Book Review: Mr. Laurel & Mr. Hardy. by John McCabe.

Did a book ever excite and inspire you as a child?

If not, I feel sorry for you.

When I was 9 I read John McCabe's hagiography of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, entitled "Mr. Laurel & Mr. Hardy". It changed my life. Up until then I had vague ambitions about comedy and laughter, but once I turned the last page of McCabe's book my life's course crystalized: I would catch laughter and scatter it far and wide.

And, for the most part, I did. First as a circus clown, then as a pantomime artist, and finally, in my old age when physical comedy became awkward and painful, by developing into an artisan of light verse.

I recommend this book, not because of what it did for me, but because it is so plainly and joyously written by a writer who enjoys his subject. I dislike the modern tendency of biographers to dig up all the dirt on their subject and then make a point of disparaging their subject (usually after the man or woman is dead and can't defend themselves). This is the so-called modern scholarship. It's modern malarkey, in my book.

If you can't celebrate someone's life, why write about it at all?

McCabe was a Shakespeare scholar and teacher, and he brings the Bard's rich language to his descriptions of how Stan and Ollie teamed up and operated to produce a unique world-wide belly laugh that is still reverberating in many hearts. His summation of the two is not complex:  Two nice guys who just happened to strike a vein of comic gold. It petered out eventually, and the two men lived in the shadows during their last years. They were unpretentious going up in the world, and they remained that way on their slide down.

I had the great good fortune to correspond with John McCabe for many years. I sent him a fan letter when I first joined Ringling Brothers Circus back in the early 70's, and he was kind enough to reply, asking me all sorts of question about life as a circus clown. My cache of letters from him are a cherished treasure that I dip into occasionally to warm my heart in an increasingly cold and unfunny world. Let me share just one quote with you:

"Although Laurel was the real 'brains' behind the team, thinking up the gags and actually doing most of the directing, it was Babe Hardy that everybody loved on the lot. He kept the team warm and human by occasionally standing up to Stan, when Stan proposed a gag that seemed too cruel or unfeeling. Babe would say something like "That's brilliant, Stan; but it'll scare the kids, not make 'em laugh. Can we change it, just for my sake?" And Laurel would always defer to Hardy, because, in his own words "How can you not love that big heart of his?'"

The book will make you feel good without pandering to bathos or scandal. You can purchase a good used copy on Amazon.com for about a dollar, plus shipping and handling.

Refugees face a growing backlash in a liberal Australian city

Sixty-one percent of Australians disapprove of people who arrive by boat seeking asylum, many of whom are escaping wars or persecution in Afghanistan, Iraq and Sri Lanka, an annual survey by Monash University academic Andrew Markus published last week found.

from the Washington Post

A refugee landed in Perth

met with complete lack of mirth.

They said "We don't want

either you or your aunt."

So they kept him from finding a berth. 

Five myths about the decline and fall of Rome

Rome wasn't built in a day
but fell apart almost that way.
The plebes got too haughty;
patricians too naughty -- 
and then they blew up like Pompeii. 

Light the World #4

  Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.

Isaiah 60:1 

You cannot outrun light.

You cannot hold back day.

The flame will not be hid,

As brightness leads the way.

Light makes no sound to hear,

but penetrates all space,

until it settles near

our loving Father's place.

The darkness that has sunk

so many in the mire

now flees before the light

of God and his Esquire! 

Book Review: My Life and Hard Times, by James Thurber

America has a genius for celebrating the eccentricities of family. There are always aunts and uncles coming out of the woodwork with strange fancies and occluded mindsets; cousins who are occasional jailbirds and/or lunatic backpackers; and don't forget the siblings that join cults or found them. 

Parents and grandparents appear as buffoons or throwers of gasconades. And that doesn't even begin to cover the faux ancestors that humorists like to invent; horse rustlers who wound up as guests at a necktie party or sea captains that braved the Straights of Malacca for jewel-encrusted jade Buddhas or to bring home an exotic spouse with batik tattoo.  

It's a fabulous tradition that possibly reached its height back in 1934, with the publication of James Thurber's brief autobiography and family bestiary, "My Life and Hard Times". 

Thurber details, with a reporter's dispassionate eye, the eccentricities and downright lunacy of his immediate family. With chapter headings such as "The Night the Ghost Got In" or "The Night the Bed Fell Down", you get the feeling that the Thurber household had few restful evenings -- and you'd be right. The book, which runs only 138 pages, runs the gamut from city panics to gun play to rogue pets. Thurber wastes little time or energy with run-on sentences or big words. His prose bristles with brief declarative sentences. A semi colon is as rare in his writing as a pork chop at a Jewish wedding. 

What this means is that the reader is treated to a glimpse of many fanciful characters without any fanciful prose. 

This would be a hard book to dislike for any reason. The humor is robust at times, at times rather sly and coy. But it's written without an iota of malice or venom, just lots of homespun bewilderment. This is how America used to laugh at itself -- and it's sorely missed in today's supercharged environment.

 Copies on Amazon.com are available for as little as one cent (plus shipping and handling). 

Hampshire College once again flies U.S. flag after weeks of protests

The school’s president, Jonathan Lash, announced the decision to re-raise the American flag on campus in a statement released Friday. The school and its leadership had been at the center of a roiling debate — and some ridicule — since Lash decided on Nov. 21 to stop flying the flag on the campus of the small western Massachusetts liberal arts college, following election-related protests that argued the flag represents hatred and racism.

from the Washington Post

When Hampshire College refused

to fly the flag, it really bruised

the feelings of vets

who showed their regrets

by wanting its Prez to be noosed. 

Bonus:  War with the Squirrels.   http://bit.ly/2ghyP0r 

Light the World #3

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.     Isaiah 9:2


I walked into the darkness as I walked away from light;
my willful soul and shallow heart thy love did want to fight.
The shadows gathered round me, yet methought I was content;
I saw so very little, there was no need to repent.

And then a great blaze broke upon my mole-like life again.
The shadows melted as I gazed upon the Light of Men.
Confused by such effulgence that was lit for such as me,
I walked into His arms once more for all eternity. 

On an Island Named for Ice, the Poets Are Just Getting Warmed Up

When they’re not at their day jobs, a great many of (Iceland's) 330,000 inhabitants dabble in verse, including politicians, businessmen, horse breeders and scientists who study the genetic isolation of the island in pursuit of medical breakthroughs. Even David Oddsson, who was prime minister in 2002 (when Iceland’s banks were privatized) and central bank governor in 2008 (when they collapsed), is a poet by training.

from the New York Times 

In Iceland the poets hold sway;

so many they get in the way.

You can't throw a shard

without hitting a bard,

composing a long roundelay. 

En Strengen av Perler: My War with the Squirrels

The squirrels of Minneapolis were more cunning and brutal than even Emperor Ming of the Planet Mongo.

Or so it seemed to me each summer as I attempted in vain to raise a small garden in the backyard of my childhood home.

Those wretched creatures gamboled through my spring radishes and the tender shoots of cucumbers, leaving behind a howling desert.

They dug up young carrots and beets for the sheer pleasure of hearing my anguished whimpers while lolling on their elm tree verandas.

And they were patient; patient as only an unhallowed fiend can be, awaiting the right moment to spring their brutal machinations for optimum effect. I took especial pride in my four rows of sweet corn, and nourished it tenderly with bounteous amounts of fish meal and plenty of sweet garden hose water. The resulting ears were fat and full -- until the cursed squirrels got to them, which was always just a day or two before they were ripe for picking. The sight of those denuded cobs strewn about the dirt breached my heart nearly beyond repair.

And then there were the beefsteak tomatoes. The soil in our Southeast Minneapolis neighborhood was for some reason especially nourishing for tomatoes. They sprouted like weeds everywhere, and grew to tremendous heights without the help of man or manure. My beefsteak tomato plants gave me a great deal of delight, as they went from spindly pale green little things to tall husky stalks, with each branch bearing a half dozen little green buds that gave promise of luscious sapidity to come. The fruit grew to monstrous proportions, seeming to gain in circumference by the hour.

That peculiar pungent odor that mature tomato plants give off; it was as jasmine or patchouli to me! I freely fantasized each summer about who I would deign to rain my largesse upon. My mother, of course, would cringe before me in gratitude for such a thing. Perhaps if I rolled one over to Mrs. Matsuura across the street she might in return give me a half dozen of her pickled rice balls -- which I lusted after inordinately ever since her son, my friend Wayne, had shared one with me during a fishing expedition on the banks of the Mississippi.

Giving my hyperactive imagination full rein, I imagined going next door to the widow Mrs. Henderson with a few cannonball-sized specimens for her, which would result in her leaving me her fabulous fortune when she kicked the bucket. For it was well known in the neighborhood (or at least in my own fertile mind) that she was fabulously wealthy, having salted away a stupendous amount of war bonds during the Spanish-American conflict.

But as each rich red globe reached its peak of perfection, I would discover it had been disfigured by a single squirrel bite. Those monsters wouldn't eat tomatoes for sustenance -- no,they just bit each damn one out of pure spite! The gash this created in the tomato skin quickly turned them into hideous and mushy pulp.

My tears would run hot with rage, and I would utter every single childish curse I could think of. Had mom been within earshot I would have had my tongue holystoned with a bar of Fels Naptha laundry soap.

Oh, how I tried to keep those squirrels out of my garden! I asked old Sven, down the street, who grew a huge and luxuriant garden, how he kept the squirrels out of his. Simple, he said; you just hang a dead squirrel on a pole in the middle of the garden and the live ones give it a wide berth. I asked old Sven to get me a dead squirrel, which he did. But when I hung it up in my garden it attracted blow flies by the thousands and emitted a penetrating odor that my family did not appreciate -- so it had to go.

I tried putting dog manure in my garden; the squirrels just rolled around in it like it was cotton candy.

I sprayed everything with Tabasco sauce. The squirrels took to wearing sombreros around my backyard and singing mariachi tunes.

Nothing worked. So at the tender age of twelve I gave up on my agricultural ambitions. Otherwise I might have grown into a career of truck farming or selling fertilizer.  But I never forgot my bitter hatred of those squirrels . . .

Years later, when I was visiting my parents at Christmas, I noticed a large bag of unshelled nuts. Nobody in the family was interested in taking the time or making the effort to crack them open, so I asked if I might have them. Because, you see, a diabolical plan had formed in my squirrel-obsessed mind.

In our backyard grew a large weeping willow. The thin drooping branches could not support the weight of anything more hefty than a butterfly. Tramping out through the ankle-deep snow, I took those nuts and super glued one at a time to the tip of a willow branch. Then came back inside to watch the fun.

The squirrels soon discovered the nuts, tantalizingly just out of their reach. They leaped for them in vain. They crawled as far as they dared down the willow branches, only to lose their grip and be hurled into the waiting snow before they could reach the prize.

"Yes, that's it, my pretties" I gloated by the window. "Keep trying. Heh, heh! You must be very hungry this cold winter day, and there is food in plenty, just out of your grasp. Hee! Hee!"  

As I was enjoying myself, dad came over to see what I was doing. When I explained why and how I was revenging myself at long last, he only shook his head and went to get a spritz cookie, muttering to himself "Mine barn er alle gale . . . "

Organic and GMO Food

Americans have differing views on the benefits and risks of organic and genetically modified foods. A new survey finds 55% of Americans believe organically grown produce is healthier than conventional varieties, while 39% consider GM foods worse for a person’s health than other foods.
The Pew Research Center.

There's nothing that starts up a feud
more often than views about food.
A beet starts a panic
if it ain't organic;
and GMO makes people brood.