June 2017 – HUMOR IS NO FUN UNLESS YOU LAUGH

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?”

Fighting Fire with Fire

It would make me nervous to watch a fire fighter starting a small fire to reduce a big fire. But it is being done. The idea is to create a burned out area, an area without fuel, in the path of the big fire. This must be risky given unexpected winds, speed and intensity of the advancing fire, and other unforeseeables.

It would also make me nervous to rely on homeopathic remedies for some sickness that plagues me. It would be somewhat analogous to the ‘fire with fire’ idea: fighting the big sickness with a smaller version of the same sickness. I believe it makes other people nervous, too. That may be why we do not hear much about homeopathic physicians. I am sure there is a reasonable explanation for the practice. It just sounds absurd to me, a layman.

Recently I came upon another such homeopathic solution for a different disorder. Caused by competition from online commerce many retail companies are forced to close down an increasing number of their physical brick and mortar facilities. At the same time a certain online company, for delivery efficiency reasons, is buying up and opening more physical facilities. To me this sounds suspiciously like fighting the decline of retail stores by adding more of them.

On the other hand, what if it works? I mean, the whole idea of fighting like with like, fighting a condition with that which caused the condition. When I try to get on to the freeway and the traffic is so heavy and fast that it seems there is barely an opening for one more car, what do I do? I don’t slow down or stop, do I? No, on the contrary. I cure speed with more speed and gently merge into the stream. The more I think of it the better the idea sounds to me. I should conduct a test. Maybe I will. My cardiologist, for example, does not want me to drink red wine although he admits that there have been studies that show that a little red wine with dinner could actually be helpful for my condition. My problem is the gap between his and my notion of what constitutes ‘little’. So for dinner tonight I will pour myself a regular glass of wine. And then, when I have sipped my puny allowance, I will pour myself another of the same poison. Let’s see if I will not feel just a little healthier.

Picture credit: Crossfit Azusa

The Why of Tourism

“Why do you go away so often?” my dogs ask me with their sad eyes. “Why did you fly to Paris not once or twice but four times so far and leave us at home in care of a pet sitter?” they ask. Well, for one thing Paris is more interesting then, say, Pittsburgh. But dogs do not buy this argument and I have human friends, too, who find London or Berlin more interesting than Paris. People, I conclude, travel for a variety of reasons.

Many a traveller will look forward to his or her trip to Florence because of the marvellous opportunities to find fine leather goods in elegant, inspiring shopping surroundings, unequalled at home. Our Wallmarts and Malls do not have quite the cachet as the via Tornabuoni. No need, of course, to travel abroad for brands like Gucci, Prada, or Ferragama. But how about some of the less known brands? There may be surprises waiting, labels like Jaeger, Herve Leger, Marchesa, Malandrino, Cavalli, Loewe, Da Milano, and Ferretti. That plus the ambience, the street life. Ah Firenze, la vita è bella!

Fascinating as fashion can be, window shopping is not everybody’s thing. In fact, most tourists will want to stop at least for one or two of the highlights of Florentine renaissance art, and if it only be Michelangelo’s David at the Galleria dell’ Accademia. Others get lost all day in the Galleria degli Uffizi or the Palazzo Pitti among a thousand famous paintings by artists whose names do not easily roll off non-Italian tongues.
Paris is not that bad a place to visit either. The City of Light! Romantic strolls on the banks of the Seine. Kissing couples on the Pont Alexandre, the bridge with the golden angels. Lunch at a little bistro not far from the Basilica of Sacre Coeur in an obscure street of the 18th District where nobody speaks English. Dinner at the Train Bleu near the Gare de l’Est railway station where everybody speaks English. Un café at the Deux Magots, the Two Monkeys of Existentialist fame, on Blvd. Saint Germain on the Left Bank.

But you can also skip all that and consider Paris to be one big history lesson, beginning with the story of Joan of Arc and leading to, but not ending with, the birth of the United States of America at no. 56 rue Jacob where Ben Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay signed the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Franklin was very popular in Paris at that time. Apparently he still is for they gave him a charming statue just across the river from the Eiffel Tower. Half a block away one also meets George Washington in bronze, on horseback on a huge plinth in the center of Place Iena, with the traffic swirling around him. Not far is a statue of Lafayette. Not to forget two or three statues of Thomas Jefferson, erstwhile Ambassador to the Court of France. There is also a monument honoring the American volontiers of 1914 and numerous other buildings and monuments that demonstrate how French and American history and culture are linked.

Lighthearted frivolity, art appreciation, the study of history — they are all equally valuable ways of spending tourist dollars. All of us have our preferences. But I am willing to bet that few if any of us would want to “do”, say Florence today, Venice tomorrow, Paris the day after, and then fly home again. And yet I knew a woman who tried to do just that. She wanted to see the cities that she believed had been the homes of some of her ancestors. Her adventure began with the idea that a sleeper cabin on an overnight train was far cheaper than a night at a hotel. Her plan was to visit Vienna, then sleep on the train while travelling to Geneva; visit Geneva, Bern, and Luzern that day, sleep on the train again and travel back to Vienna; and then fly home. Here is a brief summary of the ensuing whirlwind sequence of activities.

Day 1. Landed in Vienna. Of course she had heard about the Praterrad, the giant Ferris Wheel, “Third Man” and all that. So she went to see. Fell in with a couple who spoke English and lectured her on musical history, particularly the story of Beethoven. They suggested a visit to his former residence in Heiligenstadt, now a small museum. After lunch she stopped at the Dome of Saint Stephen where Josef Haydn was once a choirboy, then visited the house of Sigmund Freud who never was anybody’s choir boy. Stopped at the Cafe Am Dom where, to her surprise, dogs are admitted. They quietly stay out of sight under the tables. Then off to the Hofburg, trooping past fountains and statues, through castle wings, courtyards, halls, staircases, corridors, and apartments, including those of “Sisi”, a.k.a. Elizabeth, Empress of Austria.

Day 2. Arrived in Geneva by night train from Vienna. Stopped briefly down by the water to inspect the bronze marker on the spot where Sisi, the Empress whose apartments she had just inspected, was murdered. Went to see the Celestial Sphere. Didn’t know what to make of it. Other tourists didn’t either. Impressed by the huge fountain in the harbor, Geneva’s artificial answer to Yellowstone’s natural Old Faithful geyser. Loved the majestic Mont Blanc mountain range in the distance. After lunch by local train to Bern, a truly medieval town where they keep bears in a pit and where the chief tourist attraction is a massive clock tower, built about the year 1500. then to nearby Luzern and a cruise on Lake Luzern, the Vierwaldstaetter See as the natives call it. Saw the Wounded Lion carved into the bedrock in memory of the Swiss Guards who defended the French king’s castle during the French Revolution.

Day 3. Back in Vienna. There was so much left to see: the huge Karlskirche fronted by two columns that look like Muslim minarets, the Opera House, and the “Musikverein” building, made popular by annual New Year’s concerts on TV. Went for a piece of “Torte” at pricey Cafe Mozart across from the Spanish Riding School. Took the streetcar and passed the Johann Strauss monument. There are two composers by that name. Not sure which one was sculpted there. Did not matter, it seems. There was still the Secession museum to go to, and the Belvedere Palace of Prince Eugene, famous for its art collection. There were other things she could have gone to see but her head was bursting and her feet were killing her.

Needless to say, she came home with a brain packed full of impressions and tales. Nobody dared to correct her when she described in glowing colors such wonders of the world as the Zeitglockenturm of Luzern, the glorious interior of the Stephansdom where Beethoven once was a choir boy, the lions in the pit of Bern, the Wounded Bear of Vienna, and the wonderful time she had visiting the Schoenbrunn Palace on the shores of Lake Geneva. And would it have mattered? Pshaw! Dull facts. It’s the memories we cherish, “the memories of yesterday’s pleasures”, to steal a phrase from John Donne, the preacher.

If I remember it correctly, her greatest pleasure was to have saved five hundred dollars in hotel bills.

A Windfall, of Sorts

I am usually quite skeptical of religious or mythological beliefs but recently, during a stormy night, I was awakened by a terrific noise which suddenly made me realize that the ancient Greeks, bogged down as they were by a heaven and an underworld full of gods and goddesses, actually hit it right on the nose when they believed in Euros, the god of the unlucky wind from the east. I now believe in him, too. He knocked over the fence I share with my neighbor. Well, not the whole fence, but two eight-foot center panels that fell towards the neighbor’s tool shed to the west of our house. So it must have been that god whose name is prounced oí-ross and has nothing to do with the currency. Zephyr would not have done that. He is the god of the mild breeze.

As we, my neighbor and I, were surveying the scene in the morning we were relieved that the damage was almost negligible. So we laughed it off, mockingly. ‘Nice try’ I remember saying. I shouldn’t have said that. During the night there was an even bigger storm and the rest of the fence, all ninety feet of it, came down with a tremendous crash, burying the dwarf orange tree and several roses. What’s his name, Euros, obviously had me in his sight and was determined to show me just how unlucky his east wind can be.

But he really had the wrong man. In principle I was never much enamored of fences. When I was a youngster in occupied Germany after the second World War I loved to listen to the Armed Forces Network radio. A cowboy song was then in vogue that included the words “don’t fence me in!” I had a guitar then and sang that with gusto. I knew that I would get to that land without fences eventually. When I finally came to settle down in California I studied English and American literature and found more to agree with in Robert Frost’s Mending wall. Be careful what you wish, he seems to say in that poem. What are you walling in or walling out?
Whatever. It seems to me that old Euros is alive and well. He did a number on our fence. Now I wonder how he would handle a wall. As the folk song says, the answer is still blowin’ in the wind.