Differing Abstractions

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

“Canadians all live in igloos”

Some dude in Texas

Regarding their mayor:

“They kept reelecting him because he was grandfatherly and worked hard to help individuals and families who were having trouble. They didn’t care much whether he also set good policies—that was too abstract for them.”

Xenocide, by Orson Scott Card, 1991, p 238

Hello Reader,

Got differing abstractions?

Introduction

I hadn’t planned to continue last week’s theme of middle class guilt. My current blog post, right up until today’s posting, begins:

QUOTE

… I am writing this … under the spell of Audre Lorde, a member of several minority groups: Black, and a woman too, “but a traitor” with a nonBlack partner, raising children, but “without a  family values marriage,” lesbian, and speaker of truth to hands-on-ears fellow feminists… 

UNQUOTE

Differing

Trust us writers to care about the nitty gritty of sentences. So there I was, only three days after posting the above, still under the spell, among about a dozen writers, at a big long table, studying sentences, and I spoke of U.S. Blacks, and—I was corrected and told that now we say Persons of Colour. This was in Canada. You may wonder: Did Canadians genuinely ponder and decide to change names, or is this a case of swift Yankee imperialism? (Because hey, you’ve got to admit such things happen)

You ask: What did I think of being corrected?

I answer: I think it’s time to talk about levels of abstraction. But don’t worry, I’ll get back to Audre and me.

Here’s how I explain two words: I could say, “Gee, I better stop procrastinating.” Or I could say, “Well, I better get to my work.” The former is sentence is more “abstract,” the latter more “concrete.” By concrete I mean you can see it, like cement, and measure it, like with a ruler, and beholders can agree, “Yep, there’s Sean, working at his table saw.” But if you entered my man cave and saw me silent in my easy chair, the eyes of the beholder wouldn’t agree on whether I was procrastinating, or hard at work dreaming up some new poem about the Martian invasion. When it comes to something abstract like labels for people, there can be a whole lot of opinions going on. 

Abstractions have power. Are people “developing” the land or “exploiting” it? Both words are easy to argue about, as both are abstract.

How many races do you count? On the prairies, or great plains, the first nations medicine wheel abstracts four: black, white, yellow, red. 

Black or Person of Colour? Again, abstract. A member of the Mongolian race, or a Person of Colour? A higher abstraction: Here colour means not specifically black, but non-white. When my father was a boy, history text books always started out listing the various races of man. When I myself was a boy, the How and Why Book of Primitive Man began by saying scientists don’t like to say the word race. 

(With race being not so much concretely found in nature as being abstract concept we make up. Hence laymen in Europe, when Dad was a boy, as documented in brown paged books in the campus library, would say that folks on two sides of a river were two different races. I bear no ill-will to 1930-Edmonton scientists or 2010-Saskatchewan indigenous elders. They both abstracted as best they could)

That would have been about the time the term Mongolian was dropped—should I now say East Asian, Oriental, or just what?—and when, for folks with a specific disability, the term Mongoloid, with its racial implication, was replaced, on our side of the pond, with Down Syndrome. 

If people argue about abstract single words, then they can get even more heated about abstract logic chains. I can remember when a Marxist study group, meeting down in the basement, would learn a set of steps to a conclusion for good comrades, but by the time the idealists got up onto the streets, among the rest of us, they would be forgetful about the abstract steps, and go right to the Politically Correct conclusion. It was when the rest of us were puzzling over the half-missing steps that leftists felt the need to be especially strident and shaming by saying, “Trust me, that’s not PC!” Well. Human nature means that we will calmly discuss the value of cement versus concrete, while our fiercest arguments will be over fuzzy abstract things like religion, politics and PC.

Fun with abstract scenarios

If I am at a big long table with a dozen folks—not writers but my buddies who play World of Warcraft—and I want to talk about Yankee imperialism by certain Texas Yankees, then my peers might get their Star Trek shirts in a twist: “What if a U.S. citizen was spying on us from Texas using a super-telescope and heard you calling him a Yankee? He would be offended because the Texans fought on the side of the Confederacy, Rebels against Yanks, for the U.S. civil war, so shame on you, for not being PC.”

Same table: One of my male ice hockey buddies, being a little more realistic, might use a few of those few English words that help us to phrase an imaginary state, words known as the “subjunctive,” words such as were, would or could. He might say, “What if a Texan were in this room and what if he would hear you talking about imperialism… and so you shouldn’t say such things, even if, as I must admit, no Texan is present.” 

Next to speak up is my hockey buddy with a sense of humour: “What if a Yankee—I mean a Texan—was just outside the window on his hands and knees in the shrubbery, so we couldn’t see him, but he heard us, and then stood up and yelled in the window?”

Now, I just have to chuckle, and get into the game too, making things four sided. “Well buddy, suppose I had my own telescope to Texas, and so I called them long distance while they were talking. One of them goes over to the land line and says, “Hey you guys, the call display says Canada… Hello?”

“I just heard you people saying some falsehoods about Canada, some myths, shame on you, for no, we do not all live in igloos! You’re not being PC!” …Somehow, I doubt stereotypical Texans care much about PC, not these days. 

(I remember the scandal when new Texas vehicle license plates came out that said, “The friendly state.” Texas changed that in a hurry! At the time, my roommate from Kansas opined that Texans just like to bug the rest of the union—and I can blab that, because I’m in Canada)

At this point, as we are each getting into our differing private abstractions, if any of my buddies claims to have The Truth and be the centre of world, then I have to gently remind him, “Excuse me, an Ugly American would act that way, too.” (By the way, it was secret agent Matt Helm, settled in Santa Fe, who noted: No self-respecting New Mexican wants to be caught sounding like a Texan—and yes, I know I shouldn’t report that on a Canadian blog)

Obviously, talking about labels and “what if” will always sound a little crazy. My buddy says with a tense jaw: “We label jars not people; you must say ‘a person with a gimpy leg,’ not a gimp; say ‘a person of the Jewish persuasion…’”

More private abstractions

One of my thinking tools is the abstraction of Political Correctness. 

According to PC, —I could be wrong— isn’t there is a PC sound barrier, not to be broken, between us and Yankee-land? And doesn’t PC include the concept that if you talk about others then you are “speaking for” them? We would say of a Canadian woman holding two Ph.D’s in “American Studies”, that if she travels below the 49th parallel, she knows less than a high school drop out, at least about certain things in “real” American life, and so if she travels down to the States then she shouldn’t “speak for” Americans. I guess it logically follows: PC-wise, I can’t rush across the border and vent my spleen at some Texans I hear mentioning igloos, either.

At the same time, in the name of Political Correctness, the Americans have no right to complain as my professor talks, when up here, among us fellow-Canadians, about “those” imperializing Americans, no, not even if she accidentally tells us some myths about Yankees. 

(Of course she would document and footnote and quote U.S. citizens in good faith, like me quoting Matt Helm, of course)

Maybe I feel a blazing social warrior leftist temptation to drive to Montana and shout “Power to the 99 per cent!” … Still, I have to let U.S. citizens seek their own salvation. Or at least, not shout, but talk nicely to those Yankee salt of the earth folks politely, talking with them, not at them. Maybe mail them some footnotes, if asked. 

It was an apologist for communism, self-described “Chinese” writer Han Suyin, who said, “Revolution must be neither exported nor imported.” Yes. My citizenship papers are stamped Canada, not U.S. of A, so I’ll cackle whatever crazy thing I want to “among us chickens, up here, about them eagles, down there.” My latest theory is that the U.S. public enables their Yankee Imperialism by holding on to an ignorant plausible deniability. “What? Us? Imperialize? We’re so innocent!” Yeah, you just go on saying that.

A wide eyed peer might earnestly ask me, “Yes, but what if an eavesdropper was innocently out of sight below the window?” 

(I suppose this is getting away from the abstract into the actual concrete examples)

Easy: If it was me I would stand up, walk around the building and enter through the proper door. I would go to the room by the window and wait to be invited to join in. And then I would not hijack the conversation, but wait until it was appropriate to swing the conversation around to igloos. As a Muslim said to me in London, humbling and politely and without any hijacking, “If you want to know anything about Muslims then you can just ask me, for I’m Muslim.” At the time we were sharing a vegetarian, OK-for-Muslims-and-Jews, pizza.

Fun with peers

I wrote about that Muslim man on the jet back from London, for my last visit, just as this time flying home I wrote about Audre Lorde. It was while I was part way through Audre’s book that I met with a man who had moved across the globe to Oxford to raise his boy because it was a “diverse” city. That man was Derek Sivers; we knew each other through his blog, and he bought me a nice breakfast near Saville Row in London.

You may ask: Does the boy call his father a Caucasian? I don’t know, I never asked.

Does the boy know about the various formal races of man, including, “but not limited to,” Caucasian, as found in old textbooks? I doubt it, the boy is only eight. Does he give himself a label? Sure, one he either made up or hears being used by his child peers: He self identifies as brown.

Historians are only half right: We don’t learn from history, but we do learn from our peer groups—too bad they don’t learn from history. They differ in their ability to abstractly see beyond the here and now, just as they vary in their ability to think in term of time and space. Seriously: Have you ever tried to organized a street protest before the deficit has worsened into a dragon? One snorting cutbacks, and breathing fire against government programs? Have folks declined your request to take to the streets early enough to do some good, even though your peers surely know what horrors we went through last time we finally had to kill the deficit? If so, then surely you were viewed as “a crazy minority of one.” Power to the people.

It would be nice if groups were all equal, but no, they aren’t all the same. And that I like, since my different peers can express different aspects of me. Today I see I have mentioned peer groups from writing, computers, athletics and, if you include a peer group of just one, a Muslim. It seems to me that fighting within any given peer group, over fuzzy abstractions, words and labels, is like fighting over fashion: Even if I am are “right” I am are apt to walk away feeling somehow foolish. 

(Example: Should we dress for Stampede Days like a cowboy, or like a real cowboy? One could argue. Should my businessman’s trench coat be a real trench coat, complete with a wee loop for my pistol lanyard? And yes, on Saville Row they do indeed sell such coats. A young British businessman, sent to work in Italy, found that all his peers wore coats without epaulets, so he felt compelled to go back to his hotel and cut off all the epaulets on his coats. Now, before you would make a face in scorn, I would advise a pause… sometimes we really need our sense of "humour and compassion" for a poor lad craving a peer group) 

Specific words

The most Positively Correct peers for me have been the ones who will like me and buy me a beer.  If they go from properly saying cellular telephones to crudely saying cell phones, then me too. The worst peers share my hot ideals but lack a sense of proportion: No "humour and compassion." For them, as they grate on me, I will reach for the lubricant of humour, and alcohol too.

If you, dear reader, want me to say Person of Colour, then all you have do is say that word around me, like my peers saying “cell phone.” But that begs me to ask the question: Up here in Canada, when would you ever say P of C in real life? It could mean that, in order for you to change my everyday language, then, in your own everyday life, instead of talking about the the weather and such trivia, you would need to speak of what you were doing around racism. Yes, I sympathize; it’s hard to take action, and then it’s hard to share from your heart. But if I keep naturally hearing Person of Colour then I’ll naturally start saying the term too. Like how even bigots have exchanged the horribly stigmatized word homosexual for a nice, pretty, new improved one, gay.

Right now, from dear Audre, I keep hearing the word Black… God bless her.

Sean Crawford

In her majesty’s dominion of Canada,

(although Dominion Day has been replaced by Canada day)

At the foothills of the Rocky Mountains,

In the sweetest home city in the world,

(although our sibling rivals in Edmonton would say otherwise)

March

2020

Update of Thursday March 12, regarding opportunities to say to others, "Person of Colour."
There are two Person of Colur documentaries are showing in Edmonton on March 19 at the Garneau. About the time the Person of Colour Panther headquarters was being shot up, as noted one post back, innocent Persons of Colour women working in hospitals were facing the National Guard in their quest for a decent wage. Link

Meanwhile, today on CBC, writer Kiley Reid was interviewed for her book about the Persons of Colour situation called Such a Fun Age. I tuned in at the part where a middle class white woman felt safe that her husband would have no sexual desire for a domestic worker because she was a Person of Colour. 

Reid, a self described as "light-skinned (I forget if there was another word too)" reminded those of us privileged to live in the developed British Commonwealth, including, "but not limited to," Canada and the United Kingdom, how it had warped her life, diverted her employment choices, to live in the only developed country in the world without national healthcare. 

Footnotes:

~I Met a Muslim in London is archived September 2017

~Guilt and Toronto, with Audre Lorde, is archived last week, in March 2020. You might be interested in the essay for Lorde’s definition of racism.

~In Commenters and My Responsibility archived May 2018, I quoted Derek Sivers, who moved to Oxford, at length in my essay, His words in the footnotes are in yellow; his words about the financial costs of unclear writing are in the main essay, in a slightly larger typeface, with some bolding.  

~Call me an artist, but this post was written in the subjunctive imagined world; while in the real world I lack a table saw, man cave and certain peers.

Amusing (and tragic) difference in abstracting the definition of racist:
While normally I would retro-change the words "Negro" or "Black" to Person of Colour, the humour below doesn't work as well unless I report the "dialogue" accurately.

As our leftist friends know, every man, woman and child in Canada is racist because we soak it up from our culture. As least most of us aren't as bad as the TV bigot Archie Bunker, although he could at least have Persons of Colour, the Jeffersons, over to visit him and Edith, or have his son-in-law's Person of Colour friend Lionel come over. All in the Family was the first post-colour TV show filmed (videotaped) before a live studio audience.

 The "and tragic" part of my amusing memory is how my roommate, who divided his time between Canada and the States, driving a sports car down to California, had a definition of racist that differed from our leftist friends—Actually, I guess he spent more time down south than here, since he thought "minus four degrees centigrade" was cold.

I was renting the upper half of a duplex, while down below lived a Malaysian couple who were soon moving out. So they gifted me with a plastic silver platter covered in food and supplies. I remember one gift was a white container of Johnson's baby powder, only the blue writing was in Malaysian, not English.
 So there I was, coming up the stairs and cackling like a witch. Seriously, I was cackling. My roommate was at the top of stairs. "What I like about me," I laughed "is I'm not a racist. Look at all this cool stuff I just got."
The guy exploded, "Sean, of course you're not a racist! You're living with a Black man!"

How Humor Helps the Agenda

essaysbysean.blogspot.com …

September, Friday the 13th, 2019

Hello Reader,

Got humor, as a precision tool to help a formal meeting?

Prologue

Purpose

Humor concepts

During a convention

The Theory

In conclusion 

Prologue

It’s so nice to think I can help people laugh, as I used to be “humor challenged”: That’s what comes of being a child survivor. What I forget is that others can be challenged too.

I was reminded recently at a writer’s circle. A few of us were casually gathered on a Sunday afternoon. I read a bit from my blog (April 2019) about the humor background of abuse survivor Pat Conroy, (The Great Santini) saying that it’s normal to X, (I forget) Y, (I forget) and Z (save up a funny event from the morning to tell folks when when they come home at night).  A dear writer looked surprised, (maybe for X or Y, I forget) and exclaimed, “I never do that!” She wasn’t a nerd—she had a gorgeous personality and a pretty smile—but she was, I guessed, a survivor like me.

Purpose

For her and others, to express 

some concepts of group humor for helping a meeting agenda. 

In the spirit of My College Mentor (archived January 2019) who said he could find “teachable moments” from our behaviour—we were truly a class with much to learn—I could try to find specific lessons from our AGM for the AWCS, also known as, aka, Annual General Meeting for the Alexandra Writers Centre Society.

Fellow readers, I don’t necessarily expect you to care about my fellow artists having an AGM, but I expect to better express things by using real life examples.

Humor Concepts

I was almost the first to comment for our first agenda item: Turns out folks badly wanted an AWCS credit card, but our bylaws we aren’t allowed any debt. I stuck up my hand to say that a bank debit card would not be debt, since it only spends money in the account. Someone swiftly pointed out: The reason individual staff were resorting to using their personal credit cards was that you could buy stuff over the telephone, and so forth. 

To forestall lots of “and so forth” explanations, and yes, to salve my poor ego, I said in a penetrating voice, “I just want to say: ‘Oh. Now-w-w I get it.’” Laughter.

Note: Yes, I was talking for my own ego’s sake, but also to set an example of safe participation, and to prevent the group wasting time explaining the “and so forth,” AND to help the group laugh. After all, AGMs can be awfully cut and dried. 

Concept: Before you joke, or speak up in a meeting, apply Sean’s patented 50% rule. If your purpose is not “50% or more” to help the group… then don’t joke. 

Closely related: If you don’t know your purpose for speaking up, then STOP until you do. Taking a good full second to check your purpose can prevent a lot of empty words.

Fellow citizens, you may recall that in July I mentioned—or at least I meant to—some research from different corners of the world that showed that populist leaders such as Trump will get into power not because a given country is objectively rich or poor, but because of the “income disparity” within a country. 

(How President Reagan turned the key to start economic disparity in America is in Gwynne Dyer’s latest book, reviewed in my post An Experiment Called Civilization archived July 2019)

I mention economic disparity here because during our meeting we talked of building connections with the half-built grand edifice next door. Turns out we were approached by the future occupants. The new building will be for “active seniors” who are “very wealthy”: having walls of mahogany, and —say it with a hushed French accent— a concierge. 

Right before we talked of this, we had been talking about raising membership rates for all of us except our senior citizens, because, as a director said, “On a fixed income, it’s brutal out there.” As it happens, some of us writers are starving artists, AND let’s face it, “disparity,” since the Reagan years, can be “the elephant in the room” that everyone is pretending to ignore. And pretending not to be gritting their teeth about. 

So I spoke up with enthusiasm: “Well, I’m an active senior. After I cook a bowl of ramen noodles I’m going to actively take it over there and eat it.” Laughter, much laughter.

Concept: Taking up the group’s time with a quick reference to an “elephant” is never out of order. Come to think of it, that’s why society needs its artists. To put paint onto invisible elephants. Again, my joke was for others, not “about me.” (Although I pass for being a senior because my hair has gone white—also, I’m in my sixties, past the age of senior-hood in the UK)

Fellow rebels, you may like a reminder: The harshest truths, of course, can only be told with humor. In the court of the Red Queen, only the jester may tell the truth and keep his head on his shoulders… 

Again, the role of artists, including writers, is relevant here: I once saw a communist movie, with English subtitles, where a painter, devalued and scorned, yelled, “You (society) need me!” Even under godless communism, or an oppressive Muslim theocracy, there needs to be art. 

In talking about our AWCS membership rates, some folks compared them to various comparable artist organizations. Well. Can you name any? I hated to be harsh, but I spoke up, “(oh, I don’t know,) If I was a writer, I wouldn’t know that the Writers Guild of Alberta charged a fee, and (lowering my voice sheepishly) I wouldn’t care.” Much laughter. The executive director spoke up that we could inform folks about other organizations and…

Concept: A quick funny one-liner can be a catalyst. As in getting the director talking. Once something has been said, a perspective unblocked, or an elephant made real, then people can say more on the subject, or at least have it in their awareness. Laughter often comes from surprise, and surprise often comes from something new, something that needs to be added to the group’s vocabulary.

I believe humor is a precision tool: firstly as a practical means to help a meeting be more productive; then secondly as a means to quality of life. As when meeting 

during a convention.

Last month I attended a weekend for readers and writers, When Words Collide. Events started Friday at 1:00 p.m. On Saturday morning I attended the very earliest Words seminar of the day, where an author, Adam Dreece, stood at the front to share his hard-won wisdom about independent marketing and publicity. Some of us had staggered in hung over, some still waking up. Dreece was a conscientious fellow, who made reference to us meeting so early, and hoping he was teaching OK. Early in his lecture he paused to ask: “Any questions or comments so far?”

I decided to be supportive: My hand went up. “A comment. This is the best seminar I’ve attended all day!” Laughter.

Dreece said, “That’s the second best compliment I’ve had all day!” Laughter. Then he took time to inform us that he got that “second best” line from the old spy comedy Get Smart, adding that when he was with his kids driving past a tourist monument such as a Ukrainian giant Easter egg, he would exclaim, “Wow, that’s the second biggest Easter egg I’ve ever seen!”

Concept: Before you do an “increase our quality of life” joke take time to do my special check-for-time gut check, (not patented) asking yourself, “Is is OK to use the group’s time for this?” The fact that Dreece would ‘take my contribution and run with it’ is proof I had judged correctly. Come to think of it, if you don’t know, from doing your gut check, whether or not you are “grounded” and “centred” and “genuinely moved to speak” then you probably aren’t: Stay silent, there’ll be other chances to contribute.

The seminar rolled on. I was sitting beside Minkee Robinson, who has been published in the same British anthology as I, The Baby Shoes Project, (Named for the tragic Hemingway story) Late in the seminar Minkee was part of our “audience participation,” with something intelligent to say. Sometimes I can be intelligent too, so right after Minkee I shot up my hand again. “Yes?”

I grinned widely. “The lady beside me says, ‘This is still the best seminar she’s been to all day!’” Laughter and clapping. Yes!

“That is the third best compliment I’ve had all day.” Laughter.

Note: Saying indirectly, “The lady beside me says…” besides being funny in itself, allowed for a second of suspense; good jokes have suspense before the punchline.

Concept: Laughter is increased if there is repetition, or—and this is a form of repetition—if there is a reference to something said earlier in the meeting. You find this at events where there is a quick series of good humored speakers who keep spontaneously referring to something an earlier speaker had said. Sometimes successive speakers can really keep a theme going: The fact that all this wit is improvised, “live before their very eyes,” adds to the crowd’s enjoyment.

That’s all I have for recent concrete examples. Any nerd wishing to learn to do group humor would do well to start with the concrete, and then move to  

the theory 

I would remind you, dear reader, that my 50% rule applies to things such as venting your spleen, expressing your pet peeve and putting yourself into the spotlight. Don’t-don’t-don’t use up a whole formal group’s time for your own private purpose. Your spleen will still be there when you retire with informal friends to the bar. 

If, say, “getting attention” is only a minor part of your motivation then you will be forgiven: I always am. But if you’re being too egotistical, as the flip side of being too needy, then it’s like showing fear before a dog. Folks at a formal meeting or seminar will notice, and they won’t be charitable. So first do the gut check for time, and for the 50% thing too.

In conclusion, to review my points… Actually, the theory right above is your conclusion. And you can review each of my points by looking for words in bold. 

But if you still want a final word, then OK, this I believe: 

At the formal group level, properly and precisely employed, humor helps us all… and thereby helps world peace. 

Sean Crawford

September,

High River

2019

Footnotes:

~The theory of using humor to help a group advance against stormy winds of fear is in my essay Kubrick and Work or Fear archived December 2016.

~Today’s essay was held back from September to allow space for posting War of the Worlds poetry and essay re-runs, such as last weeks Sarah Connor one. Why? Because I am still trying to free up my time to maybe begin to start to attempt to tackle the writing of fiction.

~ The weekend convention title is a pun on the old Philip Wylie novel, later made into a 1950’s black and white movie.

~We liked hearing Adam Dreece. I haven’t read any of his fiction yet, but I enjoyed his book Five Critical Things for Successful Book Signings. It’s about far, far more than signings.

~Minkee Robinson has a story soon to be published in a school reader. Ca-ching! She only found her acceptance letter because she checked her spam folder. Close call!

~Sometimes I answer people: “My hobby? Writing essays.” As I see their eyes begin drooping from boredom, I hasten to say” Not academic ones, not like school kids write…” Then their eyes open again. But if, dear reader, you like academic writing, and you have some cash to spend, then here you go, here is your link to an article called Meeting Mirth… an article that I don’t ever plan to read myself.

Humour and The War of the Worlds

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

Hello Reader,

Got a foundation for humour?

Humour is like the musician in a marching band who plays the cymbals: He asked his band master, “What’s the most important thing for me to know about playing the cymbals?” 

Answer: “…When!” 

For me to include in my War of the Worlds poetry manuscript a funny poem or two would be to ignore the film student who asked his teacher, “When do you insert a minute of comic relief into a terror movie such as Day of the Triffids?” 

Answer: “…You don’t!” 

Sometimes the subject matter, such as the entire human race being under assault by Triffids, is just too serious, even if this means inflicting a relentless tension on the poor audience. 

If the danger is merely to the lives of all the passengers and crew of an aircraft, because the two pilots have been incapacitated, then OK: There will be a brief scene of a passenger being funny. I am referring to the script of Flight Into Danger, which we took in school. Besides comic relief, it also had a recap scene, in the guise of an air traffic controller on the radio, because the movie, when televised, would be interrupted for “the six o’clock evening news, with Walter Cronkite.” That same movie, complete with a civilian former fighter pilot saying the plane flew “sluggish like a wet sponge” was later re-written to be Zero Hour, by the author of Airport, and then re-written again to be a feature comedy called Airplane.

On my blog, to give my readers their money’s worth—which ain’t much, the blog is free—I try to pair my War of the Worlds poems with a wee prose essay. After all, not everybody likes poetry—go figure. My poem today is not a comedy, as I wanted unity of tone, (When? You don’t!) hence the sober mid verse, but I did try for a fun rhythm to match at the happiness at the passing of the evil Martians.

Meanwhile, how ‘bout that foundation for humour?

As a child, back in the days of weekly frontier shows such as Daniel Boone and Davy Crocket, (King of the wild frontier) I remember a children’s book with a scene where a one-room-school teacher is looking down at a little brother and sister who are so very serious and quiet. At the time, I thought, as the teacher did, that farm life must have beaten them down. Like the grey people on a farm with Dorothy in Kansas (You may recall it was only her dog Toto that kept Dorothy from being grey too)

As an adult, knowing that struggling Abraham Lincoln, as a child in his family lean-to, (before the log cabin) had no time to even make soap, yet nevertheless managed to have good humour, I remain skeptical that a harsh life would mean no sense of comedy. As a young man Lincoln was valued on work crews for his humorous stories, even as farmers hated how his stories distracted the crews from their labour. Perhaps that girl and boy were oppressed not by their labour but by their parents… Just as novelist Pat Conroy was.

Recently I came across a line in a Pat Conroy book where he once more tries to understand his horrible father, a father exposed in Conroy’s nonfiction memoir My Losing Season, written after his father’s death, and, from during his dad’s lifetime, Conroy’s first fiction novel The Great Santini. 

Question: How horrible was Pat’s dad, Santini? Answer: Conroy didn’t think any of his siblings would attend their father’s funeral. Seriously. But they did, because of the novel. 

It happened this way: To be publishable, Conroy had to tone down just how horrible the actual great Santini really was. The novel was commercial success, complete with a movie version starring Robert Duval. Then a strange thing happened: Santini decided to live up to his hero image. He changed. By the time he died, the whole town came out to his funeral, and so did his children.

(The flip side to Santini’s change is people living down to a bad image. As in the old folk saying, “If you give a dog a bad name, then you might as well hang him.”)

As for humour, here’s what I envision: As a US marine fighter pilot and squadron leader, Santini would surely have a fine sense of humour, not just to give himself some laughs, but for group morale too, especially when the going got tough, and of course to buck up any marine who was failing to cope, “dragging his tail.” Nobody ever said the marine corps was easy. I can’t imagine any marine being without enough ego to show his pals that he too could crack a joke. 

So imagine how dumbfounded I was to read, in Conroy’s final nonfiction memoir, something about his dad:

“Of all the shameful things he did to us when we were kids, he never once made us laugh. In his retirement years, Dad had surprised himself and shocked his children by developing a terrific sense of humor.”

I had to put the book down and start to think: In our everyday life, don’t we try to make our loved ones laugh? If something amusing happens in the morning, don’t we save it up to tell them in the evening when they come home? Doesn’t looking out for them include, besides asking how their day went, also trying to support them to feel better about themselves, and trying to make them laugh? Don’t nearly all people, including parents, role model behaving this way? Well, not my parents, and not the great Santini. That man was a poor excuse for a father, being neither safe nor supportive.

I put the book down, stared into space, and realized: My family of origin was a lot like Santini… I can remember, in my twenties, feeling a surge of anger when a wife and college student told me she “wanted her kids to feel good about themselves.” Not Santini, not for his kids, and not my parents for theirs. In our family, I regret to say, I am sure the youngest three children, including me, were rather like those two frontier kids. Seriously. (The older three children had known better times)

Those three kids eventually came to realize they had a humour gap. In my case, before there would be any point in rushing out to buy a book of jokes and one-liners, hoping against hope I could thereby learn to be funny, I needed first to get a handle on the 

foundations of humour: 

Looking for the good in others, projecting warmth, and reflecting on how “angels fly because they take themselves lightly.” No mortal can discern something funny, or generate humour, while uptight… or while desperately obsessing, struggling and straining to become “good enough.” Better if I take it easy, knowing I am already loved, by the Lord. And then, over time, learning what a humour-state feels like, the way stage-actors learn what a relaxed body feels like.

I can relate to a certain atheist hard-drinking fellow, truly as atheist as any other alcoholic, who got into recovery in AA, and who at last said, “Some need God to avoid hell, I need God because I’ve already been to hell.” I hear you, brother. I guess God sits next to the lightest of angels.

As it happens, at the same the time I knew that lady in college, I was seeing a college counsellor, while role modelling humour from a few people in both my past and present. Hey, that’s a nice thought: People are never really gone if you can still role model off of them. (I still learn from Abe Lincoln) 

Another thought: You’re never solely a victim if you can help others. And help I did. And do. As a life style. Recently I received a reply to my e-mail, which had been a reply to a sensitive poet. By “hear it” she means the e-letter:

Thanks for the reply Sean, I hear it in your voice which is always fun and often involves humour! I have read this at a difficult time as my mom isn't well, and your words brought a smile. Thank you…

She ended with a quip of her own, then graciously said, “Happy Easter.”

Being gracious is something else I had to learn as an adult. So I looked up from my screen and thought, “Hey, I’ve got fun and humour in my voice! Not bad, for a serious survivor of a home unsafe, a home relentlessly unsupportive. Not bad at all.”

Poem

In a dusty depopulated land recovering from the onslaught of the Martians, I imagine a good, clean, wholesome couple having access to pre-war goods. Those two might sound too good to be true, but hey, if I can imagine them then they can exist. As a healthy ex-convict once said, “What a man can conceive, a man can achieve.”

Jasper and Holly

Jasper and Holly were known to go bike,

past crumbling towns to wherever they’d like.

They were always so clean, a couple so blessed,

who stayed to be welcomed, then pedalled off west,

with glimmering chimes and a bell.

Jasper and Holly carried bags of good fun;

sour old clouds would yield to their sun.

They brought popcorn to pop, and sweet brown toffee,

ointments and gauze, and real canned coffee,

and wore Rover berets of bright blue.

Back at home

Jasper leaves the toilet seat up,

Holly scatters clothes unfolded.

She asks: Do you love me?

Jasper would sing and Holly told jokes;

they had one story they always told folks:

“There’s no terror, no chills, nothing to fear

as at sunset we coast in our slowest gear

past a Tripod that leans, just a dark shell

with its Martian long gone, 

gone down to hell.”

Sean Crawford

April

Calgary

2019

Shadenfreud Sidebar:

I for one, shudder at all those oodles of pythons, with no natural enemies, in the Florida everglades. Not funny. Our NATO allies have a word, shadenfreud, meaning to laugh or take pleasure in someone else’s misfortune. High above NATO and planet earth, I wonder if Aliens from space would feel shadenfeud at how pathetic humans, generation after generation, keep failing to learn the lessons of a) don’t do war, and b) don’t bring in invasive species.

National Geographic magazine, for April, has a special edition on Cities. One of the cover titles is Rats—they’ll always be with us. As you know, rats came over here from Europe. The practise of putting a cone over the hawser so the rats don’t crawl to shore was not observed by our pathetic ancestors. That’s not funny to me, still no shadenfreud.

“Cough.” If I was to have shadenfrued, which I don’t—who, me?—then I would tell you that my city, and the cities north of me, and to the south, are totally rat-free. Hope you’re not too jealous, but I live in the largest rat-free land mass in the free world! Ha-ha. How? Well, here on the flat prairie, (Joke) you can see the rats coming. You then call in the Rat Patrol—yes, that’s their actual name; yes, they’re taxpayer funded; yes, I say thank God for government—whenever you have any sightings at the border. We still need to build our farm grain silos out of corrugated steel or cement, but we don’t have nearly the loss to our gross domestic product (GDP) that we would have if we allowed rats into the fields.

Did I say the plains are flat? Joke: How flat are they? You can watch your dog run away from home for two days.

Update: Someone at BBC reads my blog. Here's (link) a story on "rat free cities."

Footnotes:

~Folks have put up Youtubes with with a side-by-side comparison of the two Airplane movies: one serious, one comic. Here’s a link to a shorter Youtube.

~If I preface a line intended to make you smile with “joke,” then it’s because the humour gear is not one’s default, I want to give you a micro second to gear up. That’s “up” not down, as the synonym for laughter, levity, comes from the same Greek base as levitation, as in lightness. The opposite is “grave” as in gravity, and the grave face of Lincoln, who dripped melancholy as he walked—no wonder he needed his famous Lincoln humour.

~In one of the Austen Powers comedy spy movies, the scene where the evil genius bounces a harmless beach ball off his son’s head and says, “Are you gonna cry now, are you gonna cry?” was a satire of a scene in the Santini movie, where the father kept bouncing a hard basketball off his son’s head. So I guess The Great Santini movie did well at the box office, back in the day, if folks still remember. (Critic Roger Ebert gave it 4/5 stars)

~Conroy’s final book about his dad was The Death of Santini: The story of a father and his son. The quote in italics above is on page 155. The book included revelations that struck me like a blow, but that would be best told in another essay.

~In a family like mine it is normal to “kinda, sorta know” that things are wrong, while also failing to grasp the impossible truth—God gives us “denial” (mental defence) for a reason. Even our greater society, with generations of folk sayings, proverbs and folk tales for coping, dares not be too “clued in.” Hence even at my age, I must confess, I am still learning about things.

~As Tiny Tim says, “God bless us, everyone.”

~Update: Today I found this on the Free Fall blog

In Summer

Posted on July 10, 2015by fragmentwriter2

I never thought you’d leave in summer.

The hardest part of school was over, I’d marked my last exam, graded my last essay, and at last I could relax with you. Weren’t we going to go to the lake? I wanted to see you laughing on a boat. Lord knows I haven’t laughed all semester, nor you, nor have I tried to make you laugh.

And that’s it, I guess. I stopped trying, and we stopped relating to each other in any sort of a rhythm. I did my teacher thing, with teacher facts, just as I would write on a dusty chalkboard, but there’s no rhythm there.

 Sean Crawford, June 5, 2015