Laughing out loud

It is indeed a wonderful life, especially when we begin laughing at ourselves.

Laughter is a magic elixir that improves our lives. It is a bonding agent that calms conflict and helps us get along with each other. We need more of it in an increasingly troubled and angry world.

Judging by some recent television viewing, we are getting more if it.

For example, NBC’s Saturday Night Live (SNL) is giving us strong doses of laughter by poking fun at the train wreck of American politics. A train wreck that is causing hardship and division around the world.

SNL’s recent parody of the 1946 movie It’s A Wonderful Life is an example of how laughing at ourselves better equips us to face the madness surrounding us.

A little memory jog: In the movie, George Bailey, played by actor James Stewart, is overwhelmed by problems and decides to jump off a bridge and end his life. A wingless  angel named Clarence appears and shows him what George’s town would have looked liked without all his work over the years.

The SNL version has Donald Trump, overwhelmed by problems, wishing he had never become president. Enter Clarence the angel who shows Trump what life would be like if he had not become president.

Melania is divorced and speaks clearly and without an accent. “They said being around you was hurting my language skills,” she tells Trump.

Mike Pence is a DJ at a White House Christmas party, happy and thankful that he did not have to sit in meetings as vice-president and look stone-faced bored and stupid.

Near the end of the 1946 movie the little daughter of George Bailey tells her dad that whenever a bell rings, an angel has received its wings.

In the SNL version, Kellyanne Conway, one of Trump’s mouthpieces, says to her boss: “Every time a bell rings, somebody you know quits, or goes to jail,”   

Canadian television also has us laughing at ourselves with the popular CBC show Still Standing. It is a hybrid comedy-reality series in which Newfoundland comedian Jonny Harris visits small Canadian towns that have gone through hard times.

Harris, also seen in the Murdoch Mysteries TV series, gives stand-up comedy shows in front of locals who have stuck it out in their towns, getting them to laugh at themselves. Along with the stand-up routine are video clips of Harris doing stuff with some of the residents.

For instance in a recent show from Wells, B.C. (population 245) Harris takes a side-by-side four-wheeler pedal bike ride along a snowy street with resident writer-actor-director James Douglas. Douglas is the filmmaker behind The Doctor’s Case, an award-winning movie based on a Stephen King short story.

During the ride Harris and his TV audience  learn about the town’s founder, Fred Wells, who discovered gold there. Wells was a mining boom town during the 1930s but as mining waned so did the town. Then in the 1970s hippies moved in, buying vacant houses and properties and established an arts community.

The town now is a mix of artists and miners, a dichotomy that Harris explores along with its stories and aspirations, weaving in jokes about the town and its people.

The towns Harris visits all have something sad in their past. A fishery collapsed and young people moved away. A logging operation closed, cancelling most of the town’s jobs.

Still Standing recognizes the melancholy produced by past events but finds humour that helps the residents laugh, or at least smile, at themselves. It also recognizes their resilience in staying on and working at building a strong community spirit.

It is a show that makes you feel good despite difficulties and reinforces the age-old message that good people overcome bad things when they laugh and work together.

Here’s how one person on Twitter described a Still Standing episode: “I needed that. The world (and my twitter feed) has been so UGH. @jollyharris and @StillStandingTV gives hope, spreads light & humor and shows us the best of people.”

We all need more of this. Hopefully we will see more of it as we enter 2019, which some folks say will bring continuing social, economic, political and climate upheaval.

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y

O Holy Night!

Many Christmas Eves have passed since the one years ago when I heard the voice of an angel. It was a voice I can never forget; a voice that gave me the best Christmas present ever.

Fresh-fallen snow protested beneath my gumboots breaking trail down the unploughed lane as I walked home that Christmas Eve. Dry, sharp squeaks, not unlike the cries of cheap chalk scrapped against too clean a blackboard.

Skuur-eek, skuur-eek.

The boots ignored the sounds. They moved on, ribbed rubber bottoms and laced high leather tops creating a meandering wake in the ankle deep snow.

From each side of the lane, drifted snow leaned tiredly against the backsides of the bungalows, dropped there by an impatient blizzard just passed through. Their crests were indistinguishable against the white stucco walls but nearly reached tufted piles of fluffy snow clinging nervously to windowsills and eavestrough lips.

The squeaks flew through the still night air, dodging fat snowflakes that fell heavily onto my cap bill, occasionally splashing into my face, flushed warm from the walk.

Faint strains of music joined the squeaking as I approached our back fence. I stopped to hear the music more clearly, now identifiable as singing voices escaping through an open window.

I shuffled forward and listened to the notes float out crisply and clearly, then mingle with smoke rising from the chimneys. Notes and smoke rose together into an icy sky illuminated by frost crystals set shimmering by thousands of stars and the frosty moon.

The music was the Christmas carol ‘O Holy Night,’ and the notes came from the window in my grandmother’s room. It was open to the cold because most people smoked cigarettes back then and cracked a window at gatherings to thin the smoke. They sang the first verse, and, when they reached the seventh line, the other voices ceased and a single voice carried on alone:

“Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices! O Niiii ... iiight Diii...vine! ...”

That’s the part where the voice rises higher and higher until the singer reaches a stratospheric note.

The solo voice belonged to Louise LaFrance, my grandmother, and I knew she was hitting that high note while sitting on the edge of the bed that had been her prison for sixteen years. She was crippled with limb-twisting rheumatoid arthritis and suffered searing pain and the humiliation of being bedridden, a humiliation that included needing a bedpan to relieve herself and having her son-in-law lift her into the bathtub.

She had taken up smoking to help ease the pain but had trouble holding a cigarette between her gnarled fingers.

She never complained or questioned why she had to bear the pain, and despite her frailty, she was a leader in our house. We brought our problems to her. When we hurt, we ran to her and she draped her twisted arms around us and absorbed our pain because she believed it was better that she have it than us.

The others had stopped singing to listen to her. A shiver danced on my spine the second time she hit the high notes at the words “O Night Divine,”.

When she finished singing “O Holy Night,” the other voices started up again, this time with “Silent Night” and other favourite carols.

I went into the house and found Christmas Eve celebrants — my mom, dad, and some neighbours — crowded into the ten-by-ten bedroom that was my grandmother’s world. They sang long into the night, mostly in French because the neighbours were the Gauthiers who seldom spoke English to my grandmother and my mother.

After the singing ended my mother served tourtière, which I slathered with mustard and devoured as only a teenager can. Then we gathered at the tree and opened our gifts.

I have long forgotten what I got, and it doesn’t matter, because my real gift was the understanding that those high notes were not solely the products of my grandmother’s lungs.

They came from a strength far beyond anything that mere human flesh can produce. They were high notes driven by something far stronger — an unbreakable spirit.

It was my grandmother’s last Christmas. But the memory of her high notes and unbreakable spirit brings her back every Christmas.

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y

Worry about future work

It was a long time ago, but I was an elevator operator once. That was back in the days when elevators were not push-button automatic and needed a human to guide them from floor to floor with a physical hand control lever.

It was only a part-time thing. I was bellhop in a hotel and was required to relieve the regular operator during her lunch or dinner.

It was wonderful work. You had the challenge of making swift but smooth rides without jerky stops and starts. And, you had to align the elevator cage floor exactly with the hotel floor so no one would trip getting on or off.

Best of all was meeting the people. Many remarkable folks and many interesting conversations, often brief but interesting.

The most interesting and remarkable – at least for a young guy – were the June Taylor dancers from the Jackie Gleason Show, who were brought in for several performances at the Canadian Lakehead Exhibition, a very big show back in those times. The young ladies all were stunningly beautiful, pleasantly chatty and complimentary about how smoothly I operated the elevator.

The memories of elevator work came flooding back recently when I read a story about how elevator operating has survived in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Several thousand people work as elevator operators there because of 1991 state law that requires elevator attendants in commercial buildings five or more storeys.

The elevator jobs that remain, however, are in jeopardy. A court recently ruled against the 1991 law, saying that it unreasonably burdens building owners. In other words, owners have to pay operators wages that could be used to fatten profits.

Elevator operators disappeared in most places decades ago along with telephone operators. The Rio story highlighted the seemingly never-ending stream of lost jobs in our  society.

In the last month we have had the news of General Motors closing its Oshawa plant, knocking thousands of autoworkers out of jobs throughout the Canadian auto industry. And, the loss of 700 jobs in Sydney, N.S. when Servicom Canada closed its call centre.

Too many workers in Canada and elsewhere around the world, are losing their livelihoods. Too few jobs are being created to provide alternate employment.

It makes you wonder about the future and how many people who want to work will be able to find jobs as companies seeking to build profits turn to more automation. The concern has helped generate talk, and some experiments, of a guaranteed basic annual income for people without enough basic employment to sustain them.

But jobs are about more than money. Jobs provide fulfilment and help to build social connections and the person-to-person communication that is such an important part of living. Humans are wired for social connections and useful work.

An elevator operator explained the importance of a job and communication in a New York Times interview for the Rio de Janeiro story.

“You’re never bored,” said Roselia da Conceição.  “You’re always talking and interacting with people, you learn a lot and you create a type of intimacy.”

Huge networks of social connections are cut when a plant closes or when jobs such as elevator operators become redundant.

We live in an increasing angry and violent world. Older people will tell you that the extent of the anger and its resulting turmoil are unprecedented in their lifetimes.

You have to wonder if at least part of the cause is a lack of fulfilling work and the social benefits it provides.

The future of jobs is a serious worry.

The International Labor Organization has released a 2018 report on world employment and social trends. It estimates that 1.4 billion workers were in ‘vulnerable’ employment in 2017 and that an  additional 35 million will join them by 2019.

Vulnerable employment is a job with inadequate earnings, low productivity, difficult working conditions and little or no security. In many cases vulnerable employment is work grudgingly offered because it is needed today, but likely will not be in the future.

As more jobs disappear you have to worry about what the future will look like. We can be positive and hope it will not be as angry and violent as it is today.

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y

Of friendship and common decency

It has been a week of thoughtful recollection and warm tributes to George H. W. Bush, the 41^st president of the United States, who died last Friday.

Like all leaders, global or local, Bush collected his share of credits and blame and leaves a legacy of character traits to follow or ignore. To me, a key Bush lesson is the value of nurturing friendships.

Bush’s long friendship with James Baker, his secretary of state and White House chief of staff, is well documented as a friendship that benefitted both men and their missions.

There were many other nurtured friendships, not so well documented but certainly reflective of how friendships make us better human beings and help us achieve what we need to achieve. One example is the 30-year friendship between Bush and Brian Mulroney, our former prime minister.

The two men developed a bond that Mulroney says helped achieve policies important to Canadians, including the North American Free Trade Agreement and the U.S.–Canada Treaty on acid rain.

Bush’s friendships were not just with people who felt the same about things that he did. He was close with Bill Clinton, the political opposite who denied him a second presidential term. Some observers have said that Democrat Clinton had huge respect for the man he defeated and Republican Bush treated Clinton much like a son.

Friendships offer people opportunities to learn from each other. Arnold Schwarzenegger, former California governor and movie star, remembers that his  friendship with Bush taught him “the good side of politics, that you can cross the aisle and you can talk to the other side.”

Bush also was an example of how common decency allows a person to have friendships with people who criticize you and sometimes hurt you.

Maureen Dowd, the New York Times journalist, revealed this week her unlikely friendship with Bush despite some tough pieces she wrote about his presidency and that of his son, George.

Bush did not like some things the New York Times wrote, but always seemed to understand the relationship between the press and people in power. He never considered the media the enemy of the people.

Dowd revealed that he once wrote her a note that characterizes his feelings about the press and how building friendships was a critical part of his character.

“Put it this way,’’ said his note to her. “I reserve the right to whine, to not read, to use profanity, but if you ever get really hurt or if you ever get really down and need a shoulder to cry on or just need a friend — give me a call. I’ll be there for you. I’ll not let you down. Now, go on out and knock my knickers off. When you do, I might just cancel my subscription.”

Bush was a classic example of how to build, maintain and manage friendships. Respect friends, their time, their space, their ideas and their opinions. You don’t have to agree with them but don’t be manipulative or dishonest with them.

Being honest is always the best way of doing the right thing, no matter how much it might hurt. Bush showed that in a 1995 letter to the National Rifle Association (NRA) of which he was a lifetime member.

Wayne LaPierre, the NRA head, had written a mean-spirited letter to President Clinton condemning his administration’s 10-year ban on some semi-automatic assault weapons (the ban expired in 2004). It said the “ban gives jackbooted government thugs more power to take away our constitutional rights, break in our doors, seize our guns, destroy our property, and even injure or kill us.”

Bush, gun owner, hunter and then retired in Houston, wrote LaPierre saying the NRA letter offended a “sense of decency and honor” and “indirectly slanders a wide array of government law enforcement officials, who are out there, day and night, laying their lives on the line for all of us.”

The letter said he was rescinding his lifetime NRA membership.

Times change, sometimes not for the better. But George H. W. Bush never forgot the advice of Aesop, the ancient Greek storyteller who wrote (personal pronouns changed to reflect our times):

“A person is known by the company he or she keeps.”

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
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