There Is Hope ©

Last Sunday night, I found myself sitting in front of my keyboard preparing to write this column. As I sat staring at the screen, watching the eyebeam flash, and waiting for inspiration, I realized I was stuck. This was a difficult column.  It wasn’t because I didn’t have anything to write. It was because I had too much to write…which is worse than having too little,

For those of you paying attention, the world has gone mad—100% certifiably mad.  The unjust policing and loss of black lives in America and the protests that have followed is overwhelming enough. Couple that with a rampant pandemic that has forced a global lockdown, it’s difficult to find calm in all the chaos.

I’ve been a journalist for nearly seventy years. Those who follow my social media and blog know that in my early years, I was a foreign correspondent in Buenos Aires. I also have worked as a reporter at a few newspapers here and there. Through the years, I’ve lived through and written about some crazy things.

I retired in the late 1990’s. I went onto teaching at universities throughout the Midwest before ending up at Letongaloosa Community College. I started writing this humor column. It’s hard to believe, but that was 15 years ago.

As a journalist, I know its part of my job to look for inspiration EVERYWHERE.   Usually, I write about something I saw or did that inspired me during the week.     Whether it’s a fun place Emmaline and I discover on date night, a happy headline in the newspaper, or a light-hearted story at the end of the nightly newscast, anything can spark an idea for a column

But with all that is happening:  the lockdown, the protests, the arrests and the assaults of fellow journalists all being brought to the forefront, it’s unprecedented. There’s NOTHING funny about ANYTHING that’s happening.

Like all of you, Emmaline and I have been watching A LOT of television.  Since we can’t really venture out to our favorite Mexican restaurant at the moment, we hunker down with takeout. While watching the interviews of the doctors and nurses, the elected officials and news anchors, not to mention, the talk show hosts and celebrities, I ‘m inspired to write.

Through the plethora of serious conversation, I see and hear hope. It may take awhile to get to a solid plan of resolution, but conversations are being had by EVERYONE. There is HOPE.

It’s important to keep the momentum. Life must keep moving. The stories of those who have perished from the pandemic are many.  Our hearts go out to their families. The stories of those who have lost their lives and helped reignite the Black Lives Matter movement  must be told. We will continue the dialog. We will move forward. It will take work, but we will be better than we were before. We have to be.

Like all of you, Emmaline and I are confined to daily expeditions around our neighborhood.  We see the RESILIENCE and the COMMUNIITY of those around us. Everyone is coming together, despite the continued unrest and uncertainty and all will be stronger for it.  STAY SAFE and GOD BLESS.

* This column is dedicated to George Floyd (June 2020), Ahmaud Arbery(June 2020), Rayshard Brooks (June 2020),  Breonna Taylor (March 2020), Amadou Diallo (1999), Patrick Dorismond (2000), Ousmane Zongo (2003),  Timothy Stansbury (2004),  Sean Bell (2006), Oscar Grant (2009), Aiyana Stanley-Jones (2010), Rekia Boyd (2012),  Trayvon Martin (2012), Ramarley Graham (2012), Kimani Gray (2013), Michael Brown (2014) Eric Garner (2014), Sandra Bland (2015), Corey Jones (2015), and ALL of the men and women who have tragically lost their lives as a result of racial injustice.

The Waiting Room Magazine Association©

Longtime readers of this column will recognize the name Eloise Simplkins. Eloise was a domestic cleaning woman who realized that suburban housewives were uncomfortable having their regular cleaning ladies see their husbands’ messy bathrooms. Eloise realized that these women would pay pre-cleaning ladies to touch up their houses before the regular cleaning ladies arrived.
Eloise created a nationwide business that sent pre-cleaning ladies to prepare homes for the regularly scheduled cleaning ladies. She had scores of franchises.That idea made her wealthy.
Of the various things we have said about Eloise over the years, we have never said she had a sense of humor. But Eloise does have a sense of humor. She often uses it to make a point. For example, she created the National Waiting Room Magazine Association.
Like most of us, Eloise spends time in waiting rooms of practitioners like dentists, medical doctors, financial advisers and specialists who enhance one’s personal appearance. Eloise recently was kept waiting by such a practitioner. As she waited (and waited) Eloise riffled through the waiting room magazines. They were dog eared and months old. Her eyes wandered to the walls of the office where framed credentials touted the practitioner’s professional qualifications. There was even a framed ribbon that the practitioner received for winning his third-grade spelling bee.
Eloise decided it would be easy to convince these certificate-happy bozos that their waiting rooms should be certified and organized and incorporated the National Magazine Waiting Room Certification Association. She hired a PR agency to place favorable news stories about the association in all the mass and social media.
Meantime, Eloise developed a large quantity of waiting room certificates. The certificates covered a variety of professional practices and included fee structures that each practice could afford.
Eloise added an incentive. For an additional fee Eloise would deliver the certificate personally and evaluate the waiting room magazines. She created categories for the waiting room magazines—including oldest date, most-dog-eared-but still-readable, most unusual foreign language, most appropriate content (for the particular practice) magazine, least likely to be of interest to the clientele of that practice, most unreadable type face.
Finally Eloise said she would pose for photographs with the practitioners. After she said that, orders poured in, nearly all of them specifying that Eloise was to deliver the certificates.
These projects kept Eloise so busy that she hardly had time to gloat. This leading physician and that nationally noted orthodontist, the other highly regarded financial adviser all wanted a waiting room certificate and a photo taken with Eloise. She traveled across the country, visiting waiting rooms large and small. She took a couple of assistants with her and they did a systematic evaluation of the magazines and put them in the appropriate categories from Eloise’s list. By this
time the mass media were covering Eloise’s movements without prodding from PR firms. The New York Times did an interview; the Wall Street Journal sent reporters to dig into her past and The New Yorker did a humorous short piece about her past and found it to be exactly as originally reported. She appeared on Jimmy Kimmel’s show, the Today show, Anderson Cooper 360 and network evening news.
Overseas practitioners revamped their waiting rooms. All that activity was good for the industry and good for the wide variety of clients being served in the waiting rooms.
The analysis of categories proved popular and was picked up by social media as well as the media of mass communication.
Following are the results:
• Oldest magazine found in a waiting room: 1917 copy of Field and Stream.
• Most dog-eared-but-still-readable magazine: an April, 1971 copy of Ladies Home Journal.
• Most unusual foreign language magazine: Kalakaumundi Magazine published in Malayalam .
• Most appropriate magazine content for a particular practice’s waiting room: The Bark found in Veterinarian’s waiting rooms.
• Magazine least likely to be of interest to that waiting room’s clientele: Today’s Senior Magazine, found in a pediatric physician’s waiting room.
• Magazine with the most unreadable typeface: Saturday’s Guru printed in Frutiger boldface type.
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-Dr. Larry day is a retired J-School professor turned humor writer. His book, Day Dreaming: Tales From the Fourth Dementia is available for purchase via his website: http://www.daydreaming.co

10 suggestions Poet James Russell Lowell

 

The Poet asked:  “Oh what is so rare as a day in June?”

1.     The flame created by the burning of your paid-off home mortgage.

2.     The look on the face of a three-year-old child who hears her dad’s car coming up the driveway.

3.     A wife seeing her husband of 55 years pain-free after recuperating from back surgery.

4.     Your dog’s tail when someone brings him his dinner.

5.     Grandpa’s joy at finding where Grandma hid the cookies after she left to play Mahjongg with her friends all afternoon.

6.     Grandma’s joy when Grandpa finally agrees to get a haircut.

7.     Parking the car in a rainstorm thinking you left the umbrella at home— and then seeing it lying in the back seat.

8.     The happiness of a boy who sees his homing pigeon land in its coop after being missing for a week.

9.     Ten Lords a-leaping.

10. And a partridge in a pear tree.

Dr. Larry day is a retired J-School professor turned humor writer. His book, Day Dreaming: Tales From the Fourth Dementia is available for purchase via his website: http://www.daydreaming.co

 

Cheap Dirt

Maggworth’s Flea Market–excuse me, Maggsworth’s Antique Mall—is named for a guerrilla leader who raided our town and killed a lot of people during the Civil War. Colonel Moriarty Maggsworth was his name, and kill and pillage was his game. He and some of his cohort were later hanged.

Its name is the only thing exciting about the “mall.” The place itself is pretty drab—there’s a bunch of stalls set up in an old warehouse near downtown.

There are jewelry booths, pre-owned clothing stalls, furniture booths, sports card booths, and a both where they sell toilet paper holders made out of armadillo shells. The mall is only open on Saturdays and Sundays. You don’t quit your day job when you open a stall at Maggworth’s Antique Mall. But owning a booth at the mall, or shopping there every weekend does give the townspeople something to look forward to. Other wise they’d be sticking their tongues into electric lamp sockets to break the monotony.

One Saturday morning a stranger came to the mall and asked to rent a booth. There were four or five stalls unoccupied at the time so Ana Maria Symphonia Schultz, president of the mall cooperative association, signed him up, collected a month’s rent and showed him to a stall.

“You’re not going to sell dirty magazines are you?” asked Ana Maria Symphonia.

“No,” said the stranger.

“Good,” she said and went back to the booth where she and her partner Greta Soulsworthy sold exotically contorted ceramic vegetables.

The stranger dusted off the shelves and stacked them with cheap white Styrofoam cups—the kind you buy when it’s your turn to furnish hot cocoa for 150 people at a church bazaar. Then he nailed a board across the front of the booth for a counter and hung up a sign. It was hand lettered and it read: “DiRT fOR SaLE.”

With his merchandise in place the stranger sat down on a folding chair and began reading a magazine.

“Whatcha sellin’?”

“Dirt.”

“What?”

“Dirt.”

“Ya mean DIRT?”

“Yes.”

“Lemme see.”

The stranger handed the man one of the Styrofoam cups.

“It’s fulla dirt.”

“Yes.”

“Hey, Maggie, git over here. This guy’s sellin’ dirt.”

Maggie didn’t respond. She was gazing into a glass case containing several sets of authentic kidney stone earrings. Others, not so deeply absorbed, sauntered over to the stranger’s booth.

“This guy’s sellin’ dirt,” Gertrude’s husband said as a small crowd gathered.

“How much?” asked a pragmatic 13-year-old who had pushed his way to the front.

“The large containers are 75 cents, the middle-sized ones are 50 cents, and the small ones are a quarter, tax included,” said the stranger.

“Where’d the dirt come from,” asked somebody.

“From my back yard,” said the stranger.

“You just dig up dirt in your back yard and bring it in here to sell?”

“Yes.”

“What does it do?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re selling dirt that don’t do nothin’?”

“Yes.”

“Hot dog,” said the man. “I’ll take three big ones and a middle-sized one.” The stranger had sold all his dirt in an hour. He never returned.

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Dr. Larry day is a retired J-School professor turned humor writer. His book, Day Dreaming: Tales From the Fourth Dementia is available for purchase via his website: http://www.daydreaming.co