Common follies – Page 3 – HUMOR IS NO FUN UNLESS YOU LAUGH

The Wreath

In neighborhoods of single family homes many if not most front doors sport a wreath of some sort. Double doors have two wreaths, for visual balance. Where I grew up, on the other hand, a wreath was something you ordered from the florist when somebody died. A wreath was something funereal that ended up in the cemetery decorating a grave. Certainly not anybody’s front door. So I was curious what the meaning of the ubiquitous front door wreath might be.

I have asked around but so far I have not found anybody who had a better explanation than “my parents always had a wreath on the door”. I could make a few guesses. What if the roundness of the wreath — no beginning, no end — symbolizes the home owner’s wish for permanence, the “home sweet home” idea. In the past this certainly made sense. The house remained in the family, generation after generation. When you consider, however, how common it now is to sell and buy real estate, and also how mobile the population has become, passing things on to the next generation is more of a fiction than a reality.

In Antiquity winners of sports events and emperors (being also winners of sorts) wore a laurel wreath on their heads to symbolized victory. “Hail to you, wearing the winner’s wreath”, goes the text of a German hymn. It is unlikely that this might be the meaning of the common door wreath unless the owners of the house celebrate the paying off of the mortgage, which certainly qualifies as a victory.

There is considerable variety among wreaths. Some are made from real sticks, branches, flowers, and berries. Most, I am afraid, from more durable and less wilt-prone plastic. The plastic ones in particular, if they were meant to propitiate any gods, will not do. The gods would know the difference. So whom are we kidding? Not anyone, actually. I have concluded that hanging out a wreath is just something we do. It does not mean anything beyond that. It is done by religious people as well as by more secularist folks.

Except right now, in the Christmas season, when all the regular wreaths are replaced by advent or christmas wreaths, i.e. wreaths made from green branches of deciduous trees. Suddenly a bit of religious or spiritual sentiment is injected into the practice. The evergreen material of which the wreath is made now may signify faithful endurance, no flagging or weakening, come summer or winter. The round shape of the wreath stands for life. Perhaps once around for this life, and then round and round for eternity, rather a stern warning for the faithful.

But the green christmas wreaths, as well as their plastic stand-ins, are also enthusiastically hung out by heathens who decidedly are in the majority. How else can one explain the prevalence in my neighborhood of inflatable Snoopies, snowmen, and reindeer on peoples’ front lawns and the apparently complete absence of manger scenes and shepherds carrying lambs.

And there are not many wise men in evidence, either. But I will let that go.

Shattering Old Truths

In September of 1862 the Southern slaves were freed by proclamation. One could say, and some still do say, that on that day President Lincoln destroyed the fabric of the established order. What Lincoln actually did is declare officially that slaves, in this case black people, are indeed “people”, not “chattel” as had been believed for thousands of years before. Yes, he destroyed that thousand year old established order of slaves and free men. Cost him his life, but we have learned to live with that truth since then, or at least 8 in 10 of us have.

Now the good Pope Francis in Rome has managed, some say, to shatter the fabric of the Catholic world order by saying or implying that a lot of what we assumed to be divinely revealed unchangeable truth was actually no more than human tradition subject to adjustments as new knowledge surfaces. If I heard it right, traditional creation stories now belong to the realm of human imagination. No god created “the heavens”, let alone earth. Even Adam and Eve are gone, replaced by the Big Bang. Too much for some to take. Good thing we are out of the Middle Ages. This would be heresy, time for a jolly good bonfire.

Something else was shattered in the process. When somebody questions something that is obvious, can I still ask “Is the Pope catholic” and be understood? It is going to be difficult now that some conservative theologians have brought up the question if the Pope is really Catholic. What turns this into humor is the fact that these theologians are serious. The implication is that if you speak the truth to the best of your knowledge you cannot be Catholic. In other words, if you want to be Catholic you must fake it. This turns it into an example of humor of the kind that doesn’t cause one to laugh. Takes the fun out of it. Pity.

Frontporch

Back in “old” (ca.1950) Montreal the houses along rue Cherbrooke just west of rue de Bleury where I lived all had front porches. Some of those wooden porches had low bannisters all around but most did not. They were open to view from the street. That is how I know about the Canadian rocking chairs. Few porches had less then four of those. One chair per resident, it seems, was the norm. The interesting thing about these chairs is that they were used. If you walked along Cherbrooke any evening you would see them all occupied. It was fascinating to see the good folks chatting and rocking. Some would do short back and forths, controlled with their feet on the ground. Others pulled their feet up and did deep, energetic swings. No matter when I walked by this parade of motion, however, there was never any rythm to it. I do not remember ever seeing two chairs rocking at the same clip. As a matter of fact, by the time I reached the library at the other end of the street I was sometimes a little dizzy. It was a confusing phenomenon: they rock and I get dizzy.
In Newport Beach where I now live I find myself again in a neighborhood with front porches. The houses are single family homes and the porches are mostly stone and stucco. Most of those porches are furnished with chairs and little tables. The preferred style is the Adirondack chair. Many families have cushions in their chairs and flowers on their little tables, all set up for little evening gatherings and some gossiping. Just like in the old days, you would think. But there is one noticeable difference: nobody ever sits in any of those nice chairs. There are no rocking chairs either, and nobody is chatting, let alone gossiping. In a way this town is asleep. But that is deceptive. There are people living in these houses and they are awake. But they are never seen outside unless you catch a glimpse of one of them hurrying from house to car or from car to house. Judging by the few I have seen they are like regular people except that some of them have only one arm to wrestle with shopping bags, children’s seats, golf clubs, and such. Their other arm is attached to a telephone which, in turn, is fastened to one ear.

And here, I think, we come to the crux of the matter. Things have not changed. All the chatting is still going on, more than ever probably. But people no longer take time to sit around in a group, talking. One now talks to one person at a time, and not face to face either. But one does talk, all the time, continuously, all through the day. As long as it can be done by telephone. The juiciest bits of gossip are transmitted by the local blog mothers. They show up as email messages, also on your phone.

In the process our front porch lost its function. It did not disappear. It has only been reduced to a tableau, a thing you look at but mustn’t touch. Somebody please tell me: is rue Sherbrooke at least still rocking?

Ground Level Existentialism

(Fontanae fabula similis)

The Elephant who’s usually the quiet sort / complained one day of being much too short.

He told the Donkey that it was not fair at all. / The Donkey said: “Don’t talk like that. Look in the mirror: you are tall.”

But then the Donkey thought some more about it. / Was he himself the proper size? This troubled him and he began to doubt it.

He went to see the Goat whom he considered worldly wise. / The Goat assured him that he was exactly the right size.

But then the Goat compared herself and realized that she was rather small. / (That thought had never crossed the old Goat’s mind at all).

Now she was worried and she told that to the Fox who said: “I see.” / But then just laughed: “You look the way you should, if you ask me.”

But as the Fox himself now thought some more about the matter / it came to him that as a taller fox he also would look better.

The Fox talked to the Squirrel next about his strange delusion. / The Squirrel warned: “Tall foxes would just cause confusion.”

The Squirrel, though, was quite aware that he himself was certainly not tall. / Had fate dealt him a larger size he would not have complained at all.

He talked about that to the Mouse that night. / Mouse disagreed. She thought that all the Squirrels she had met looked right.

The Mouse, like all her kind, was truly small and others often teased her. / To gain an inch or so in height would certainly have pleased her.

“If it were possible”, she said to Madam Beetle, “to grow a bit would be my next objective.” / But Beetle said Mice need not grow, at least when seen from Beetles’ low perspective.

The Beetle, though, who’d never liked her size at all, confided to the Ant / she wouldn’t mind to be a little more like yonder Elephant.

The Ant just shrugged. “I never think of size. To be yourself and free it’s better to be small. The existential question namely, since you ask it, / is simply this: how easy can you sneak into a picnic basket!”

The Oldest Profession

There is some paleo-anthropological evidence, I understand, that early homo sapiens used ochre as face paint a hundred thousand years ago. My guess is that they applied this pigment to ward off predators by making their eyes look scarier. The method is still in use after all these thousands of years, except that the homo sapienses of today prefer black or blue and call it eye shadow. The effect, I am afraid, is still the same. We are talking here about self-applied or, more often, self-inflicted cosmetics.

There are, of course, other ways to make eyes look scary. The Venetians are good at that. They make face masks that hide all but the pupils behind grotesque elongated noses or in folds of gruesome looking crinkled skin. The effect, of course, is temporary and reversible. Closely related is the practice of theatrical makeup. This is an art form rather than a profession. The more talented practitioners get nominated for Academy Awards.

Some facial modifications are permanent. They are not meant to look scary. Their purpose is to improve a person’s appearance. You begin with crinkled skin and, if successful, you end up with a smooth, more youthful complexion, plumper eyelids, and higher or lower brows, your choice. This is the miracle of plastic surgery. Surgeons, however, including plastic surgeons, are a relatively new profession.

But to come back to eyes, let us go fast backward three thousand years. In a museum in Berlin, my home town, I once, as a schoolboy, saw a bust of the Egyptian queen Nefertete. If one looks closely at her eyes one notices that they have been ever so carefully rimmed in black. Anyone capable of doing precise eye liner jobs so close to the lashes three thousand years ago must have been a professional makeup stylist. To me the bust in the museum suggests that cosmetology has been a human priority for many thousands of years. It still is, judging by the inordinate amount of counter space given to creams, sprays, sticks, tongs, tweezers and brushes, washes, dyes, polishes, polish removers, conditioners, shadows, fragrances and lashes to name a few categories, and not counting the innumerable brands involved — the Chanels, Balenciagas, Escadas, Bulgaris, Lauders, Guccis, Givenchys, Hermeses, Versaceses and Yves Saint Laurentses of the world — in any department store you care to mention. My point is, I have a new theory. The oldest profession, I think, really is cosmetology!

Sorry about that. I know it hurts to give up cherished beliefs.

Picture credit: CNN.com

Just Cruising

People go on cruises for several reasons. Some like to be on a ship in order to go on shore again all day and do things, see things, take pictures of things. Others, me for example, take the same cruise to relax in the comfort of their stateroom and quietly observe the world as it floats by. The black and white orca that shot out of the water right in front of our balcony would be an example. Or the compressed blue glacier ice blocks floating all around and the water falls rushing down the steep rock faces of the inner passage. My idea of the perfect cruise ship is an elegant dining room surrounded by a wood paneled library with leather chairs, table lamps, and lots of books. And it should be located not too far from the cappuccino bar.

I do not really care where the ship is going or how the weather is outside. On a recent foray into Alaskan waters we ran into a week of rain and cold winds. Some of my more active ship companions complained about our bad luck, although none of them were discouraged from traipsing through the woods, looking for salmon, bears, and bald eagles. The floating ice blocks crowded with resting seabirds were not enough for them. They wanted to see the glacier that “calved” those blocks and were sad when we could not go near enough to witness the procedure.

For me, on the other hand, this was a perfect arrangement. Thanks to the lure of the bears the dining room was not crowded and I had the library to myself. I had nothing to crab about.

Talking about crabs, we observed a fishing boat coming into the harbor at Prince Rupert in British Columbia. It was loaded with crabs. They were being hoisted onto the pier in large buckets. A work crew on shore inspected them. Those that passed muster were packed in ice. Those that failed the inspection – not very many – were unceremoniously tossed back into the water. That made me think this over: the bad ones live; the fit ones get eaten. Yes, that is how it goes with the crabs. “Survival of the what?” I heard the crabs say, “Where were you, Herbert Spencer, when we needed you?” If I were a crab I would be crabby, too.

Picture credit: morguefile.com

Chariots

John is a good father. His kid, he told me one day, is in danger of turning into a homebody. Like his Dad, he confessed, alas. “When I say ‘we need to go to the hardware store’ I hear: ‘Again? we just went last week’. When I suggest that he go watch the swim meet at the pool he will say, ‘Nya, not really’. When I say ‘lets take the dog for a walk’ he will answer ‘Aww Dad, do we have to?’ And so it goes, no matter where we have to go or whatever I suggest, I have to drag him along. The kid I mean. The dog is not much better. I have to drag both of them along.”

But things are improving, I hear. Seems that a while ago John and his boy were on their way to ‘boring’ Costco when, on their right, they witnessed an illegal but fascinating private little car race. A pink Ferrari Enza, a McLaren, and what looked like a Lamborghini were chasing each other, deftly changing lanes ever so smoothly without, so it seemed, moving a wheel. It looked like magic as hey floated parallel to the line into the left lane, passed a car, and then slid back the same way.

That’s when the kid, the stoic one, burst out: “Wow, Dad, did you see that?” For a moment, John said, he thought he had not heard right. Such an enthusiastic “Wow” from a boy who formerly tended to restrict himself to a querulous “do we have to” or a grunt? Talk about the life changing effects of technological progress on the emotional well-being of the young.

Not long after this event the kid applied for admission to State Polytechnic. John told me the other day that he is now a junior and you cannot keep him from talking about fuel consumption, cylinder capacity, combustion and emission, or why speed matters in four wheel steering and how rear wheels that angle in can help the breaks.

All of us, meanwhile, have also grown a little older. John reports that he now finds himself in the kid’s position. Recently his wife suggested something and he found himself answering ‘Aww, do we have to?’ Yep, she answered, straighten up, we are going to! What scared him most, he said, is that the woman who never talked about cars suddenly has this fascination with the BMW 7 Series “with four wheel steering”, as the man in the commercial emphasizes. John shouldn’t complain, though. He is lucky it isn’t the Lamborghini Huaran Ragno, Edizione Esclusiva that caught her eye.

She couldn’t pronounce the name, I guess.

Is Useless Useless?

I do not play tennis. I could not hit the soft spot even if I tried. But from time to time I watch the professional “Opens”. The skill and the strength of these athletes is fascinating and I cannot help but watch the ritual in awe. Lately, though, I have been thinking: here is a little white rubber ball, a toy essentially. And down on the court are two grownups in their best years which they waste on scheming how best to lob that toy over a net, back and forth, back and forth. That’s their profession, their job. A job that produces absolutely nothing, except an income. That’s all they do, 24/7. And then I watch the spectators on the other side of the court. Eight hundred noses turning left, eight hundred noses turning right. For hours on end. In the glaring sun. “Lord, what fools these mortals be”, I would have liked to say but Puck beat me to it.

I would have even harsher words for certain European soccer fans who have actually attacked and killed opposing team fans over the if or how a ball had been kicked across a stretch of innocent lawn. It goes beyond uselessness when something as intrinsically useless as a soccer game turns into insanity.

Hiking in the mountains was always a passion of mine, though, until I got too old for the strain. It was always hard for me, very hard. Breath after breath, slow step after slow step. Up and up and still up. Another switchback. And another. Pant, pant. Oh God, how many more? Nobody there to see you. You could quit and turn around. But no, you force yourself. You just stare at the ground and plod along until you practically stumble out onto the plateau at the top of the mountain, the end of the trail. And then, Ah! The exhilarating feeling of having made it all the way up. The sky, the clouds, the view of the valley below are your well earned rewards. Others don’t see it that way, necessarily. Clambering up a mountain only to come right down again strikes them as a useless exercise. Touché.

But to tell the truth, when I was a boy I also often misunderstood, even rebelled at having to do useless chores such as cleaning my room. “But I just did it yesterday”, I would object, confusing ‘useless’ with ‘onerous’. She was right, of course, my mother. I still remember the pithy way she used to counter that argument: “You also have just eaten yesterday, no?”

On Birthright

Some scholars and philosophers claim that you belong where you were born and that it is important to know that. Belonging somewhere is your birthright. Hence the slogan “America for Americans”. It is not a new formulation. Theodore Roosevelt used it, and the Ku Klux Clan did too. A preacher in New York, I understand, once used it as the title of his sermon. I suspect they all meant different things. The first thing that comes to my mind, however, is exclusiveness. The slogan does not evoke the image of welcoming open arms. It rather divides people into Americans and non-Americans.

From the day I entered the United States as an immigrant I saw that America is more than a geographical entity. I felt and still believe that America stands for and is recognized as a value the world over, the champion of democracy, the leader of the free world. America, in other words, is something big. If you take that slogan at face value, however, and apply it to our present reality America has suddenly become something very small. It sounds almost pitiful and desperate.

Time will tell if “America for Americans” really means something or if it is just empty rhetoric. In the meantime, who qualifies as an American? Not visitors, of course. We love tourists and foreign students provided they leave again. Ditto undocumented workers. They are not Americans either, but employers welcome them as cheap labor. Immigrants with Green Cards? No, they are not Americans either. Citizens! That’s it. All citizens are Americans by definition.

But there are two kinds of citizens. Some are born Americans. It is their birthright. Others are immigrants (i.e. non-Americans) but studied to become naturalized Americans. Thus we have two kinds of Americans, naturalized citizens and native citizens. Lately voices are being heard that only native citizens, citizens by birthright, should be considered Americans in this context. A precedent, some believe, would be the constitutional dictum that “no person except a natural born citizen … shall be eligible to the office of president”. If that view wins, perhaps the slogan ought to be more specific, like “America for Native Americans”.

Sitting Bull would have liked that. I don’t think it will fly, though.

Is There Humor in Religion

We have all been admonished at one time or other not to discuss religion in polite society. The danger, I think, is that we might hit on something patently absurd which would tempt some of those present to laugh but deeply offend others. This is where the written word comes in handy. Reading is a solitary act. You are not forced to listen to your conversation partner’s offensive tales. You can simply skip what you don’t like and read or do something else.
So in a blog like this it is alright to hit on a few absurdities in religion and the ensuing humor. One of the funniest stories I know is found in the Bible of the Hebrews. The ancient Hebrews were people soaked in their faith, but at the same time they were Jews, respectful of the power of logical argument and thus quick to grasp the absurdity of a situation and the humor of it. As the tale develops in the Book of Genesis 18: 22-33, here looms God himself, all powerful and as tall as the Empire State building, ready to wipe out the entire neighborhood of Sodom. And there before him stands that little mite of a man, Abraham by name, saying — saying to God! — “Stop! What do you think you are doing?”

I mean, if that is not chutzpa I don’t know what is. You don’t have to be a Jew to laugh out loud if you try to picture this situation. Maybe you remember the ensuing hilarious sequence of Abraham haggling with the Allmighty over how many righteous people, minimum, it would take to save Sodom? There is humor in religion, at least in the Hebrew Bible. In the Greek Bible we also find humor, if subtle, such as Jesus’ eye-winking reaction to Nathaniel’s belittling of Nazareth (John 1:47).

Some one once said that if you want to make God laugh tell him your plans. You could also make him laugh by telling him what trivial details some religious people find important. One I have heard was the “problem” of hand gestures a priest should use when blessing the people. Should his thumb touch one finger? Or two? He might also find it funny that we print “IN GOD WE TRUST” on, of all places, our Federal Reserve notes. “Have the money changers been readmitted to the Temple?” God might ask with a twinkle in his eyes.

More seriously, in the Judeo-Christian scriptures are contradictory passages. One declares Yahweh to be the only existing god, that there can be no others. In a different section, however, it says that there are others and that he is greater than all of them. Scholars go out of their way to explain that the scriptures do not mean what they say which, according to Gallup, does not discourage 3 out of 10 Americans from reading the Bible literally. There is humor in that. There are also numbers in that, millions of voters.

There are other absurd but less humorous topics that sometimes vex religious people. For a long time the Church of England found it troublesome when women tried to enter the priesthood. The Anglican version of that Church in America had by then solved that issue but was now struggling with the issue of homosexual priests and bishops. No sooner was this issue overcome a new issue arrived: homosexual marriages. Suddenly those who left their Church over the women’s issue and those who left because of homosexual priests were now joined by those opposed to homosexual moms and dads. They have not even touched Roe vs Wade yet. In a quasi-theocracy like ours this promises to become an issue way beyond humor.

My Jewish friends tend to have thicker skin. They will not be offended when I snicker at the way they divide themselves into groups. Sarah is a reformed Jew. You can tell by the fact that she stores her milk and her hamburger meat on the same shelf in the refrigerator. Gloria, on the other hand, is not a real Jew but she is married to one and has two Jewish children. Her family is unreformed. They lean toward the orthodox faith, which means that they store their milk and their meat on separate shelves.

I understand that there also are ultra-orthodox Jews. They cannot even store meat and milk in the same refrigerator. So they live on milk and feed the meat to the dogs.

Be that as it may: we tend to be polite and do not laugh at things other people are passionate about. Important is that we are Americans. We could laugh, if we wanted to.

I will not touch the Koran, however.

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