Quo Vadis?

In the wake of Donald Trump’s easy victory in a country with 45 million registered Democrats, 35.7 million Republicans and 32.5 million Independents, thousands of perplexed Americans are wondering what happened.  Women, gays, liberals, scientists and anyone with an Ivy League college degree are suddenly feeling very much persona non grata and wondering what they should do about it.  Many of them have their binoculars out, contemplating a place where the grass seems greener, the skies bluer and the population more enlightened.  “The Philistines are taking over America,” fears Gary Borse of Fairfield, Florida.  “I may be leaving on a jet plane, don’t know when I’ll be back again.  Or if.”

In Raleigh, North Carolina, Krista Wilson, a registered Democrat said “it’s a hard time to be a woman” following the election of Trump, who was convicted on 34 criminal counts in a hush money case, impeached twice and found liable for sexual abuse and defamation in a civil trial.  “I don’t feel safe in a country where people would vote for a convicted felon, someone who is unstable, who incites violence and uses fear and racism to motivate voters.  I might have to go somewhere else to live a joyful life.”

Joan Arrow, a 29-year-old trans woman who canvassed for Kamala Harris in Arizona wept and was discussing with her husband whether they should leave for Canada.  The Land Up North is attracting more interest than ever with its relaxed atmosphere, stunning landscapes and friendly natives.  Canada is the 11th most peaceful country in the world; the United States stands at Number 132 and declining.  But now let’s discuss the shivering elephant in that room; temperatures in January and February range from 33 to 20 degrees and they’re not much better in December, and we’re just talking about the warmer cities.  The ice-cream-man doesn’t jingle through the neighborhood much in Montreal.  

Many countries welcome American immigrants with open arms, among them Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, France, Monaco, Costa Rica and Panama.  “American interest in moving is about to go into overdrive,” testifies Fortune magazine, “and these are the easiest countries to immigrate to.”  Panama tops the list of best/cheapest options.  The cost of living is under half of what it is in the United States and our Flying Pie in-house expert Laura Benedetti, a native, can tell you all you want to know about the place.  In fact, try and stop her.

Americans can work without a visa in dozens of countries, including Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, Germany and Ireland.  In addition to Panama, the Philippines, Portugal, Malaysia, Mexico, Thailand and Vietnam all will cost you around $1000 a month in living expenses.  Many countries offer excellent health care, infrastructure and amenities at a fraction of the cost in the United States.

Since all this might seem a little daunting to our less-traveled friends who leave all the usual moving details to Two Men and a Truck, The Flying Pie is here with a few words from old friends since Sub Circus days, excursionists who have been there, done that and know the ropes in many lands beyond the Great Ocean.  They’ll take you up, they’ll bring you down, they’ll plant your feet back on the ground.  Got your pencil?  Here we go:

Meet Your Hosts

You remember Daniel Levine, the Circus’ famed salesman extraordinaire, cradle robber and Kawasaki racer.  When he grew up, he became a Professor of Art History and was therefore required to visit Italy and see all the good stuff.  Signor Levine went for the art but stayed for the food, which he deems “the best in the world.”  He would live in Italy if he could and the jury is still out as to whether that’s possible.  Meanwhile, he’s sitting at his desk in fetching Savannah, ready to tell you all about the manicotti.

Deb Peterson was a student in Gainesville when the Subterranean Circus opened and she watched as Ishmael deliberately painted his Old English lettering on the front wall:

May the long time sun shine upon you,
All love surround you
And the pure light within you
Guide you all the way on.

She soon discovered the message originated with The Incredible String Band and decided she had to traipse over to England and meet them, and she did.  The story of how that happened is included in her treatise on the UK, which she has visited many times.  Deb is smart enough to have figured out a way to reside on the lovely Oregon coast near Yachats so you might want to pay attention to what she says.

Patti Walker, now travelling under the alias Patricia McKennee, was an early and brief Circus employee in 1968, a nice girl corrupted by her stint at the store and relationship with the owner.  One day, she just took off and kept on going to New York, then Boston, then Santa Barbara, then Miami, San Francisco, Seattle and finally Sausalito, where she resides today…but who knows for how long?  In addition to all these ports of call, Patricia has traveled the globe and is here to tell you primarily about Spain and Portugal.  Matter of fact, here she is now.

Welcome To Spain/by Patricia McKennee

Thinking of leaving OrangeLand but not sure where to go?  I’ve been to 44 countries and will cast a strong vote for Hermosa Espana (“beautiful Spain” for those who need to brush up.)  There are many reasons Spain is the world’s second most-visited country.  Though we’re leaving home, we won’t want to give up much, and expat living in Spain offers a unique blend of virtually everything we spoiled North Americans might look for in a new home.

1. Cost of Living.  Very affordable.  A furnished 2 BR flat in major cities like Barcelona and Valencia ranges from $1200 to $2000 a month.  Smaller cities are considerably less, prices depend on location.  Looking to buy?  A new 2 BR flat in Barcelona or San Sebastian starts around $250,000.  Good luck finding a hint of those prices in San Francisco, NYC or Miami.

2. Healthcare.  Likely near the top of your concern list, so you’ll be happy to know that Spain offers a top-notch healthcare system.  It’s a combination of public and private providers and the WHO ranks it among the best in the world and at a fraction of the cost we pay at home.

3. Climate.  If you’re hungry for glorious sun-drenched beaches, there are 300-plus days of sunshine and 5000 miles of coastline.  And it needn’t be the beach or the mountains; for those who like to spend time in high places, the awesome Pyrenees in Northern Spain are perfect for winter skiing.

4. Entertainment.  These fun-loving people enjoy colorful festivals virtually year-round.  There’s music everywhere, especially the unique artistic style of Flamenco, which originated in the Andalusia region but is now almost universal.  And the waterfronts at night!  The endless entertainment in bars of every persuasion---sipping your favorite cocktail in atmospheric spots frequented by Papa Hemingway himself, or joining the raucous young people as they dance the night away to the newest popular tunes.  And how does “No Tipping” sound?

5. Culture.  Spain is renowned for amazing art and architecture.  I love the Picasso Museum, and Gaudi’s masterpieces are everywhere in Barcelona, so you get two legends in one city.  I also loved visiting the fascinating Dali Museum in Figueres (hands down better than the one in St. Pete) where I was happy to climb  the statue to “Que besa el cul de la lleona retorna a Girona,” which means kiss the ass of the lioness so I would return to Girona.  Madrid is also home to several world-class art museums, including El Prado, where seeing the infamous Hieronymus Bosch masterpiece “The Garden of Earthly Delights” is a special treat.  Pamplona, of course, is famous for its Running of the Bulls and many statues of Hemingway.

I have been to Spain three times and spent two months just in Barcelona.  I loved living six weeks in the Gothic Quarter, easy walking to all the unique shops, cultural places and fabulous foods---enough for a whole blog by themselves!  I always felt right at home wandering the infamous La Rambla an infinite number of times.  I’ve also spent time in Madrid, Malaga, Pamplona, San Sebastian, Zaragoza, and no matter where I went, the people were friendly, laid back and charming.  And did I mention Spain is #1 on the Nomad Visa Program list?  See it for yourself---you’ll love it.  Oh, and if you see any American redheads misbehaving in any fountains, come over and introduce yourself.  That will be me.

Barcelona

Portugal/by Patricia McKennee

I have been to Portugal twice and loved it both times.  The first visit was a solitary birthday trip in 2013 when I flew to Lisbon after hearing it was much like my San Francisco home.  As the kids are prone to say these days, true dat!  You might not know this but Portugal constantly ranks among the best places in the world to retire.  The November 6, 2024 issue of Travel & Leisure magazine named Lisbon Europe’s #1 Best City Break Destination at the 25th edition of the Star Awards.

Ever heard Old Blue Eyes singing about little cable cars climbing halfway to the stars?  Sure you have---and while we all know Frank was singing about San Francisco, he could just have easily meant Lisbon.  The city is often called the “European San Francisco.”  Both are coastal cities on the far west coast of their countries bound by major oceans with miles of glorious beaches.  Built on seven hills with steep, windy streets, iconic yellow trams scooting up and down, Lisbon even has its own Golden Gate Bridge---the 25 de Abril Bridge connecting Lisbon to the municipality of Alameda, which was constructed by the same company which built the the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

Though many people enjoy tours, I prefer going it myself.  In Lisbon, I hired a friendly young taxi driver named Pedro for a set fee and he was great.  He gave me an overall tour of the area so I could get my bearings, then I explored the city on my own for a few days.  After that, Pedro took me to the beautiful town of Sintra, a longtime royal sanctuary now a resort city in the foothills of the Sintra Mountains.  I roamed through the impressive Moorish-style National Palace with its elaborate tile work throughout and dramatic chimneys you can see for miles.  I also visited the equally magnificent 19th-century Pena National Palace on a hilltop not far away.  Both places are known for sweeping views from the terraces and almost every room, and the latter is famous for its whimsical design.  Like bygone castles everywhere, it was great fun walking through these majestic rooms, thinking what it must have been like to live in them.

My second trip to Portugal was in 2019, when my husband and I made the eleven-hour drive from Barcelona across Spain with wonderful fun, food and culture-filled stops in Zaragoza and Madrid.  We culminated in Oporto, which is located along the beautiful Douro River and is Portugal’s second-largest city.  It is one of the oldest European centers and its core was proclaimed a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1996.  There are four more such sites within a two-hour drive of Oporto.  We both loved the city and had a great time wandering the waterfront and its charming, not-so-hilly streets.

In Portugal, it’s so easy to find great music and good food everywhere---just round any corner.  That said, a word to my Vegan and Health Food friends; while there is an abundance of fresh vegetables and fish, a dried and salted cod called bacalhau is the national dish and regional favorites include rojoes (fried pork meat) and sarrabulho (a pig blood-based dish).  I think you get the drift.

The crime rate in Portugal is low and gun violence is unheard of.  I always felt safe anywhere in the country, including at night.  The Global Peace Index continually ranks Portugal as one of the safest places in the world.  Add to that, the infrastructure is equal to or better than anywhere in the U.S. or Canada and the elderly and disabled find amazing discounts in many areas.  Healthcare is simply phenomenal and almost everyone speaks English.  You can even swap your American driver’s license for a Portuguese one with no test.

Last but not least are the incredibly friendly people.  With low cost of living, a temperate climate and many other advantages, it’s no wonder people are flocking to this small but mighty European country?  And I’ve not even begun to describe the Algarve…maybe next time!

When The Moon Hits Your Eye Like A Big Pizza Pie, That’s Italia/by Daniel Levine

I love Italy.  But Italy, like love, is irrational and emotional.

Italians just know how to live.  True, their big cities can be noisy, chaotic and sometimes overrun with tourists, but the country life mostly moves at a glacial pace, and that opinion comes from a resident of sleepy Savannah.  Italy is a land of fascinating and often frustrating contradictions.  This stems partly from the fact the Republic of Italy is a modern construct (1861) based upon diverse ancient traditions.  What is unifying and almost rational is that Italians work to live, not live to work.  Even the immaculately dressed Milanese take time from their busy days and nights for a little La dolce vita. 

The landscape of the Italian peninsula bears the marks of humanity’s presence like few other places.  It has been occupied since prehistory through the Etruscans and Romans to the present.  The Italian sensibility has absorbed all of this and distilled into a society that has seen it all, been there-done that, and accepts man’s fleeting place in time.  To me it seems to be all summed up in one word—domani.  The literal translation means “tomorrow,”  but it could also reflect an attitude towards life; nothing is so pressing that we can’t stop for an espresso, aperitivo or vino, depending on the time of day.  If you ask a worker when some project might be finished, the response is often “domani”---which only expresses an indeterminate time in the future, maybe never.  It’s the American equivalent of “Who knows?”

This doesn’t mean nothing ever gets done.  Italians can actually be quite efficient, but everything must operate at its own pace,  My first visit to Italy was spent mostly in a hill town on the Tuscany/Umbria border.  At first, I didn’t understand how anything could be accomplished in the narrow, twisting, slippery cobblestone corridors which pass for streets.  Gradually, I came to realize as I watched the public squares fill with the twice-weekly Mercato that these people were not only surviving but flourishing in an environment created between the fifth and thirteenth centuries for oxcarts, not SUVs.  And the variety and freshness of the goods being sold far surpassed that (with a few major city exceptions) which can be found in the U.S.  They had all types of vegetables, fresh herbs, endless varieties of cheese, salami, breads, olives and olive oil, along with live chickens, rabbits, fish and dry goods.  This all manifested in the morning and was gone, streets swept and washed by early afternoon.  I went wondering what’s wrong with these people to why don’t we do that?

The markets were not only the source of abundant and healthy foods, but everything tasted better.  I can’t remember the number of times I thought something like, oh, so that’s what tomatoes taste like or I thought I didn’t care for pesto.  I’ve never been a big meat eater, but in Italy I changed my ways.  Italian cuisine might be the world’s greatest, in my opinion.  At it’s best, it’s simple, yet elegant and above all, fresh.  I remember once arriving late one evening at a friend’s place and her preparing me a late snack, then apologizing for not having fresh mozzarella, not that I’d notice.  Next morning, when we got the fresh stuff I was astonished how much better it was.  You want fresh?  Hell, the buffalo were grazing in the field next door.

Eating food in Italy is not something you do between visits to the gym or the mall.  Supper involves sharing the pleasures of good food, good wine and good company.  No one turns on a television or computer and there is no rush to get on to the next item on your agenda.  Domani.  And since I mentioned it, the wine is wonderful.  To me, the wines are like the food, earthy and honest and you can buy a liter of eminently drinkable wine for the price of a can of Coke.  Drink what the locals are drinking.  It has been cultivated for centuries to pair with the food of the region.

Italy’s charms, however, are far from being limited to the gastronomic.  Being a long and narrow country, the Italian landscape changes dramatically along its lengthy coastline with endless beaches.  Villages perch on cliffs like the famous Cinque Terre.  There are rolling hills, and dramatic mountain ranges like the Dolomites or the Alps in Tyrol.  As lovely as the landscapes are, many are drawn there by the country’s rich history.  If you like ancient Greek culture, some of the best preserved Greek artifacts come form Italy…such as the Temple complex at Paestum.  Like Roman culture?  Paestum is close to that great time capsule into the Roman past---Pompeii.  And, of course, Rome is at the heart of the living museum of itself.  Everywhere you go, there are souvenirs of the past.  I have stayed in ruins which I later learned were at the site where Julius Caesar was murdered.  History is alive in the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the glitz of the Vatican, the countless baroque churches designed to combat the austerity of Protestantism with lavish displays of Catholic wealth and power.  The Renaissance can still be seen and imagined in Florence.  There is an impossible serene city in the sea called Venice.

The Italians have given us urban planning, concrete, mind-numbing bureaucracy, pizza, Dante, Leonardo, the Mafia, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Fellini, Mussolini, Sophia Loren, Fiat, Ferrari and Ducati.  Y’gotta take the bitter with the sweet, right?  I love Italy, with all its raw beauty, great people, boundless spirit and endless history.  I even love Italy with all its flaws, irrationalities and inconsistencies.  Maybe, on second thought, it’s because of them.

(L-R) Susan Gage, Deb Peterson, Robin & Bina Williamson 

There’ll Always Be An England/by Deb Peterson

Despite loving virtually all of the many places I’ve visited, if I had to relocate it would no doubt be to the UK…specifically England and the border cities of Cardiff, Wales and Edinburgh, Scotland.  The first time I was there in 1971, it just felt like home.  The fact that English is the native language is a bonus, of course, but many of the things I love most originated there…especially the music.

England is very compact compared to the United States.  The cities are easy to navigate and very walkable, with so much to see and experience along the way.  Train travel is excellent and will take you anywhere you care to go in 1-5 hours.  It does tend to rain a lot but living in Oregon has taught me to better cope with that.  On rainy days, there are excellent museums and galleries to inspect, especially in London, and admission is free.  There are also tons of shops and cafes to enjoy.  One of the best things about food in England is that it has no GMOs.  Also, it has in recent years morphed from “that awful English food” to food that can please almost any palate.

In London, the outdoor markets are perfect for sunny days, offering fresh produce, various food vendors, antiques, clothing, etc.  Two of my favorites, the Portobello and Camden markets are enormous, and sections of both of them are open on weekdays.  From Paddington Station, it’s just a 45-minute walk along the canal paths to either Portobello or Camden, though in opposite directions.

Being a Beatles enthusiast from age 13, I especially enjoyed Liverpool.  It’s come a long way since the Beatles heyday and evolved into a pleasant city.  Naturally, there are small private tours of all things Beatle, from visiting the famous Cavern Club on Matthew Street to the childhood homes of the individual band members.  You can even spend a little time in the former homes of John and Paul.  It’s a treat to be in the rooms where they first wrote songs and played guitars together.

I also enjoyed my time in Cardiff, Wales, just across the river from England.  My first time there was particularly interesting as I somehow almost immediately met three people (the only three I spoke to while asking directions) who happened to be neighbors of Robin Williamson of the Incredible String Band.  I knew of their music from first reading a verse from one of their songs on the facade of the Subterranean Circus in the late 1960s.  It was a serendipitous encounter which led to meeting Robin and his wife Bina and later attending many of their concerts and Robin’s Bardic Workshops at Hazelwood House in Devon.

Doubtless, I could go on forever about my love for England and the UK, but then this blog would never end.  Suffice to say, I’m sure that I’d never tire of the country or its people.  It’s a very beautiful place, full of great art, architecture, history, literature and, of course, music.  Run, don’t walk, if you get a chance to go there.  And if you decide to stay…well, I’ll see you soon.

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com       

 

      

Bizarro World

Eighteen theatergoers at the Stuttgart state opera required medical treatment for severe nausea after watching performances of Florentina Holzinger’s Sancta, which included live piercings, unsimulated sexual intercourse and copious amounts of fake and real blood.  “What’s the big deal?” wondered American observer Daniel Levine.  “It’s just like a sorority party at Florida State.”

The opera’s spokesperson, Sebastian Ebling admitted “On Saturday we had eight and on Sunday ten people were looked after by our visitor service.  A doctor was called in for treatment in three instances.  Nobody died and most people seemed to enjoy the show.”

Holzinger, 38, is known for freewheeling performances that blur the line between dance theater and vaudeville.  Her all-female cast typically performs partially or fully naked, and previous shows have included live sword-swallowing, tattooing, masturbation and action paintings with blood and fresh excrement.  Yep, fresh!

“Good technique in dance to me is not just someone who can do a perfect tendu, but also someone who can urinate on cue,” Holzinger told reporters.  Sancta, her first foray into opera, premiered at Mecklenburg state theater in Schwerin in May, and is based on Paul Hindemith’s 1920 expressionist opera Sancta Susanna, which has its own history of controversy.  Hindeman’s original tells the story of a young nun who is aroused by one of the nunnery’s older women, steps on the altar naked and rips the loincloth from Christ’s torso.  An encounter with a large spider leads her to repent her action and beg the other nuns to wall her up alive.  Sorry you missed it, eh?

The current version that unsettled the Stuttgart audience this year supplanted the original musical with naked nuns rollerskating on a movable half-pipe at the center of the stage, a wall of crucified naked bodies and a lesbian priest saying mass.  After Holzinger brought Sancta to her native Vienna in June, bishops from Salzburg and Innsbruck criticized it as “a disrespectful caricature of the holy mass,” which some observers considered a bit of an understatement.

Ebling recommends that all audience members very carefully read the warnings about the show so they know what to expect.  “If you have questions, speak to the visitor service.  This is not ‘Bambi.’  And when in doubt, it might help to avert your gaze.”

Reports of medical treatment in the auditorium appear to have done Holzinger’s Sancta no harm.  All the remaining shows sold out in short order, leading Gainesville, Florida opera promoter Bill Killeen to consider a Sancta sequel starring Anna Marie Kirkpatrick in the leading role with Gina Hawkins as gangleader of the posse of naked rollerskating nuns.  Gregg Jones will lead the Time Warp sequence and Wil Maring will sing Somewhere Over The Rainbow.  David Atherton gets the Pope’s seat, as usual, this time with full papal regalia. 

Another Reason Finland Is The World’s Happiest Country

Life is a sprint, not a marathon at the annual North American Wife-Carrying Contest in tiny Newry, Maine.  This year Caleb and Justine Roesler---Team Roesler to you---splashed through water, leapt over logs and trudged through mud in a piffling 37.88 seconds to capture the prize.  The Waukesha, Wisconsin couple won a gaudy seven cases of beer as well as five times Justine’s weight in cash, which turned out to be $510.  Following the victory, Caleb told local media, “I don’t expect we’ll turn pro.  We just do it for the challenge.  Fortunately, I have a lightweight wife who trains by starving a lot.  This year she even shaved.  Next time, we’re going to feed her more so the check is bigger.”

Wife-carrying is a Finnish sport based on a nineteenth century Baltic legend about a varlet known as Ronkainen the Robber, whose gang of thieves regularly pillaged villages and carried off the women.  In the modern contest, most participants use a technique in which the wife is carried upside down---like a backpack---to ensure the runners’ arms are free for better balance and agility.

The first wife-carrying event was held in Finland in 1992, with foreign contestants being admitted three years later.  The world championships are held annually in Sonkajarvi, Finland.  The course is 278 yards long for some reason and includes one water obstacle and two dry ones.  The Worlds have a weight limit of 108 pounds for the female competitor, an obvious example of politically incorrect weightism.  If a bumbling husband drops his wife, there will be a penalty of five seconds added to the team’s time.  There is no restriction on how the female teammate is carried and several techniques are commonly used, including the time-tested Piggyback and Fireman’s Carry (over the shoulder).  The most popular, however, is the abovespoke Estonian Carry in which the wife hangs upside-down with her legs around the husband’s shoulders, holding on to his waist and screaming bloody murder.  In a news item of local interest, Illinois songbird Wil Maring was turned down in her request to carry partner Robert Bowlin over the bumpy Maine course.  “You’d think they’d wanna shake things up every so often,” she grumbled.

Sounds Familiar

In turtle news, Wan Yee Ng, a Chinese woman smuggler, pled guilty recently to attempting to sneak 29 eastern box turtles, a protected species, across a Vermont lake into Canada by kayak.  The culprit was arrested at an Airbnb in Canaan as she was about to get into an inflatable kayak with a duffle bag on Lake Wallace, according to alert Border Patrol agents.  The agents had been notified by a crack team of Royal Canadian Mounted Police that the woman’s husband and another man had started to paddle an inflatable watercraft from the Canadian side toward the United States.  Inside the duffle bag, authorities found 29 unfortunate but live box turtles neatly wrapped in old socks.  Eastern box turtles are known to be sold on the despicable Chinese black market for a staggering $1000 apiece.  Ms. Ng is scheduled to be sentenced in December and faces up to 10 years in prison, immense disgrace in her home town of Hong Kong and a fine of up to $250,000.  That’s a lot of turtles.

If the above shenanigans sound a lot like what you and your friends might have been doing (sans turtles) in the Everglades in the mid-seventies, stand on a chair and yell “Boy Howdy!”  Thank you, group.

It’s 2001 All Over Again

First it was Utah.  Then Romania.  And California…Spain…Wales…even Paraguay.  The metallic monoliths began popping up in 2020, discovered by unsuspecting people in random locations around the world.  The mysterious objects quickly captured the fancy of a sci-fi loving public, drawing crowds despite their often remote locations.  Then, early in October, another gleaming prism materialized outside Las Vegas.  “People see a lot of weird things when they go hiking,” said a Vegas Metro Police officer, “but this beats them all.”  The cops have no clues on the origins of the monoliths, though UFO-loving Nevadans are getting their hopes up.

In November of 2020, the Utah Department of Public Safety announced that a work crew conducting a count of bighorn sheep had come across a reflective object in a remote section of red rock country.  Photos showed an eerie metallic monolith standing afront what looked like a rocky Martian landscape.  Utah officials didn’t disclose the location but curious citizens found it anyway, flocking there in droves.  The Utah Department of Land Management said later that month that the monolith had been removed over Thanksgiving weekend by folks unknown, who left behind “evidence that more than one vehicle had to be towed out.”

In weeks that followed, monoliths started showing up elsewhere.  Atop a California mountain.  In the ruins of a church in Spain.  On the hills of a New Zealand adventure park.  When one of the critters appeared in the Romanian city of Patria Neamt, the city’s jolly mayor, Andrei Carabelea, said this: “My guess is that some naughty alien teenagers left home with their parents UFO and started planting metal monuments around the world.  They were hoping their ruse would go viral and they’d get on CNN.”

If so, they’ve been busy little green teens.  There are now 245 monoliths reported worldwide since the Utah installation of 2020.  Whoever created the Utah critter kicked off a veritable monolithon.

David Zwirner, a gallery owner who represents the estate of the late artist John McCracken initially told the New York Times that he believed the object was created by McCracken, but later retracted the assertion after discovering the monolith was machine-made, which was not McCracken’s style.  An artists collective called Most Famous Artist, which thrives on lampooning popular culture, began acting like the culprits later in the year, selling its own identical monoliths for $45,000.  Other Utahns believe it was a prop used in any one of numerous TV shows and films made at nearby Dead Horse Point State Park, including Westworld and John Carter.  If so, however, that only accounts for Utah, leaving 244 lasting questions.

Are the perpetrators one or many?  Artistic jokers…Martians out on a bender…unknown cultists with a message for the world?  Likely we’ll never know the truth.  As the grizzled wizard once declared, there are no answers…only mysteries.

Smells Funny To Us

Nothing much ever happens in the greater  Thessaloniki metropolitan area so you can imagine the judge’s surprise when Greek police dragged in a defendant for repeatedly sneaking onto a neighbor’s property and sniffing the family’s shoes.  The 28-year-old man told the court he was unable to explain his behavior and he was “greatly embarrassed.”

Police had been called to the sleepy town of Sindos after the neighbor found the defendant in his front yard inhaling away on the family’s brogans which had been left outside for a good airing.  The court heard that there had been at least three similar incidents in the past six months…a clear case of serial sniffing…despite several neighbors having asked the defendant’s family to intervene.

“We did try an intervention,” one of his uncles said, “but we made the mistake of asking all the attendees to leave their shoes at the door and, well…”

The judge imposed a one-month sentence, but then suspended it and ordered therapy sessions for the offender, then gave him a stern warning.  “If I see you in my court again,” he growled, “I’ll have your nasal passages blocked, so mind your manners.  And stay out of shoe stores!” 

Speaking of smelling funny, it may have escaped readers’ notice that there is now a Poozeum hard by the Grand Canyon in sprightly Williams, Arizona.  Owner George Frandsen has carefully---and we mean carefully---gathered over 8000 coprolites from dinosaurs, sharks and other creatures and put them all on display in one place, so you can now vist an entire museum dedicated to fossilized fecal specimens.  You want Tyrannosaurus poop?  We got it.  Prehistoric shark doody?  Right over there in the corner.

Fransen initially used his coprolite collection to launch an online resource center in 2014.  Then he created a traveling exhibition and took it to museums across the country.  Based on the thrilled responses of ancient shit lovers everywhere, he decided to go all out and open his own permanent dedicated space.  And get this---admission is always free any day the museum is open.  “I believe it’s important that everyone has the opportunity to enjoy and learn from these fossils,” Frandsen says.  While you’re there, don’t miss the single largest coprolite specimen in the world---more than two feet long and up to six inches wide, weighing more than 20 pounds.  Now, that’s a load of crap!

“We Heard There Was A Gathering Of The Tribes…”---Rocky Raccoon

“Close the door, they’re comin’ through the windows!”---Jim Lowe

The nights are mostly quiet in Washington’s Kitsap County, though deputies frequently get calls about errant animals like loose livestock and surly dogs.  But that all changed one night with a frantic 911 call from a woman besieged by an army of disagreeable raccoons.  “I had to flee my property,” she reported.  “There were just a few of them at first so I started feeding them.  Then more came and they were very demanding, hounding me day and night.  More and more kept coming.  They were like the biker gang in ‘The Wild One’ movie.”

Police said the increasingly aggressive raccoons scratched on the doors and walls of the home and surrounded the complainant if she went outside.  Video from the sheriff’s office shows about 100 of the critters.  “There was a big ‘WILL RELENT FOR FOOD!’ sign stuck in the ground by the garage, but we’re pretty sure that came from one of the wiseguy neighbors,” advised the sheriff (but he’s not sure). 

A cagey raccoon expert was called in by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to meet with the put-upon victim.  “Stop feeding the damn raccoons!” she recommended.  The local coon newspaper picked up the advice and made it front page news, and at last notice the grumpy bandits were seen dispersing in scroungy pickup trucks with Idaho license plates.  A hand-made banner on the tailgate read “Don’t Stop Believin’ About Tomorrow.”

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com

We Got Trouble!

“We got trouble, folks, right here in River City, trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with D and that stands for Dimwits.”---Mr. Natural

So now the Beast arrives as was foretold in the gospels and his worshippers flock to him.  He has made their basest instincts respectable like never before and they rise like wildflowers in the desert after a first rain.  In previous times, they were embarrassed to display their hatred for niggers, spics, queers, ragheads, kikes and tree huggers, but the Beast has made it all acceptable.  Burn, baby, burn, in the truest sense of the word.  Where can we buy one of those neat sheets with eyeholes?

But the True Believers are not enough.  To rule the world, the Beast must recruit the lazy, the foggybrained, the weakminded who’ll do anything to be popular with the crowd.  “I try to stay out of politics” is the chant of the cowardly.  They’ll leave all their thinking to their pastor, Fox News or the loudmouth on the corner.  More recruits for the Beast, but still not enough.  He needs the critical Undecided Vote.

You hear it over and over again.  “I just can’t make up my mind” between Attila, the Scourge of God and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.  Yeah, it’s a real poser, that one.  Is your brain made of spaghetti squash?  There is reliable information out there in the world and it’s not difficult to discover who is the shit and who’s the shinola.  Make an effort.

Oh, but what about those creepy immigrants and the economy?  The economy is just fine, thank you, and a Congressional panel led by a conservative Republican wrote an immigration bill satisfactory to everyone but the Beast, who squashed it because it didn’t suit his purposes.  Let’s get real here---all this talk about policy is just so much fluff.  The Beast is in it for power and glory and money.  The Beast is in it to stay out of jail.  And that’s where he’ll put you if you don’t get out of the way.

The real sermon on the mount is this:

“Assholes of the world unite!  This is the best chance you’ll ever have to shoot a few deviants, lock up the liberals, put women back in their place and royally piss off George Clooney.  If we have to rip up a few Constitutions to do it, too bad.  Just follow me!  Onward to glory!  Oops, just one second while I bugger this pangender floozie….”

And hey, Puerto Ricans---have they got a deal for YOU! 

Sisyphus Is 84

“Last night, when we were young
Love was a star, a song unsung,
Life was so new, so real, so right
Ages ago last night.”---Frank Sinatra

Sometimes I feel like a scout sent out by slightly younger friends to gauge the landscape, look for Indians, find a pass through the mountains and report back.  Octogenaria, we are warned, is a prickly place full of highwaymen, dense forests and strange diseases where crusty humans go to die, but they said that about Septuagenaria, too, and here we are.

When one is old and wise to the ways of the trail, he is expected to pass down what wisdom he has accumulated in his time on this mortal orb to less experienced hikers coming up the mountain.  That doesn’t mean anyone is likely to heed his advice, but some of us are traditionalists who believe time-honored rituals must be adhered to.  Nobody cares, of course, what a piccolo player thinks about raising nutria for fun and profit or what a priest thinks about marriage, but there are some common suggestions which apply to everyone, and among them is this:

Listen.  “Listen to the sound, listen to the sound, listen to the tune that the wind brought down.  Listen to the old time sound of the fiddle telling of a place you never have found.” (Dillards)

The world is a chattery place, full of nonsense and distractions, generic advice you don’t need, advertising you don’t want, self-serving simpletons who just want to bend your ear, fill it full of fatuous fripperies.  It makes a person wish for invisible ear plugs or the arcane ability some people claim to let things go in one ear and out the other.  But just when it seems safe to drop out, a true gem passes from the lips of another, something that will rescue you from confusion, steer you in a better direction, teach you how to operate your tractor more efficiently, and it might come from unlikely sources.

Most people would rather talk than listen, but nobody learns much when they’re talking.  Listen with the intent to understand, not with the intent to reply, like most of the talk show guests on television.  Bernard Baruch famously remarked, “Most of the successful people I’ve known are the ones who do more listening than talking.”  And Doug Larson correctly told us that wisdom is the reward we get for listening when we’d have preferred to talk.  Sometimes the rewards are incomprehensibly great, like that moment in 1968 when my cosmopolitan early girlfriend Claudine Laabs told me, “Bill, you just have to stop wearing big white undies.”  A whole new world opened up in just seconds.  So pay attention.  You never know when the next Claudine will come along.

Do What You Say You’ll Do

Your word is a contract with someone else, a compact that you will perform as agreed to at a certain time or place.  It begins with small things like being on time or agreeing not to buy  any more potbellied pigs.  Reliability is the precondition for trust.  Do not make excuses like, “But I’m only five minutes late, that’s virtually nothing” or “Petunia was lonely so I had to buy a Porky.”  Wrong.  You broke your contract and revealed you could not be relied on in the future.  In addition to keeping your word, you should also hold others to the same standard.

In Subterranean Circus days, I didn’t have a ton of rules for employees, but one I did have was that noone could be late.  The first time a worker was late, he or she was sent home with the admonition to cogitate on how much they valued the job.  The second time, they were gone for good.

Now, virtually everyone who worked at the shop was appreciative of just being in such a place, let alone being paid to show up, so there were exceedingly few rulebreakers.  Alas, there’s always that ten percent.  One feisty young lady turned up a few minutes late on her first day and was shocked to find herself sent home to reevaluate her priorities.  After a week of adhering to the rules, she found herself waking late on a Monday morning, still stoned to the gills with about ten minutes to get to work.  She roused her roommates in a blind panic, they sped across town breaking speed limits left and right and shoved her in the Circus door one minute early.  She staggered up to me and croaked, “No rules about being marginally unconscious, right?”  Surprisingly, the girl worked there for several more years and was a big asset.  More surprisingly, in 23 years no one was ever fired at the Subterranean Circus for being late.

Just Do It

When you’re old and rickety, there’s always an excuse for stasis, like “The weather outside is frightful, but in here it’s just delightful.”  The old sacroiliac is acting up again, driving at night is a crapshoot and you never know what you’ll run into west of Jonesville, so better not take any chances, right?  Not right.  Whatever happened to that guy who set the record for consecutive days streaking down University Avenue?  It may be a jungle out there but that doesn't mean you have to lock the doors, pull down the shades and wait for the clip-clop of the Grim Reaper’s pale horse.  If you can travel, do it, and no whining please.  Daniel Levine, the pride of Savannah, Ga., is 80 with Parkinson’s and he’s running off to Amsterdam.  Last year, it was Italy.  So what if somebody occasionally has to pick you up and steer you in the right direction?  That’s why they invented the Boy Scouts.

If you want to live to a ripe old age, find things you look forward to, like your monthly tryst with Sadie O’Grady, the first week of football season or the Flying Pig Parade.  Head off trouble at the pass with the annual physical exam, CBC, lipid profile and the rest of the long grey line of medical revelations.  Walk.  Swim.  Join Richard Rahall’s Bicycle Rangers.  Lonely?  Buy a large, economy-sized lifetime membership to Heartwood and you’ll always walk on, walk on with hope in your heart and you’ll never walk alone.  If you’re lucky, you might even find a sympathetic broad to butter your toast in the morning, like Will Thacker did.

Finale

I don’t mind admitting I’m irked aplenty by the physical limitations old age imposes.  I can’t roll boulders uphill any more like that 72-year-old guy in the photo above.  The fifteen-mile uphill hikes have leveled off by two-thirds and those clever trekking sticks are looking better all the time.  But I can still walk my morning mile in fifteen minutes with the original hips and knees intact, climb up the stadium ramp to my 54th row seats unaided and keep the fields mowed at the farm.  Strange women have stopped calling me on the phone as in Circus days, but I tell myself it’s only because they’ve lost my number.  I celebrate things like having made it to 84 with nary a single intestinal polyp and driving through Alachua County at night without killing anyone.  And I confess to snickering to myself every so often that my wife has yet to discover what a terrible mistake she made taking up with me.

When I was a young lad, I aspired to sweeping Kathleen Carroll off her feet, becoming a professional baseball player and living in sunny Florida, a magic land revealed to me by radio announcers and sports writers covering the Red Sox at Spring training.  One out of three’s not bad.  I’ve experienced the many charms of 49 states (sorry North Dakota) and despite its yokels, hurricanes and paralyzing summers, still prefer this one.

If you’re 84 and tell me you’ve never experienced a near-death experience, you’re either a big fibber or the luckiest person on Earth.  I somehow made it through high school with only one car crash, escaped college with only a few cuts and bruises after jumping off the back of a moving truck, avoided being shot during Circus days when a paranoid maniac aimed a shotgun at me, barely evaded death by heart attack and at the hands of  irate Knoxville, Tennessee football fans.  When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me speaking words of wisdom, like “You know you’re not ready to die.  You want to know what happens tomorrow.”

She was right, of course.   Fifteen years ago when I was lying sick as a dog on a cold hard hospital table with a heart rate of 20 beats a minute, the doctors came in, told me I had a bundle branch blockage (which I already knew) and asked if I wanted them to insert a lifesaving pacemaker.  Despite my condition, I couldn’t help being amused.  “Well, what do YOU think?” I answered.

While I waited, I considered my situation for an instant, thinking oh, so what if I die, what’s the big deal?  One of those momentary flashes quickly dispersed.  Almost immediately I was struck by the realization that I needed to hang around to find out what happened.  To Siobhan, friends and family, the country and Gator football.  Shallow, perhaps, but enough to snap me out my lethargy.  Perhaps this momentary indifference is why some people survive and others cash in their chips.

With that, the implant crew zoomed in, slapped the shiny new Boston Scientific device inside my upper chest and pressed down hard on it for about a week, or so it seemed.  Voila---fait accompli!  Life goes on, and with few compromises until the last couple of years.  When you’re this old, thinking about death is inevitable.  It’s an obsession with some people, which is where the meditation devotees have something to teach us.  When the night is long and sleep fails us, uncomfortable thoughts climb up off the floor and into the bedcovers and start poking around.  Don’t let them in.  Slam the doors and close the windows.  The moment will pass and you’ll be back in Salisbury Beach, six years old and riding the carousel with your mother looking on.  Hold on tight, she’ll yell to you, and you do.  You’re a good kid.  You always do what your mother tells you.

That’s not quite all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com 

 

Season Of The Witch

“It’s astounding.  Time is fleeting. Madness takes its toll!”---Time Warp

Admit it….you think this country’s on a fast train to Looneyville.  There’s plenty of evidence, after all, including a hefty percentage of the population which is trying to elect Jabba the Hutt the next president.  New genders are rising up daily, folks are eating massive amounts of kale, maniacs are shooting up the ballet and there are disturbing rumors of people willingly moving to South Dakota.  Even worse, there are no more real kickoffs in professional football---the players just have a friendly comingle, drink a little tea and start on first down.  It’s a scandal.

Before you sell all your stock in Cracker Barrel and move to La Rinconada, consider this; it’s not just us.  Sophisticated countries like France and Northumberland have been associated with lunacy and mass hysteria since Medieval times.  One famous Middle Age incident involved The Cat Nuns of France.  Life in a convent is no bed of roses with its celibacy, poverty, hard work and unquestioning obedience to authority.  Understandably, every so often a sister goes off the tracks, like the one who suddenly started meowing for no apparent reason.  At the time, cats were not highly revered; more often they were associated by the lower classes with Satan and witchery.  Before long, other nuns joined in, then the whole convent.  It eventually became chorus-like, with caterwauling continuing on for several hours a day, which the neighbors found offputting, to say the least.  When all the attempted solutions failed, the army was called in to quell the cacophony by whipping the meowing nuns into submission.  “Absolutely unnecessary” protested one of them.  “We would have been more than willing to renegotiate our contracts.”

Meanwhile, across the Rhine, a 15th-century German nun suddenly began biting the other sisters in her convent.  Before long, the behavior spread and the convent was full of crazed nuns running around biting each other.  Witchery or mere lunacy?  Word of the Biting Nuns Outbreak went international and convents as far north as Holland reported outbreaks of nun-biting.  The hysteria also traveled south and crossed the Alps into Italy.  When prayers and masses failed, the Church resorted to exorcisms and the casting out of devils and demons, to no avail.  At wits’ end, Church leaders resorted to flogging or dunking in water any nun who bit another.  After a few examples were made of rulebreakers, the nuns finally came to their senses and the biting mania finally subsided, to the everlasting regret of The Jerry Springer Show.

Still Crazy After All These Years

Think you could swallow a nail?  How about 453 of them?  One patient at St. Joseph’s State Lunatic Asylum #2 in Missouri did just that.  Then again, it is the Show Me State.  We’re not sure whether the Guinness Book of Records recognizes such feats, but if not, they should.  If Joey Chestnut gets props for gobbling down 83 very soft hot dogs, what about a guy who puts away 38 dozen big stickers?  This accomplishment is one of many enshrined at the Glore Psychiatric Museum inside the Asylum, which is sort of like a Met Museum for the disturbed.  Many exhibits at the Glore are intended to give visitors life-size visuals of what mental health treatment devices looked like in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and include surgical tools, doctors’ notes and diabolical equipment that will scare the devil out of you.  There is also a gallery which features offbeat and sometimes scary creative works of art by patients past and present.  But heck, you can see that kind of stuff every day at Chuck LeMasters’ house.

Speaking of lunatic asylums, as we so often do, it’s almost that time again.  Halloween, a big favorite among the insane, is celebrated full-tilt at the Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, West Virginia, which provides ghost hunts, paranormal tours, a haunted house and close to 100 crazed actors trained in the art of scaring the hell out of people.  “We have a lot of support from the crazies in the community and we really appreciate people coming to see us,” says Michell Graham, Events Manager at the asylum.  “You don’t really have to be crazy to enjoy our festivities, but it helps.”

Alternatives:

If you can’t make it to your favorite asylum this year, here are a few tasty alternatives:

In Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, a 20-foot neon green witch-head balloon floats over a costumed crowd of 180,000 at the annual Sea Witch Festival.  Our favorite Wiccan, Bron Beynon of Tampa, will lead contestants in the fabled Broom Throwing Contest, which is preceded by the annual Dog Costume Parade.  Arf arf!

What started as an unfortunate tale in Manitou Springs, Colorado is now a creative ritual.  Legend has it that Emma Crawford and her coffin were washed away in a 19th-century landslide, never to be seen again.  The town rightfully decided to honor Emma in an annual Coffin Race for which teams meticulously decorate their coffins, place an Emma inside and haul ass down the street, trying to beat each other’s times.  If you’re weak, slow and unartistic, don’t give up---they can always use a few more Emmas.

If you happen to find yourself in New Orleans at Halloween, and why wouldn’t you, don’t forget the Endless Night Vampire Ball, where Venetian masquerade ball-with-vampire-court meets rock concert meets 19th century burlesque cabaret.  This beloved NOLA event taps into the city’s haunted reputation, penchant for voodoo and longstanding affinity for vampires, and inevitably falls into decadence and debauchery.  A good opportunity to flash your Steampunk garb and try a  Bloodbath Cocktail.  Maybe the only opportunity.

If you’re a history nerd, how can you beat Halloween in Salem, Mass., witch capital of the world?  Salem’s Haunted Happenings is the largest annual Halloween celebration anywhere, a month-long festival with over half a million visitors arriving to explore 17th-century Witch Trial sites as well as the infamous Burying Point Cemetery.  Highlights of the affair include the Grand Parade, the Haunted Biz Baz Street Fair and scary film nights.  “Science fiction double feature---Frank has built and lost his creature.”   

Advice For Future Corpses

Since this is the Season of the Witch and dead bodies are fair game, let’s continue with our headliners du jour, the nuns.  In particular Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, OSB, the founder of the Benedictine Sisters of Mary, who died in 2019, though you’d never know it.  When the Gower Abbey community just outside Kansas City dug her up recently to move the body into the monastery’s chapel, Sister W. looked pretty much the same as she did while clapping erasers and twisting kiddies’ earlobes several years ago.  What’s up with that?

Maybe she just had a top of the line casket impervious to bacteria?  Nope.  The coffin had a large crack in it through which water could enter.  The Catholics in the area went nuts, hopping up and down at the apparent miracle.  Scores of rabid pilgrims descended on KC to witness the scene.  Church leaders retired to their belfries to consider sainthood.  The phenomenon of incorruptibility is not common, but there are more then 300 saints whose bodies were exhumed centuries after their deaths which showed no sign of physical decay.  St. Cecilia, the first of them, was martyred somewhere between 177-230 AD and nearly 1500 years later her remains were exhumed and her body was discovered to be perfectly preserved, as if she were asleep in the same position in which she’d been buried.

We know a lot about human decomposition because those clever forensic scientists have created body farms to study human decomp under various conditions.  Without embalming and in a neutral climate and not in a coffin, body remains liquify into a dark sludge at around 30 days.  The body will skeletonize anywhere between one month and several years, depending on the environment, burial, etc.  If undisturbed, bones will dissolve in 20 years in fertile soil, though in sand they might last for centuries.  So what keeps this from happening in the cases of Wilhelmina, St. Cecilia and many others?

First, embalming can preserve a body for long periods of time.  Second, a closed anaerobic environment will slow things down since bacteria responsible for much of the tissue breakdown need oxygen.  But a large percentage of uncorrupted bodies have no such protection.

In a small town high in the Colombian Andes, Clovisnerys Bejarano kneels before a glass box holding the petrified corpse of her mother, who died 30 years ago but looks as if she might just be asleep.  Saturnina Torres de Bejarano is dressed in the same rose-print dress and green woolen jersey she was interred in, clasping a fake red carnation in her eerily well-preserved hands.

“She still has her little brown face, her braids, her hair,” Bejarano remarked at her mother’s final resting place in a museum displaying her body and those of 13 others from the town of San Bernardo.  All became spontaneously and mysteriously mummified after death.  “When all this began, people were a little incredulous about what was happening,” said museum guide Rocio Vergara.  “But as time went on, it became more and more frequent to find bodies in this condition.”  Some even had their eyes, usually among the first body parts to decompose.

Despite numerous attempts by experts to explain the phenomenon (which has also occurred in countries such as Mexico and Italy), the reason for the spontaneous mummification in San Bernardo has never been pinned down.  There is no clear pattern to the uncorruptibles, they were different ages when they died, of no particular gender or body type.  The climate of the area is humid, which should aid in decomposition.  Locals prefer to believe that some bodies were spared because “the person was so good,” says Vergara.  “The people think it is a reward after death by God.”  Then he stands back to look at one of the corpses and his slight smile morphs into a look of concern.  “But you know, Senor, I am not so sure of that.  There are others who consider it a punishment.”  

Tales Of The Ghost Car (Best read in a dark cemetery at night by a hippie on LSD.  But you’ll do.)

It was a dark and stormy night, foreboding even for Halloween.  Lightning flashed, thunder rolled and rain pelted down to lock everyone in place.  Alas, poor Timothy, never the bravest of souls, was left on his own at a motel in the middle of nowhere after a foolish argument with his girlfriend Roseanne.  The power was out, the phones useless and Tim decided the only possible way out was to hitch a ride on the lonely road which fronted the motel.  He stood in his doorway, half blinded by the swirling storm, contemplating a dreadful fate.  Then, providence reared its head…a vehicle slowly approaching from the west, dark in color with no headlight beams to light the night.  Timothy tried to wave it down, but the mystery car had no intention of stopping.  In desperation, Timmy did a very uncharacteristic thing—he ran alongside the creeping vehicle, hoping the driver had slowed down to pick him up.  Tim was wrong.

Sopping wet, Timothy snapped open the door and jumped into the passenger seat, thrilled to be saved.  When he looked to his left, however, he was shocked to see there was no driver.  This ghost car was headed who knows where on its own power in its own good time.  The sole passenger was terrified but decided to stay put and wait for signs of electricity along the dark and spooky highway.  Adding to his discomfort, the driver’s side window was down, admitting inside the furies of the storm.  Timothy tried to raise it but it seemed locked in position.  Tim had an eerie feeling that the vehicle---and the entire night--- was laughing at him, positioning him for some dire fate.  Then something shocking happened.

Timothy’s conveyance faced a sharp curve up ahead, but showed no sign of turning.  Suddenly, a ghostly white hand appeared from nowhere and turned the wheel, then it completely disappeared.  Tim had his head in his lap, he wished to see no more of this but he felt he had to watch the road.  When another curve appeared, the hand returned and Timothy was beside himself with fear.  Was this car taking him directly to hell?  Would he ever find a way out of this nightmare?

Then, incredibly, lights appeared ahead…neon enticements from a small tavern…a possible oasis from his dastardly plight.  Salvation was at hand!  Timothy leaped from the car and ran inside the pub, grateful to be alive.  And no, the bar was not full of vampires waiting to suck the blood out of him, just plain folks like you and I.  Tim sat himself down for a bracing drink and surveyed the customers---a friendly lot, all in all, and in surprising numbers considering the brutal conditions outside.  But then, like a shot from a gun, the front door banged open and two drenched customers stumbled in, dripping wet and very angry.

“There he is, Joe!” one of them yelled to the other, pointing directly at Timothy.  “There’s the asshole who jumped in our car while we were pushing it!” 

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com  

Waiting To Exhale

Seven books of the Chinese Tao which date back to circa 400 BC focus entirely on breathing.  Yeah, we know, you’re waiting for the movie.  Even earlier, Hindus considered breath and spirit to be the same thing, describing elaborate practices meant to balance breathing and preserve mental and physical health.  The Buddhists used breathing not only to lengthen their lives but to reach higher planes of consciousness.  Many practitioners of yoga believe the breath contains the body’s life force, or prana, and that working with it can improve health and wellbeing.  Yogic breathing exercises have exhibited a powerful effect on the lungs of patients with severe asthma, decreasing the histamine response that triggers an attack by as much as 20%.  Deep breathing definitely increases oxygen levels in the body, which is essential for the proper functioning of body and mind.  Breathing exercises can also ease tension and stiffness in the body, leading to increased flexibility and mobility.  By focusing on the breath, we can release tension in the body, allowing us to move more freely and comfortably.

No, breathing can’t do everything.  It can’t cure Human Werewolf Syndrome, allow you to leap tall buildings at a single bound or turn J.D.Vance into The Dancing Queen.  But like all Eastern medicines, breathing techniques are brilliant as preventative medicine, a way to retain balance in the body so that milder problems don’t blossom into serious health issues.  For most of us, breathing is a passive action, something we just do.  Breathe and live, stop breathing and die.  But breathing is not binary and it’s not just that we do it that’s important…it’s how we do it.

James Nestor, a noted respiratory researcher, says this: “For me, the perfect breath is this; inhale for 5.5 seconds, then exhale for 5.5 seconds.  That’s 5.5 breaths a minute for a total of about 5.5 liters of air.  You can practice this perfect breathing for a few minutes or a few hours.  When we breathe like this, the circulation in the brain and body will increase while the burden on the heart decreases.  All the while, the diaphragm will drop lower and rise higher, allowing more air to enter the lungs and assisting in pushing blood throughout the body.  It’s for this reason the diaphragm is sometimes referred to a a ‘second heart,’ because it not only beats to its own rhythm but also affects the rate and strength of the heartbeat.”

Nestor should know.  Before his revelations, he’d contracted pneumonia three years running, which is death-rattle territory.  He spent most of his time at home, wheezing.  Finally, after a scary visit to his doctor, he listened to some medical advice and signed up for an introductory course in breathing.  It was there he was introduced to a technique called Sudarshan Kriya.  Here’s Nestor on the experience:

“A bushy-browed woman locked the front door, sat in the middle of the group, inserted a cassette tape into a beat-up boom box and pressed ‘play’.  She told us to close our eyes, inhale slowly through our noses, then to exhale slowly.  Focus on our breath.  I kept breathing but nothing happened…no calmness, no tension release.  After 20 minutes, I was getting irritable, even thought of getting up and leaving, but I didn’t want to be rude.  Then something happened.  I wasn’t conscious of any transformation taking place.  I never felt myself relax or the swarm of nagging thoughts leave my head.  But it was if I’d been taken from one place and deposited somewhere else.  It happened in an instant.”  If this sounds a lot like someone getting stoned for the first time, James swears there was no marijuana smoke in the room.

“There was something wet on my head.  I lifted my hand to wipe it off and noticed my hair was sopping wet.  I ran my hand down my face, felt the sting of sweat in my eyes and tasted salt.  I looked down at my torso and saw sweat blotches on my sweater and jeans.  Everyone had been covered in jackets and hoodies to keep warm but I had somehow sweated through my clothes as if I’d just run a marathon.  The instructor asked if I’d been sick or had a fever.  I told her I felt perfectly fine.  The next day I felt even better.  I had a feeling of calm and quiet that I hadn’t experienced in a long time.  I slept well.  The little things in life didn’t bother me as much.  The tension was gone from my shoulders and neck.  This feeling lasted for a few days before slowly fading away.”  James Nestor went back to the teacher’s place for another session but found only a note and a silver bullet.  “My job here is done,” the note said.  James could swear he heard hoofbeats in the distance.

Breathe Your Troubles Away

Author Kirkland Smulders, the victim of several panic attacks a day during her postpartum depression, was desperate to get a reprieve from her dilemma, which came with a side dish of relentless insomnia.  In a last-ditch attempt to avoid hospitalization, she visited CBT therapist Dr. Robin Hart, who taught her a simple breathing technique that she should start every time she felt a wave of panic coming on.  Hart recorded it on her phone and she clung to that recording for dear life.  Incredibly, it entirely altered her existence.

“It was so simple,” says Smulders, “just breathe in through the nose for 4 seconds, then hold four seconds and breathe out slowly through pursed lips for 8 seconds.  It worked!  Gradually, as I practiced the technique on a daily basis, I felt more confident I had a reliable tool to control my panic instead of letting it control me.”

Ten years went by and there were no further attacks.  When she felt anxiety rise, Kirkland simply went to her modus operandi.  She became absorbed with the science of breathing and interviewed several leading practitioners of the art.  In one of her articles, teacher Richie Bostock likened breathing to “a tool, a Swiss army knife which can be used for many different purposes: to calm us down, rev us up, increase our feelings of happiness, help heal our trauma and enhance sexual and spiritual experiences.”  Whoa!  some of our readers just woke up.

Another Smulders interviewee, Rebecca Dennis of The Breathing Tree used different breathing techniques to release what she called “stuck energy.”  “It was a form of somatic therapy which involved lying on the floor, breathing in a certain way and eventually crying a lot due to some emotional release.  Then a feeling of exhaustion but also complete peace would sweep over me and I felt cleansed, happier and lighter.”  And Tom Hanks tried to tell us there was no crying in therapy. 

Requiem For A Non-Believer

“I squeezed her hand three times, our code for I’m here, I care, I love you,” recalls Stuart Sandeman.  “I was trying to be strong for her but as I stared across the desk at her doctor, I was barely breathing.  It was only a couple of months earlier that my girlfriend, Tiff, had found a pea-sized lump on her chest.  Until that day, we’d been having the time of our lives, a couple of 30-year-olds without a care in the world.  Then, cancer joined the party and dragged the needle violently across the record of our lives.  Now, we were here sitting in silence in the oncology unit of the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles waiting for the specialist to give us the news.  Ultimately, we learned the cancer had metastasized, with tumors in her liver, spleen and brain.  When Tiff passed away six month later, I just shut down, bouncing between outbursts of anger and complete withdrawal.”  Sandeman wound up in a breathing workshop with his mom, a gift he’d bought her for Mother’s Day.

A smiling session leader showed him to a seat in the sharing circle.  “Jeez, I thought.  I hate this sort of thing.  They put on some New Age trance music and everyone in the room began to puff.  I opened a wary eye to make sure the whole thing wasn’t some sort of prank and saw my mom was having a high old time, so I stuck with it.”

After a couple of rounds of breathing and shaking and shouting, Stuart was more than ready to can the experiment.  Then, a funny thing happened on the way to the exit ramp.  “It was SO bizarre,” he smiled.  “Suddenly, I could feel electricity surging through my entire body, the kind of vibrations you feel when standing in front of a giant festival speaker.   A wave of emotion roared up inside me.  And then, for the first time in a very long while, I cried and cried and cried.  Not only did I feel the weight of grief being pulled off me, but I felt a lifetime of tension I’d been unknowingly carrying around just dissolve into the atmosphere.  I felt a very strong presence surrounding me and had the distinct feeling that Tiff was there.  It was weird and powerful and life-changing.”

Who could imagine that something as simple as breathing could transform a life, especially in a rigid doubter like Stuart Sandeman.  But it did.  “It became a regular practice for me.  My energy increased, my mind cleared, my fitness levels went through the roof.  Even the voice in my head began to sound a little kinder.  I threw myself into the world of breathing, studied a number of modalities.  Read research journals, hung out with consultants, yogis, healers and gurus.  ME!  And get this---eventually I set up my own small private practice with the goal of introducing more people to this life-changing power.  It was a miracle.”

Many cultures have a long history of using breathing to help people endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.  The Chinese qi, Sanskrit prana, Egyptian ka, Hebrew nefesh and ruah, Greek psuche and pneuma, Latin anima and spiritus, Polynesian mana, Iroquoian orenda all highlight the importance of breathing to the body and mind and its connection to something deeper.  And none of them care whether you believe in it or not.

James Nestor's book on the new science of a lost art

That’s all, folks….

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