone else, except for a group of the fattest wild turkeys I’ve ever seen. I politely gave them the right-of-way. The trails are mostly grass covered, although some them still had sections of ice or snow or were muddy from the recent melt-off. I covered six miles on meandering trails, and it was a great opportunity to allow my mind to wander and ponder the possibilities presented by the little river that runs through River Falls. If I were so inclined, I could build a crude raft, Huck Finn style. I could put it in the water of the Kinnickinnic downtown, just past the dam and falls that give the town its name. Then I could let the current carry me, theoretically at least, down to the St. Croix, which feeds into the Mississippi a short distance from here. From that confluence, I could float past St. Louis, Memphis, and New Orleans, into the Gulf of Mexico. At that point, a person would become part of the great waters that make up the oceans and seas of the world. You could sail to Japan, Africa, Europe, or India. The very thought makes the imagination soar.

With no actual Masters tournament to watch this year, I have found it to be somewhat cathartic—and a whole lot of fun—to at least be able to write about a fictional golfer. Similarly, while being locked up at home most of the day, my mind is kept alive by thoughts of travelling to distant parts of the world where I have never been. An American cyclist named Jamie Paolinetti once said that “Limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless.”

We may all have to remember that over the next few months.