Kathygrams

Apparently, we live in The Age of Breaking News…to hear the TV networks tell it, there seems to be no other kind.  This is a serious challenge for your smaller news organizations like The Flying Pie, which occasionally must depend on the kindness of strangers to discover newsworthy events and some not so newsworthy but funny to talk about.  Fortunately for us, we have the services of ace reporter Kathleen Knight, who prowls the Earth for all of the above, compiles the particulars in her spartan News Cave and sends them in on an irregular basis.  We just apply the frosting, put the icing on the cake and light the candle.  Here’s the latest:

Exploding Manhole Covers Terrorize America

On April 21 of this year, a family in Poughkeepsie, New York had a close call from a new danger lurking in America’s city streets….the dreaded “exploding manhole.”  The fam was strolling down the boulevard after a nice Easter egg hunt when suddenly a manhole exploded, sending a raft of scary concrete and other debris flying through the air.”I was like, ‘Oh my God, I don’t know where to go,’ it was awful,” testified grandma Lisa Davis, who dodged the flying detritus.  “It just barely missed us.  I grabbed up the grandkids and ran for the hills.  I couldn’t really run straight ahead of me to the corner because the manhole there blew up, too.”  At least three manholes joined in the chain reaction.  Videos of the explosion show flying debris missing Davis and the kids by less than one foot.  Firefighters responding to the call found high levels of gas in the craters left in the pavement.

Apparently, the Poughkeepsie blast wasn’t a one-time phenomenon.  Current estimates suggest there are between 3000 and 5000 manhole events in the United States annually.  In New York City alone, Con Edison reports over 2000 incidents a year with many being explosions.  There is a famous 2014 video of a taxi driver being injured when a manhole cover flew through his window without so much as a fare-thee-well.  In January, 2025, there were several internet videos of exploding manhole covers in Worcester, Mass.  Other large cities have been the victims of similar blasts, perhaps occurring due to aging infrastructure and corrosion from road salt and gas buildup.  Traffic vibrations, rodents biting wires and severe weather can also contribute to these incidents.  Police advise caution in known manhole problem areas and “under no circumstances should pedestrians ever stand on manholes,” according to the National Safety Council (before it was dissolved by President Donald Trump, a notorious patron of chaos).

It’s Against The Law (Somewhere)!

Some of us think there are too many laws.  Why should it be illegal to smoke agricultural products or dance naked in public or take your guns to town, Bill?  As an infamous vice-president once said, “We have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism.”  It’s difficult keeping track of all these laws.  A person could be doing something completely natural and the next thing you know the long arm of the law reaches down and plucks them up, which explains why your friends Pancho and Lefty are sitting in the calaboose merely for sucking down a few mushrooms. The Flying Pie has researched this sordid matter and come up with a raft of dubious crimes nobody knows about.  Herewith:

1. In Alabama, you may not chain your alligator to a fire hydrant.  We Floridians have no such foolish regulations, of course, since we are well aware that sometimes a person might need to go to the bathroom while walking his alligator.  It’s the height of rudeness to bring your reptile into the lavatory, so measures must be taken.  Under no circumstances, however, should an alligator ever be chained to a baby carriage.

Coincidentally, it is also against the law in Georgia to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole.  This obviously makes far more sense.

2. In Minnesota, it’s illegal to cross state lines with a duck on your head.  Well, you know those Minnesotans, always minding someone else’s business.  That said, all ducks must be kept at eye level or below when entering or exiting the Dakotas, Wisconsin or Iowa.  The law does not apply to people visiting Canada, where ducks are held in high esteem.

3. In North Carolina, it’s illegal to plow a field with an elephant.  This makes no sense at all.  Pachyderms are big and strong and perfectly cut out for the practice.  The American Federation of Elephant Labor bemoans the loss of job opportunities for its constituents and has taken this foolish law to court.

4. In Connecticut, a pickle must bounce to be legal.  No arguing with this one, which resulted from a 1940s scandal where disreputable vendors were selling bogus pickles, a heinous crime if ever there was one.  Here you are ready to bite into your delicious peanut butter and pickle sandwich and UGH!---a rubber pickle rears its ugly head.  Technically, if your pickle doesn’t bounce, it’s a cucumber.

5. In Arizona, it’s illegal to let a donkey sleep in a bathtub.  Well, who would, you might ask?  Alas, back in the 1920s, a careless asskeeper did this and the bathtub washed away in a flood, causing valiant but costly attempts at rescue.  Not wanting a repeat of the shenanigans, the legislature put its collective foot down.

6. In Alabama (again), you can’t keep an ice cream cone in your back pocket.  No, really.  Apparently, back in the 1800s, horse thieves would steal horses by using cones to lure them away, claiming the horses followed them home and their mothers said they could keep them.

7. In Sarasota, Florida, you may not sing while wearing a swimsuit.  No one can explain this one, but you know how fussy those Sarasotans are.  Maybe the law is the result of a riot at a karaoke bar on the beach or some infidels wearing their swim togs to church.  Nobody knows.  But it’s the law.

8. In Oklahoma, making ugly faces at dogs is a crime.  And punishable by a fine or even jail time if the face is particularly scary.  “We like our dogs in Oklahoma,” said Odell Cox, of Enid.  “If your pug gives you the stinkeye, just smile and toss him a biscuit.”

9. In Alaska, no pushing moose out of aircraft.  Alaskan police want you to know they take this law very seriously, even though it only happened once.  On that occasion, the moose pusher was extremely inebriated and fell out of the plane with the moose.  “We don’t want this thing happening on a regular basis,” said Sergeant Ralph Preston of the Alaska Mounted Police.  “It’s a real mess.” 

It’s Flush

If you happen to be passing through The Colony, Texas around 11 p.m. any night of the week and your fun options don’t look too perky, you might want to drive over to Barney Smith’s Toilet Seat Art Museum at the Truck Yard brewpub.  The Museum showcases the life work of  Mr. Barney, who opened the place in 2019 when he was a sprightly 97 years old and it contains 1400 painted toilet seats of all descriptions.  Barney passed on to his heavenly reward at age 98, but the toilet seats linger on.  Smith opened his original museum in 1992 in a large garage in his backyard, garnering national attention and plenty of tourists.  His impending retirement brought the Truck Yard boys into the picture.  “I appreciated them wanting to put my work on display and to show the world what I did for 97 years of my life,” said Barney.  I’d like to be remembered for how a person could save a lot of stuff that is being destroyed and showing there’s something you can do with it,”

The Truck Yard has picked up the ball and carried it down the field.  One of their ads reads, “DON’T LET YOUR NEXT EVENT BE CRAPPY!  Host your corporate event, birthday party or shindig in the Toilet Seat Museum, which can seat up to 60 people with additional standing room on the outside balcony.”  The art, by the way, is fabulous.  

“Quick, Robin---The Goatmobile!”

In dusty 1937, a Columbus, Ohio farmer anxious to emulate his more wealthy neighbors in possessing an easygoing conveyance created the Goatmobile.  A.W. Nelson was short on assets but long on imagination, not to mention being the proud owner of one large he-goat.  After considerable cogitation at the local alehouse, A.W. conceived the clever scheme of powering his new vehicle by hooking his goat up to a bottomless cage with four wheels; the cage would have a seat atop for the driver and a sort of steering wheel attached to the goat’s harness.  (Alas, Mr. Nelson neglected to protect his brilliant idea by patent, leaving the invention open to manipulation by scurrilous fortune-seekers not averse to chicanery, so go to it all you knockoff artists.)  The Goatmobile was born in an era marked by innovation and experimentation, a time of hardship fostered by the Great Depression.  And well before the rise of the American Society to Prevent Conniving with Goats (ASPCG).

The Ultimate Ant Farm

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to Brussels, a couple of Belgian peckerheads were kiboshed by Nairobi police for trying to smuggle 5000 Kenyan ants out of the country,  Oh, the shame!  Teenagers Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, a likely alias, were given a choice of paying a $7700 fine or serving 12 months in prison for violating wildlife conservation laws.  Authorities claimed the ants were destined for European and Asian ant markets (There are ANT markets?  How about RED ants?  Come and take a few thousand of ours, please) in an emerging trend of trafficking lesser-known wildlife species.  Magistrate Njeri Thuku, sitting at the court of Kenya’s main airport said the species included some valuable messor cephalotes, a distinctive large red-colored harvester ant native to East Africa.  “These critters are all the rage with snotty European ant galleries,” she sniffed.  Mr. Dennis Ng’ang’a, who was supposed to pick up the ants from the lawbreakers claimed he didn’t know ant traffic was illegal because many ants are sold and eaten locally.

Crazy Guys

You may not have noticed, but in the rolling hills outside Williamstown, Kentucky there is a massive wooden structure which looks a lot like the Bible’s description of Noah’s Ark.  The thing is 510 feet long and 85 feet wide, lots bigger than your local football field, and is said to be the largest timber-frame critter in the world.  The entire construct, including piers that raise the ark about 15 feet above the earth (like Noah’s) is about 10 stories tall.  It even has cages in it just like the original.  It’s sitting there because a crazy guy named Ken Ham decided it would be a good idea to build it.  Snicker if you will, but even Zippy the Pinhead would have to admit Ken is having fun now.

“We wanted to show the feasibility of the Biblical account,” says Ham, a fervid Creationist.  “We wanted to make our case that the story of Noah could really be true.  We wanted to take people out of the modern world and into Noah’s.”  Mission accomplished, Mr. Ken.

The awesome project cost Ham a salty $101 million, almost enough to hire Billy Strings’ band for the whole weekend.  Don’t cry for him, Argentina, because he’s getting plenty of it back from zealots who want to savor Ark Encounter, the Christian Disneyland in the mountains.  On Deck 1, you’ll be introduced to “the kinds of animals that were on Noah’s Ark,” including dinosaurs, pakicetids and a sort of long-necked giraffe.  Um, Ken…about those dinos…

On Deck 2, you get to learn why God sent the flood, how Noah’s family cared for the animals, what ark life was like and how to load a T. Rex onto a boat (very carefully).  You can also get your photo taken by the ark door, which features a picture of God’s salvation.  If you’re in a big hurry, you can get a bird’s-eye view of the whole shebang by soaring past the ark on Zip Line Canopy Tours.

Not satisfied with a mere 510-foot ark, Ken is now building an enormous replica of the first-century city of Jerusalem, scheduled to open sometime in 2026 just south of Cincinnati.  Now all you Reds fans can schedule the ultimate doubleheader.  Unfortunately, however, due to circumstances beyond Ham’s control, the City of Jerusalem will have no major dinosaurs.  As Emily Litella once said, it’s always something.

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com

Austin, 1962; The Way We Were

Those of us who hit the ground in 1940 lived in authoritarian times.  You heeded your parents, obeyed the nuns (mostly), respected the mayor and admired the President.  If your mother got a note from the principal, you were wrong and she was right, case closed.  The most dreaded sentence you could hear after a lapse in judgment was “Wait until your father gets home.”  To make matters worse, we had four (count ‘em 4) cops living in the neighborhood.  We either toed the line or kept our transgressions on the downlow.  It wasn’t any different in other neighborhoods, or cities, for that matter.  We were under the heel of the boot, and even the soft slippers of the monsignor.  Still, there were occasional murmurs of resistance.  A few of us in Catholic high schools started noting some inconsistencies in our religious tenets.  When we  dutifully brought them to the attention of the Marist Brothers who taught us, we were given short shrift rather than deft explanations.  I can recall one particularly grumpy conversation about God being an “uncaused cause.”  It ended with “Sit down, Mr. Killeen, we’ve heard enough out of you today.”

About this time, the Beatnik Era began picking up speed despite its adherents’ disheveled lifestyle and disagreeable attitudes.  What started with a few disenchanted writers and novelists like Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac blossomed into a full-scale phenomenon by 1957 when Kerouac’s occasional stream-of-consciousness On The Road novel introduced us to a cast of characters who were playing a very different ballgame.  Every adventurous young boy in America suddenly imagined hitting the road, living off the land and exploring the country with Sal Paradise.  Sal took his orders from noone, flew by the seat of his pants, shot first and asked questions later.  Nobody cared when the once iconic J. Edgar Hoover railed against “Communists, Eggheads and Beatniks.”  Slim tolerance for beatniks morphed into further investigation, amusement and gradual acceptance.  The original beats even became a tourist attraction in San Francisco’s North Beach.  Everyday people started using words like “cool,” “crazy,” “dig” and “like.”  Suddenly, it was alright to challenge authority…maybe even cool.

Despite being accepted by a dozen colleges, most of them closer to home, I opted for relative independence, getting on a train and heading for Stillwater, Oklahoma.  It wasn’t as much fun as hopping a boxcar but sometimes you have to compromise with the mother who’s footing the bills.  By this time, many of us in college recognized some fraying in the system.  The once-admired college president was often now more of a political appointee than an educational leader, a peace-keeper inserted to deter the natives from getting restless.

At Oklahoma State, I sought to revive the moribund campus humor magazine and was introduced to the novel concept of red tape.  Rather than simply telling you no, the administration employed a tool called a “committee” to pass judgment on unsavory projects.  Apparently, the OSU Alumni Association found the previous magazine raunchy and disagreeable and wasn’t in the mood for a do-over.  I decided to publish the Charlatan anyway and sell it illegally in the dorms.  That’s what Sal Paradise would have done.

Now back in those days, universities had “advisors,” trusty old academicians familiar with the system who would help new students adjust to college life.  My adviser called and said we needed to have a little meeting about my new project.  He was a kindly old fellow, a mellow ex-journalist counting off his days and truly sympathetic with his advisees.  We’ll call him Mr. Mann.  Mr. Mann smilingly advised that the University had weaponry in their arsenal.  They could kick you out of school if you became too much of a problem.  It’s fine to be a rebel when there’s nothing to lose, a whole different story when someone can “revoke your privileges.”  He didn’t exactly ask what would Mother think if OSU kicked me out on my ass, but he made his points clear enough.  I told him that in a few years Franki Valli was going to write a song telling me to walk like a man, talk like a man, so I might as well get an early start.  He smiled and wished me good luck.  Nobody kicked me out of school, but they became very testy when I printed a “University Is Going To Hell” issue.  Sometimes it just takes one person to start the ball rolling.  After the dawn of the Charlatan, the OSU college newspaper started calling out the administration on several fronts.  Nobody threw them out, either.

In the process of running the Charlatan, I ran across other college humor mags across the country who were fighting their own battles.  The best of these was the exceptional University of Texas Ranger in Austin, edited by Bill Helmer, who maintained a clever balance between being outrageous and infuriating the UT magazine censors.  Gilbert Shelton, a cartoonist on the Ranger staff, began a correspondence which lasted many months, and eventually visited me at my Massachusetts home one Thanksgiving.  It was there the first rumblings of a Wonder Wart Hog comic strip took place.  I wrote the script for the first one and it was published the following year.  Shelton said he would be returning to Austin as Ranger editor in 1962, following Helmer’s reign, and he invited me to come, sleep on his hair couch and help him put out the magazine.  In mid-summer of that year, I pulled up in his driveway in my Cadillac Superior Model Hearse, which was on its last legs, the victim of a disagreeable radiator.  As I pulled to a stop at his door, the radiator gave one giant heave of smoke and its last breath of hot water flew into the blue Texas skies.  Gilbert Shelton emerged from his condemned apartment with a smile.  “Well, Killeen,” he said, “you sure know how to make an entrance.”

Austin-town 

To say the following weeks were revelatory, exciting and productive would be a gross understatement.  The Ranger staff was seriously deranged, especially one Joe E. Brown, who got drunk one night, climbed to the top of Austin’s tallest building and scrawled “Fuck You, Sky King!” in yellow paint. on the roof.  I asked him why.  “Because I want to make sure he sees it when he flies over,” said Joe.  Oh, okay, I get it now.

Then there was Ranger poet-laureate Lieuen Adkins, a master punster and heavy drinker, who still lived at home with his parents.  Adkins had a curfew and if he didn’t make it home in time, he slept on a sofa on the porch.  Lieuen was like the coyote to Shelton’s Roadrunner in the old cartoons, always just a little too inept to fool the master, as a story in Shelton’s letter below illustrates.  On one occasion, Lieuen finally attracted a girlfriend, a wild high-school girl named Tami Dean, who plotted to interrupt his virginity one night when her parents were out of town.  All went well until the father unexpectedly returned to find his daughter en flagrante delicto.  Which would have been bad enough if he hadn’t been a prominent member of the English Department faculty.  By now you can easily guess what Adkin’s major was.

Later that year, Lieuen decided for some reason to become a candidate for the Student Senate, despite no previous political experience.  He somehow talked himself into thinking he had a realistic chance.  On the night of the election, he squirreled himself away with a bottle of whiskey while the ballots were being tabulated, only mounting the steps of the counting-house when the results were posted on a giant green chalkboard.  When he saw the sad vote totals, he went into a disappointed rage and ran at the board, trying to punch a hole in it.  “He failed, of course.” wrote Shelton.

The Summer of 1962 was filled with glorious events like the Great Waterballoon Wars, which began when Joe E. Brown and the West Side Boys invaded the impregnable fortress of the East Side Boys, also known as Shelton’s apartment.  Seeking to place Lieuen Adkins in a safe place where he could do no harm, Shelton posted him upstairs, guarding the ammunition dump.  Spies of the West Side Boys learned of this folly, sneaked in early and tied up Lieuen.  When the battle started, they began picking off East Side Boys below from the ammunition dump balcony to the befuddlement of all, leading to yet another verse in the eventual Ballad of Lieuen Adkins.

The Summer of ‘62 was an awakening for many of us, a jailbreak, a first attempt to push the envelope to its limits.  After all, who among us had ever before enjoyed gagging down peyote, traipsing through bridge tunnels listening for bats or sailing across Lake Travis, picking off errant floating detritus with pistols?  Not many.  Due to the blessings of good fortune, we recently stumbled upon an antique missive from Gilbert Shelton to Bill Helmer, a genuine relic recalling recalling some of the pleasures of those good old days.  You’ll laugh until you cry. 

A Letter From Gilbert Shelton To Bill Helmer, August 1962

”Greetings, Helmer.  A wild summer season has just come to a close this morning with the departures of Joe Brown and Karen Kirkland, Joe home to Oklahoma and K.K. to San Antone, leaving a destitute Shelton in Austin to live on other folks’ charity.  Tony Bell went home about a week ago, Bill Killeen hitchhiked to Houston yesterday to start a new era in the Adventures of Poddy in the city of his birth.  My brother went home to College Station simultaneously.  And here is Shelton, trapped in Austin with only the birds and Lieuen Adkins, the Super-Sparrow, to talk to.  It’s been a good time,though---old Shelton’s got lots of prizes.

Looks like I’ll not be able to make it to N.Y.---only  twenty days left before registration and I have to write a Ranger and a delinquent seminar paper in the interim.  And besides, I’m broker’n a doodlebug.  Cashed a check for $1.50 at Faulkner’s this morning and the guy said he sure hated to take the fifteen-cent check-cashing charge but he had to.  I ate and drank for free yesterday at a foreign student picnic out at Ted Klein’s new lake house, but unfortunately they started opening the beer early in the afternoon and didn’t get the food until late, resulting in the near destruction of Shelton and his crew, who hadn’t eaten since noon the day before. 

The Great Gin Bottle Caper

For the two days before that, Lieuen had unwittingly supplied much liquor for Gilbert, Karen and Joe: he started buying gin, which unfortunately (or fortunately, as the case may be) looks just like water, so when he hid his still-unfinished bottle in the closet when he left (still can’t take liquor home) we found it after a diligent search and drank it all up and filled the bottle back up with water.  Lieuen came in the next day, got his bottle, mixed a drink and had drunk about half of it when Killeen, aware of the plot, walked over and picked up the gin bottle, asking Lieuen what he’d give him if he’d swill it, straight, hot and completely, and Lieuen promised free meals for all if such a deed were to be accomplished, knowing Killeen to be a teetotaler. Killeen drank it down.  Lieuen continued to gape in wonder for several minutes before a dim light of realization started to appear.  We made him buy us hot dogs.  And Lieuen, plans of vengeance rapidly forming in his pea mind, got another bottle of gin, drank part of it, switched the remainder to another bottle, and filled the original bottle up with water and hid it again in the closet, bidding us farewell with a smug grin.  We found both bottles, drank the gin, replaced it with water and re-hid them.  The first rule of war, Lieuen, is never to underestimate your foe.

Days Of Wine & Peyote

Karen missed the midnight bus to San Antone and had to catch the 5:00 one, at which time it was discovered that between us there was not enough money for a single ticket, so we had to go wake up Joe in the middle of the night to borrow 50 cents, and then the bus was late so we both sat on the benches in front of the capitol and played Nothingville.  Joe left later this morning in his ailing Renault with nothing but one dime and a credit card to sustain him.

Ted Klein and Co. seem to be happy as can be.  Ted has gained fifteen pounds.  They’ve got another artist living with them, somebody I didn’t recognize from the old days.  Frank and Robbie Stack were in town for a few days and we had a beer-bust over at Jon Bracker’s house, but I didn’t have much of a chance to talk to Stack.

Right after school was out, Joe and Tony and Hugh Lowe and I whupped up a big batch of peyote, simmering it on the stove and then straining the bilious green juice through a cloth.  You only have to drink 2 to 4 ounces of this juice for a good high.  Maybe I’ll do it again tonight---Joe left some behind.  Anyway, we split up into teams, Joe and Hugh at their house and Tony and I at mine, so that when we got sick the lavatory facilities wouldn’t be overcrowded.  Gilbert got sick first and worst: I could only hold the mixture and my soda-pop down for fifteen minutes, and then during the next 45 minutes I had four great retching-sprees, while Tony only had two.  I certainly wished I were dead there for a few minutes: peyote makes you sick from vertigo, motion-sickness, rather than just stomach irritation.  Yecchh.  But then after I had finished being sick and lain thrashing on the bed for a while, everything became all right and I had a good high that lasted for six or eight hours, during which time we walked all over town marveling at things.

And then there was the day that Tony and I, following the example of The Great Helmer, boarded up the bathroom door and made a swimming pool out of Shelton’s bathroom.  The water only got about 18 inches deep, though.

Finally finished up the first Ranger.  It looks pretty good, although it is primarily cartoons.  There’s a picture of ol’ Helmer in it.

Ah hell.  Nothing else has happened newsworthy.  And I’m not expecting much of anything to happen, either.  Maybe now I can get some work done.  I’m writing a book of amazing adventures, deriving my inspiration from Gilbert’s adventures of the past year, which, I might add, never ceased to amaze old Gilbert himself.  Aw hell damn.  Drop a line.  Ranger address.  I might even be sleeping in the Ranger office from now on if it doesn’t cool off here.  Later….Shelton”

Epilogue/bill killeen

Well, it didn’t cool off one bit, didn’t even rain for 55 straight days.  When it finally did early one evening, the UT powers-that-be lit up the Texas Tower a bright orange in celebration and Janis Joplin pulled off her upper garments and ran around a parking lot half-naked in the rain.

As for not expecting anything to happen…well, Gilbert was pretty much incorrect about that.  There was the very exciting First Annual Bicycle Race and Treasure Hunt (which Gilbert won) where clues were left in busy places like the Austin Police Station, Scholz Garten, etc., in which the three dozen competitors had to dash through rowdy mobs to find them.  There were the non-stop antics of disaster songwriter John Clay, who penned Road To Mingus (“A decent person ain’t got no chance against a reckless, speedin’ train”) and (Anson Runaway (“As they got bigger, they took bigger things, becoming a juvenile criminal ring”).   There was the propitious discovery of Threadgill’s music room and cheese bar, where pickers from the UT English Department meshed comfortably with rednecks.  And there were the weekly Wednesday Folksings at the UT Student Union, so spectacular they caused Janis to quit her waitress job at the Pancake House to participate.  Janis later hosted the ultimate late-night party at her digs where a songfest broke out, drawing carloads of police and the best one-liner of the summer.  When asked by the cops if she knew there was a little old lady dying next door, Janis said, “No, but hum a few bars and we’ll fake it.”

Austin, 1962---The Way We Were.  There was no place like it.  Ever.  Oh, and yes, there is now a song titled “There’s A Little Old Lady Dying Next Door.”  But you already figured that one out, didn’t you?

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com    

 

ALS---The Gift That Keeps On Giving

If you’re ever given the choice of having your brains beat out and your testicles stomped by the Hairy Organ Motorcycle gang or contracting a disease called Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, take the beatdown.  At the end of the first ordeal, chances are you’ll still be alive, even if it’s with one less kidney.  At the end of the second, you most certainly won’t.

Like the fog, ALS creeps in on little cat feet, you barely can tell it’s taken up residence in your motor neurons, the nerve cells that control voluntary muscle movement.  Then one day, you get an odd twitch in your calf muscle or your ankle turns in or you throw the dog’s ball the wrong way.  No big deal until it happens a couple more times or you unexplainably trip and fall.  You go to the doctor, but a casual inspection finds nothing.  About 40% of the victims of ALS are initially misdiagnosed as suffering from another condition.  The disease puts on oversized eyebrows, a fake nose and glasses and is often mistaken for Groucho Marx.  You begin to wonder if you’re going nuts.

Eventually you hire a better detective and he gives you the bad news.  Stunned, you wobble home and turn on old tapes of Lou Gehrig, an early victim, retiring from baseball and telling a sold-out Yankee Stadium crowd he considers himself “the luckiest man on the face of the earth,” which he is not.  Merit points to Lou for putting on a brave face, but he had no idea what he was in for.  Nobody really knows until they sit inside a broken-down vehicle where none of the controls work.

Early symptoms can include difficulty with fine motor skills, muscle cramping and fatigue.  As the disease progresses, it can affect speech, swallowing and breathing.  Eventually, the walker morphs into a wheelchair and then a bed.  Muscle weakness spreads to more parts of the body, muscles shrink from lack of use, dysphagia leads to weight loss and nutritional deficiencies.  Weakening respiratory muscles cause shortness of breath and eventually require ventilation.  Bouts of random laughing and crying can occur.  The emotional baggage that comes with the disease wouldn’t fit in the cargo bay of an Airbus 380, mirroring the stages of intense grief---initial shock and denial followed by anger, bargaining and profound depression as individuals struggle to cope with the implications of a shortened lifespan and constant physical decline, all the while knowing The Lone Ranger will not be dramatically showing up with an antidote.  Take how bad you think you might feel and multiply by 100.  It’s the ultimate shitstorm.  What did I do to deserve this?

“Incurable” Is A Frustrating Word

Okay, doc, I’ve got ALS---there must be something we can do.  Sorry pal, it’s a long walk off a short pier.  Nobody gets out alive.  The lack of a cure stems from a complex interplay of factors, including the relative rarity of the disease, the diverse range of genetic and environmental factors that can contribute to its development and the difficulty in targeting the specific mechanisms of motor neuron degeneration.  Despite more than 85 years of scientific struggling, there are still no drugs that can stop or reverse the progression of ALS.  For bacterial infections, we’ve got antibiotics, for viruses we have medicines that reduce the viral load, for cancer we have surgery, chemotherapy or both in tandem.  For Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, we’ve got bupkus.

Terrible news, Doc, so how do we avoid getting it?  Hard to say.  Only about 15% of ALS cases are known to have a genetic origin.  Most cases are sporadic with no known cause.  Many researchers believe a combination of genetics and environmental factors are at play in both genetic and sporadic ALS, but there is still little understanding of how the two influence the onset of the disease.

Because of the modest numbers of people with the disease and a long, dreary history of failed research, Big Pharma has little interest in throwing big money at the problem, and make no mistake, solving enigmas like ALS has always required big money.  Nonetheless, in her small backyard laboratory in tiny Fairfield, Florida, a stubborn scientist named Siobhan Ellison may have detected a ray of sunshine.  Ellison, along with Dr. Robert Naviaux of San Diego State University and a small coterie of collaborators at Neurodegenerative Disease Research (NDR), a nonprofit, have recently finished an analysis of Naviaux’s metabolomics study in normal people and others with ALS.  Metobolomics is the comprehensive study of small molecules known as metabolites within a biological system.  It analyzes the complete set of metabolites (the metabolome) in cells, tissues or organisms, providing insights into the physiological state and biochemical activity.  Essentially, it’s like taking a snapshot of all the chemical reactions happening within a biological system at a specific moment.

Dr. Naviaux’s new study illustrates that ALS leaves a metabolomic signature which clearly distinguishes between the two populations.  The signature reveals biomarkers for disease and may predict a response to drugs or supplements which could be used to fight ALS.  This signature can change in three months and thus be used to assess the impact any treatment is making.  This is the first time such an advance in ALS research has occurred.  Naviaux’s scientific paper on these remarkable findings will be published in the Fall.  Until then, NDR is hard at work on an asset everyone can help with.

The Kit

A small young San Francisco company called iollo is using AI to analyze multimodal data to discover new biology in hours, work that typically takes teams of scientists years to process.  iollo can measure 500+ molecules in your blood, determine where the train is edging off the track and give you a personalized action plan involving dietary, behavioral and therapeutic interventions to keep you on the straight and narrow.  Think CBC test on steroids.  Your CBC results usually measure from 10-30 markers, but none of the large collection of molecules called the metabolome.  iollo captures imbalances in your blood that are relevant to your overall health and how fast you’re aging.  Studying iollo’s results, Dr. Naviaux realized that utilizing this test could be invaluable to the team’s work.  Individual biochemical reactions converge into a pattern leaving the ALS signature.  The signature reveals biomarkers for disease and may predict a response to drugs or supplements which could be used to fight ALS,  The signature can change in three months and be used to assess the impact of treatments.

Here’s where you come in.  If you’re financially able and so inclined, Siobhan Ellison would like you to buy one of iollo’s tests ($359, and a second one in three months to measure your changes) and become a part of her new study.  She doesn’t make a nickel on the deal but the information garnered is invaluable.  We know it’s not cheap and it’s not for everybody.  The objective is to sign up 200 people with ALS and another 200 who do not have the disease.  Anyone who wants to assist but not  participate personally in the study can help by purchasing kits for people with ALS.

The test uses an innovative collection device currently in use in studies at Stanford, Cornell and various pharmaceutical companies.  Users of the the device report it to be relatively painless.  The sample is collected in the comfort of your own home.  The collection device contains a stabilizing substance that allows the dried sample to be returned without the need for refrigeration.

The iollo machine learning methods analyze your data and the results are then generated by comparing your personalized report to iollo’s database built from a curated list of peer-reviewed scientific research, domain knowledge from their team of scientists, previous testing and user feedback.

Participants in the study may be rewarded not only by the knowledge they are helping move forward research and an eventual cure for a truly heinous disease, but also by revelations in the testing results of their own personal health issues that may need attention and advice on how to proceed in correcting the problems.  How often do you get a chance at a twofer?  And if that’s not enough, the names of all testees will be placed in a hat and one winner picked out by our Prize Patrol.  The lucky duck gets a visit from the iconic NDR Trio.  Chuck LeMasters will come to your house and roll you a big one, Gina Hawkins will sing Stardust and Will Thacker will let you hold his snake.

Siobhan with Laura Benedetti in San Antonio.  First we cure the horses, then we deal with the humans.

Addenda

Please direct all requests for test kits or questions about the process to Siobhan Ellison at the email address below.  Her operators are standing by.

contact@ndrinc.org

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com   

The Pleasures Of The Farm

“I Would rather be on my farm than be emperor of the world.”---George Washington

“I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own.”---Thomas Jefferson

There are all kinds of artists in the world.  Some people paint, others play the bassoon, create giant quilts or tape bananas to a canvas.  Some mow.  I am a mower.

I know painters who crave a new brush, others who work with the same one for years, and there’s something to be said for both.  Same with tractors.  Noone likes to part with the trusty old tractors which have served them well for years, even decades.  The driver knows their habits, their assets and shortcomings, their moody behavior over certain terrain, their hatred of hidden rocks poking up at their unwary blades.  If you have to hook your water cup on the accelerator handle, so be it.  If your tractor develops a few small rust holes, no problem.  But then one day your best friend peters out in the middle of the paddock and a reckoning must be made.

Your first thought is that there must be a carburetor problem or a blocked gas line, but nope, they’re just fine.  You revive your pal, get it back going, wheeze over to the barn on wobbly wheels and gloomily consider the possibility of a burgeoning heart condition.  The tractor repair man comes by and confirms your worst fears…it’s an engine problem.  “Almost as expensive to fix this mess as to get a new tractor,” he exaggerates.  But there are other minor problems with this 20-year-old Kubota and hard choices have to be made.  The salesman comes out from the Kubota dealer and offers a very reasonable trade-in price, and you accept.  You cheerlessly drive your old friend down the long driveway to the rear of the tractor hauler and wave goodbye.  Now the hard work of learning all the confusing ins and outs of a newborn tractor is at hand.  Harumph, the bucket adjuster is a little flighty and it’s slow as molasses backing up…but ooh, look at that nifty drink cup holder!

Olden Times

In days of yore, I had a fine John Deere tractor with a bush hog to mow my 40 acres in Orange Lake.  A bush hog is a rotary cutter towed behind the tractor to cut dense grass and clear vegetation.  It does not generally deliver as finished-looking a cut as the Kubota’s belly mower but neither is it as temperamental as its orange alternative, which whines at the hint of hidden tree roots and unsuspected holes in the ground.  You could go to war with the bush hog, you go to church with the belly mower.

Originally, we had a young neighbor boy come to mow the fields in Orange Lake, but those weekly bills pile up.  “We need a tractor,” advised my wife, Harolyn, who was always eager for new farm equipment.  “Who’s going to drive it?” I asked naively.  “I will,” she said, boldly.  That lasted for about four slow spins around the farm, after which she found more pressing work to do.  Guess who inherited the mowing job?

Fortunately for me, the experienced Mr. Carl Johnson lived right down the road and he was the ultimate tractor expert.  He had even built his own from scratch with a Volkswagen engine, assorted truck parts and a living room chair.  Mr. Johnson told me he would teach me all the tractor arts he knew plus keep my John Deere in fine fettle if I leased him an acre of land to grow his melons. You don’t get an offer like this every day, so of course I accepted.  At the time, I didn’t realize this meant the old codger would hide in the underbrush for nights on end firing his shotgun at small critters invading his garden, but a deal’s a deal.

Thanks to the handy Mr. Johnson, I learned everything I needed to know about tractors, including how to clean out the carburetor and occasionally suck gunk out of the gas lines.  When I got tired of mowing in boring straight lines one afternoon and started going in ever-expanding circles, he flew over in a dither and told me what I was doing was a breach of tractor etiquette and bad for the bush hog.  “You boys who grew up in the city don’t have proper respect for equipment,” he told me.  To Mr. Johnson, everyplace north of the Mason-Dixon line was New York.  Mr. J. also had an eye for Harolyn, making suggestive comments every now and then.  “He’s an old man,” she said.  “He’s harmless.”  Since becoming an old man myself, I now realize that Mr. Johnson was probably not as harmless as she thought.

The Art Of The Wheel

There are many jobs which offer little visual satisfaction, even when you know you are doing them well.  The idea man puts the germ of a brilliant plan into action and knows that somewhere in the clouds his idea is churning away.  The traveling salesman takes orders, reports them to headquarters and moves on to the next town, satisfied his commission is forthcoming.  But there is nothing standing at the side of their roads exclaiming “Joe Schmoe accomplished this!”

A painter creates a lasting monument to his labors.  A kazoo player leaves parade-watchers with brilliant smiles all along the route.  A chicken farmer ambles through the henhouse every morning collecting eggs.  A pasture mower of some proficiency leaves row after row of perfectly cut lanes, none dissimilar from the others, creating a pastoral scene the equal of any landscape painter.  What was once a shaggy, disheveled heap of acreage is now a field of dreams.  The mower smiles, clears his charge of the remnants of his work and goes home whistling a happy tune.  This almost never happens to stockbrokers or psychiatrists or those odd people who work in coin laundries.

In addition to mowing, of course, there are other important things you can do with your tractor.  You can dig big holes to bury sizeable critters.  You can pull clumsy people out of ditches.  You can tow various farm equipment hither and yon…things like seeders and fertilizer dispensers and manure spreaders.  Wait, you ask--manure spreaders?  Where is this manure coming from?

It’s coming from your horse stalls.  You can’t just leave it there and get the Good Horsekeeping Seal of Approval, you have to move it--thus, the manure spreader, which tucks up to the stall and waits for you to shovel the subject matter into its waiting maw.  Once loaded, the spreader is connected to your tractor and driven across the fields.  As the tractor moves, its PTO powers the spreader’s components.  A conveyor belt moves the manure to the beaters or nozzles, which then spread it evenly across the field.  Horse manure, you’ll be pleased to know, is a natural source of valuable nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium, which can be used as a substitute for expensive commercial fertilizers.  Manure also contributes to soil structure, aeration and water-holding capacity.  It also has unexpected side benefits.  According to the original Hank Williams, you have to smell a lot of horse manure before you can sing like a hillbilly.

Horse Country

The best way to get horse manure, of course, is to buy a few horses and feed them.  Pretty soon, your inventory will pile up.  In the meantime, you have to tend to them and avoid killing them or yourself in the process, which is not as easy as you think.  Equines, especially thoroughbreds, have devised endless imaginative ways of offing themselves and a few clever tricks to nail you, as well.  They run through fences.  They contract laminitis.  But mostly they resort to colic, which can spell doom in no time flat.

Horses develop colic in a variety of ways, including gas buildup, impaction (often from hay) or displacement of the intestines.  When you see those cute red buckets all in a row along a fenceline, you’re looking at a playground for colic.  First, without individual pens, there is no way to insure how much feed a horse is getting, be it too much or too little,  Either way, you’ve got colic potential.  Second, horses will spill feed on the ground under those buckets and scarf it up along with plenty of dirt.  Grass doesn’t last long under fenceline buckets.  Every day, there’s a veterinarian somewhere checking a horse’s poop in a long plastic glove full of water, watching the fingers fill up with sand.  Horses should be fed in individual stalls or at least in separate pens from which they’re released shortly after they finish eating.

An injection of Banamine will usually give horses quick relief from colic, but without further attention to the problem it’s like putting a bandaid on a serious wound.  One practice that relieves many colics is feeding alfalfa year-round, an expensive proposition.  When I met Siobhan Ellison, like the preponderance of horse owners, I fed alfalfa only in the winter when there was little grass.  It was her feeling that making alfalfa a permanent part of their regular diet would prevent colic in most horses.  After fifty years in the horse business, I have no doubt this is true.  We have almost never had a colic on Siobhan’s farm and there were years when we housed a dozen horses on ten acres.  If money is tight, it’s a good idea not to have horses.

A Country Boy Can Survive

Keeping your horse alive and happy is one thing, keeping yourself vertical is another.  We have seen people get off their motorcycles, stash their helmets and jump on a horse.  Here’s a news flash--you likely have far more control over your bike than you do your horse, which can be spooked by any number of things.  Wear your damn helmet and pay attention.  If you’re around horses long enough, it’s inevitable you’ll be hurt, just try to minimize the catastrophe.

They tell you to stay away from the back end of a horse but that’s hard to do when you’re foaling a mare.  Even your trustiest sweetheart can kick you across a stall when in labor, as I unfortunately found out one night.  Joining hands with another horseman to load a yearling into a van might seem like jolly fun until one kicks a dent in your thigh and sends you rolling down a loading ramp, another fun moment.  Even on the front end, there’s danger.   A normally sensible young horse can rear up at the sound of a backfire and come down with a hoof on your forehead, leaving you looking like Jesus that day he was crowned with thorns.  They say there’s no accounting for some people’s tastes and there’s little accounting for the predilections of folks who keep horses; we’re victims of a certain kind of lunacy usually reserved for skydivers and bank robbers.  But hey, what’s a farm without a couple of horses?

We’re down to a stolid pair, Zip, a happy stallion and Dot, a curmudgeonly mare, both in their twenties and looking like they’ll live forever.  They spend their days in different fields, just in case Zip gets any latter-day ideas.  Zip greets me each morning with a paragraph of neighing and snorting as he charges into his stall for breakfast.  He politely tips his cap when I bring his carrots at night.  Dot, on the other hand, often arrives for breakfast late and wouldn’t give me the time of day if I brought her a carrot souffle.  She generally waits for me to leave so she won’t have to give a smile or answer any of my foolish questions.

Everyone has his own idea of the ideal place to spend his days.  Younger people often choose the bustle of the city.  Pirates inevitably choose the coast.  Grandmothers feel an irresistible pull from the vicinity of their grandchildren.  Poets like Walden Pond.  Siobhan, Roxy the Rottweiler and I walk down our quiet laneway at night, look at the starry skies and survey the many pleasures of the simple farm.  Speaking for myself, however, unlike George Washington, I would rather be the emperor of the world than a mere horse farmer.  But not by much.

Older farmers seek to pass their secrets down to younger generations, like this guy.

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com       

 

Vacationing With The Nuclear Family

When we were kids, summer vacation meant Road Trips.  My sister Alice and I would pile into the car with our parents and usually our grandmother, Celia, who was originally cursed with the moniker “Alphonsine” (which she promptly chucked into the bushes as soon as she was able).  We often motored east to Gloucester to see relatives or west to the Berkshires so see relatives or south to Connecticut to see…well, you get the idea.  Motels were not a thing at the time so you overnighted at the visitees’ manse, ate their food, drank their liquor and played with their kids even if they were rotten little brats who threw things.

The ruler of the roost in Gloucester was big Joe Tettoni, who was loud and funny and the bane of my tiny but tough grandmother.  Joe knew he wasn’t her favorite guy but every time she walked through the door he gave her a mighty clap on the back and roared, “How ya doin’, Celia?”  His victim would pick herself up off the floor and deliver a magnificent zinger which would have the crowd in stitches.  And so, the visit was on.

Joe’s quiet wife Mary, who my grandmother referred to as a German war bride, invariably made spaghetti in a gigantic pot, and whether it was complemented with sausage or chicken or the brains of monkeys, it was always the best spaghetti in the world.  “Mary was made an honorary Italian for her spaghetti at the last Sons of Italy banquet,” boasted Joe.  “She beat out all the real Wops.”

Her abilities in the kitchen were a source of great pride to the demure Mary and she was careful to pass her prized recipes down to her two daughters, who were, alas, never able to duplicate their mother’s unique magic.  This seems to happen in kitchens worldwide, whether the long lost creator is Mary Tettoni or Chef Elmo---is it accidental, perhaps just one forgotten critical ingredient or do these prideful cooks intentionally carry their secrets with them to their graves?  Despite searching the finest trattorias in 49 states over a lifetime, I have yet to find the equal of that brilliant concoction of the German war bride.

Beachin’

Sometimes, we’d drive to the beach.  It was only 25 miles away, but the traffic was ample and the two-lane roads of the era made for slow going, and that didn’t include stopping at every farm stand we saw for home-grown produce. Sooner or later, our hearts would lift at first sight of the Salisbury Beach roller coaster in the distance, and Alice would always shout “I’m going on THAT!” as if we didn’t know it.  If Alice knew the roller coaster would go off the rails and fly down into the street, she would get on anyway, she was an addict.  I preferred the Dodgems, where you could jump in and look for kids to smash into even though the sign said head-on crashes were illegal.  The manager would let you slide unless you had the bad manners to pulverize some four-year-old riding with his mother, at which time your car would be disabled and you would be yelled at and expelled for assault and battery, sometimes for a week.

There was only one place to go for lunch and that was the Tripoli pizza stand, the mecca of thin-crust magnificence.  As with Mary’s spaghetti, the Tripoli pizza was impossible to duplicate and their little streetside booth was always overwhelmed while cheaper emporiums nearby were empty.  No visit to Salisbury Beach was complete without a sitdown lunch outside the Tripoli shrine listening to the carousel music of the merry-go-round across the street.

Most of the time, we’d even go into the ocean, freezing-ass cold as it was.  On a good day, you might get 64-degree water, which my fiftyish father wanted nothing to do with.  He was fine with his beach towel, straw hat and transistor radio, purchased only to listen to Red Sox games and thus commiserate with other concerned males on the beach.  The Red Sox were omnipresent---strewn out down the strand on everyone’s  radio, on the black and white television of every saloon---and a hollered request for a score anywhere in Salisbury would get an instant reply and often a dash or sarcasm.

I particularly liked the penny arcades, where experienced experts showed their mettle at exotic games like Skee-Ball or those claw machines where players used a joystick, attempting to grab prizes like stuffed bears, which amateurs like me never could wrangle.  If you had a quarter, you could ask an exotic dummy in a glassed-in booth named Madame Zelda for a brief reading of your future, which was always unduly optimistic.   Better to spend your change at a glistening pinball machine where you could pile up the points if you were good and play for an hour.  I knew a kid named Jimmie Hennessey who could beat the hell out of those machines without getting a tilt and once won his mother a big stuffed octopus.  I hate to admit it but I was jealous of his talents and aspired to be a pinball wrestler when I grew up.  Later, I professed as much on my college application forms just in case there were any closet arcade lovers in the Dean of Admissions office.  Guess what?  I was accepted everywhere I applied.  You never know.

While we pursued our plebeian pleasures, of course, we had no idea that Las Vegas, Nevada was waking from its sleep, wrestling with the sheets, putting on the coffeepot and sitting down at the table to plan big doin’s.  Danged if we didn’t miss all the fun.

The Big Boom; Nuclear Tourism Arrives

Las Vegas has long been the home of the bizarre and the land of the outrageous.  Things happen there that don’t dare occur anywhere else, sometimes even to you, and when they do you’re encouraged never to tell about it.  An anonymous gambler took that advice to heart in 2003 when he hit the jackpot at the Excalibur Hotel & Casino, winning $39.7 million on his first spin at a progressive jackpot slot machine.  The win got the man a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records  and has yet to be topped.  There are endless stories in Sin City of unlikely candidates making a fortune overnight at the Vegas gambling tables and as many of luckless characters losing tens of thousands.  Not surprisingly, Las Vegas is the suicide capital of the United States and perhaps the home of the nation’s only Suicide Cleanup Service; “Our compassionate and trained staff are available 24/7 to provide a safe and discreet cleanup service.  Call us anytime for support.”

People get married in Vegas, lots of them, over 70,000 a year.  You can get married at a wedding chapel, at the Mob Museum, inside the Pinball Hall of Fame, on a gondola at the Venetian Hotel or at the Taco Bell Cantina by Elvis, Frank Sinatra, the Fonz, a Vegas showgirl, Darth Vader or a bonafide local minister.  There’s even an underwater ceremony at the Shark Reef Aquarium for mermaids and their catches.

Many people flock to Las Vegas for the entertainment, which is unrivaled anywhere.  From the Rat Pack to Liberace to Elvis to Cirque du Soleil to the Blue Man Group and now, ultimately, to the Puppetry of the Penis, which features two naked men who contort their bodies into impossible shapes, including one mimicking a sailboat.  There’s the Zombie Dance Burlesque, Popovich’s Comedy Pet Theater and the Atomic Saloon at the Palazzo, but nothing nowadays can equal the Pride of the 1950s---the nuclear detonations in the nearby Nevada desert clearly visible from Las Vegas.  Or as one New York Times writer put it, “The non-ancient but nonetheless honorable pastime of atom bomb watching.”  Soon after the fireworks began, Vegas was transformed from a town of 25,000 people to a world-renowned playground of hundreds of thousands.

People went gaga for Yucca Flats, epicenter of the Nevada wasteland and Target Zero.  Vegas tourist hotspots held Dawn Bomb Parties, where guests would drink and sing until the flash of the bomb lit up the night sky.  One fellow writing for the State Department Bulletin described the fun: “You put on your dark goggles, turn your head and wait for the signal.  BANG!---the bomb is dropped.  You wait for the prescribed time, then turn your head and look.  A fantastically bright cloud is climbing upward like a huge umbrella.  You brace yourself against the shock wave that follows an atomic explosion.  A heat wave comes first, then the shock, strong enough to knock an unprepared man down.  Then, after what seems like hours, the manmade sunburst fades away.  Time to hit the bar for a stiff one.” 

For twelve years, an average of one bomb every three weeks was detonated…a total of 235 bombs.  Flashes from the explosions were so powerful they could be seen from as far away as Montana, so you can imagine what it was like up close and personal.  Scientists claimed that the radiation’s harmful effects dissipated and were harmless once the shock waves reached Vegas but they nonetheless scheduled tests to coincide with weather patterns that blew fallout away from the city.  As the tests continued, however, people in northeastern Nevada and southern Utah began complaining that their pets and livestock were suffering from beta particle burns and other ailments.  Beginning in 1963, the Limited Test Ban was in effect, barring above-ground nuclear testing at the site.  “Turn out the lights,” said the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, mournfully, “the party’s over.”  But they were wrong.  It was just getting started.  Wayne Newton showed up.

  

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com. 

    

 

Belonging

From the cradle to the grave, belonging to something is important.  Neighborhood kids form gangs or sandlot sports teams, teenagers don the colors of Pflugerville High School, college kids fill up the stadium for Old Siwash.  Alums return for homecoming, donate vast sums to the old lacrosse team, travel hundreds of miles and spend thousands of dollars to watch the alma mater in The Frozen Four.  Why?  Because, by God, they belong to something, they are card-carrying members of a club, be it the Shriners, the Trap Door Spiders or the Owlhoots Motorcycle Gang.  They might miss Aunt Susie’s funeral but they’re all in for the annual Sturgis, South Dakota bike rally.  Loud and proud, with God on their side.  I was walking down the South Kabob Trail in the Grand Canyon one fine July day several years back and up the steep footpath came a trekker in a University of Florida cap.  “Go, Gators!” I said in passing and he smiled, straightened up and hastened his pace to the top, cheered on by this unknown brother from the same club.  It’s you and I against the world, bro!  In all kinds of weather we’ll all stick together because otherwise…well… it’s a little lonely.

Belonging is a fundamental part of being human.  We need people and this need is hardwired into our brains.  A recent MIT study found we crave interactions in the same region of our brains where we crave food.  Another study showed we experience social exclusion in the same region of the brain where we experience physical pain.  A study at the University of Michigan found when people lack a sense of belonging it is a strong predictor of depression…an even stronger predictor than feelings of loneliness or a lack of social support.

It’s also telling to look at animal examples.   According to Jeanine Stewart of the Neuroleadership Institute, “When something is conserved across species, it’s an indication that some elements of our behavior are driven by things that are more basic and which we can witness.”  Research from Florida Atlantic University provides a telling example in beluga whales.  The FAU study found these whales form complex social relationships with close kin, but also with distantly related and unrelated whales…a behavior mirrored in humans as well in their connections with close friends, family and others more distant.

As Barbra Streisand sang:

We’re children needing other children
And yet letting our grown-up pride
Hide all the need inside
Acting more like children than children.
People who need people
Are the luckiest people in the world.

That’s you, pal. 

One Nation Under God.  And One Is Enough.

In 1978, National Football League film narrator John Facenda, who sounds a lot like God, used the term “Steeler Nation” to describe Pittsburgh’s avid fanbase, thus drawing a distinction between the Steelers’ ardent supporters and those of other teams.  Ever since, passionate fans of teams in all sports have adopted the term, even if the average observer might wonder how many citizens it takes to constitute a decent nation.  Red Sox Nation is acceptable, of course, as is Gator Nation, but what about lowly Muhlenberg?  Must we have a Mule Nation?  It sounds so awkward and unoriginal.  How about resorting to the phrase “a pack of mules” and calling Muhlenberg the Mule Pack?  Florida fans could be the Alligator Congregation, Ohio State fans the Buckeye Nuts, while FSU would have its Seminole Reservation.  Much better.  Just think of it; the Tulane Wave Surfers, the Army Brats, the Texas Horn Dogs…there’s no end to the possibilities.  Hold on a second---someone just asked about Syracuse, an obvious problem.  The Orange Juliuses just won’t do and the Orange Aid seems wimpy.  Okay, got it---we’re going with the Orange CRUSH.  What else ya got?  Iowa State?  The Storm Trackers.  Baylor?  The Bear Necessities.  We’ll be here all week, folks…don’t forget to tip your waitress.

Jesus Loves You, Despite Everything

Siobhan and I were walking through the neighborhood one recent morning when we passed Cathy, a familiar face on the morning jaunt.  She carried with her a smile and her imposing stick, intended for balancing and to ward off errant coyotes.  Somedays we pass with a couple of words, this time we stopped to talk, and Cathy brought up the subject of church, asked us which one we belonged to.  Not nosy or preachy, just curious.  We told her we were members of the Church of the Golden Rule, which was very forgiving about Sunday service lapses.  Cathy said she was a believer but the main attraction of her facility was its ambiance, fellowship, the opportunity to make friends.  She was fairly new in the ‘hood and wanted to belong to something and when that something is church, nobody asks any questions.  You are immediately assumed to be an okay guy or girl, maybe even a future dinner invitee or quilting bee companion, or, if you get particularly close, co-mourner.  People at these places often speak very little of God, himself, but more about weddings and swap meets and health issues and vacations.  If some unfortunate member of the congregation becomes ill, everyone knows what to do, where to go, what to say.  Of course, the inverse is also true.  If someone is exiled from their religious community for, say, their politics, their sexuality or other unacceptable taboos, they often lose their entire little world.

Fortunately, there are other options for community, sometimes an entire town.  In the nineteen-sixties and seventies, places like San Francisco and Austin and Boulder and Gainesville drew endless young pilgrims looking for a new shrine at which to worship, new companions, a life in common with people who were discovering an alternate way to think and live.  The Peace/Love crowd gravitated to the Subterranean Circus, the Florida Theater, any back porch where a hometown rock band was playing free music, forming their own society within the greater one.  Today, they're still at it---only the venues have changed…to Heartwood Soundstage, the One Love Cafe, Friday Nights on the Downtown Plaza, Chiappini’s sanctuary in Melrose.  On a good night, you might even spot a quiet Jesus floating through these landscapes (though it might also be Chuck LeMasters in a fright wig).

The hippies, of course, had their own religions, often Eastern, sometimes pagan, occasionally Wiccan.  Then---and perhaps now--- there was also the inclusive live-and-let-live Universal Life Church, with its outdoor chapels in the forest.  If you were so inclined, you could send in a cereal boxtop and five dollars and become a licensed minister of the ULC, allowing you to preside over weddings, speak in solemn tones at funerals and give fatherly advice to your flock, as our old pal Danny Levine did.  One day, an old acquaintance from Temple Beth Sholom in Miami came up and asked, “Danny, what’s a nice Jewish boy like you doing in a place like this?”

D. Levine looked up and offered his usual genuine smile.  “Fostering harmony,” he said.  Where do we sign up for that church?

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

“It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood…a beautiful day for a neighbor.  Would you be mine?  Could you be mine?”---Fred Rogers

The Facebook neighborhood is a little rougher these days…filled with varlets pushing crotchy reels, posting silly questionaires and trying to convince you you’re smarter than Einstein if you can just answer these ten questions.  Where are all the stickball players, the hopscotch boxes, those guys who come around in fifty-year old trucks to sharpen your scissors?  Facebook, of course, sends out its Sanitation Department periodically to clean up the place but its difficult to maintain a neighborhood which lets just anybody in.  Maybe they need a few gated communities.

Nobody has to live in a Facebook village, of course, but there are obvious benefits.  If you’re Nancy Kay, you might catch a ride to the ophthalmologist.  If you’re Will Thacker, you can set off stinkbombs.  If you’re Georgie Ghetagrip, you can reveal your flirtations with suicide to see if anyone cares.  Having Facebook friends offers several psychological advantages, including an increased sense of belonging, reduced feelings of isolation and emotional support.  It can also help individuals maintain close contact with loved ones, particularly those who live far away, like in Bronson.  Then too, FB residency provides a platform for sharing experiences and receiving validation, not to mention  the opportunity to post funny cartoons of Donald Trump on the toilet.

Positive social relations are known to have a beneficial impact on health, physical and mental.  Dawn Stevenson of South Florida, a modern day Perils of Pauline heroine, rises from the dead monthly after yet another scrape with the archvillain Cancer, who carries bullying to new heights.  Just when you think she’ll be run over by that railroad engine steaming around the curve, she unties herself from the tracks and leaps to safety, giving Cancer the finger one more time.  Having a FB audience to cheer her on is like being the home team at an SEC football game and Dawn is boosted in mind and body by her cheerleaders.  Simultaneously, the cheer squad is boosted by realizing they are not Dawn.  Studies reveal that just thinking about friends activates specific areas of the brain---including the ventral striatum, amygdala, hippocampus and ventromedial prefrontal cortex---more significantly than other types of relationships.  At least that’s what our pal Big Ted of Newark tells us.

The hitch in our getalong is that after age 70, our friends start disappearing faster than Arkansas Democrats.  In your seventies, you pull up to the toll plaza and the Grim Reaper is manning three-quarters of the kiosks.  Other friends move away to Bhumfuk Junction, like Judi Cain did.  And anybody who’s left can’t leave the house, crippled by some septuagenarian plague like shingles, the vapors, narcolepsy, the rockin’ pneumonia or the boogie-woogie flu.  This is obviously a job for the new Pope, Bobby Prevost of Chi-town, a known healer and righter of wrongs.  We called him and made a deal.

On the weekend of May 2, 2026, a protective aura will be placed over the Heartwood Soundstage facility.  No one will be nauseous, lame or otherwise incapacitated by some grim disease.  For seven hours, everyone will be allowed to dance without fear of heart attack, stroke or angry bunions.  If it’s critical that we see our friends as much as possible, how valuable is it to see all of them at the same time in the same place?  Where have you gone, Michael Hatcherson, Gregory Barriere, Debbie Adelman, David Matthews, Thomas Sutton, the Nation lifts its lonely eyes to you? 

Write it down on your wrist with indelible ink: The Grand Finale, May 2, 2026, 1-8 p.m. at Heartwood.  Free admission to people of good cheer.  All your friends will be there, even Judi Cain, who promises to parachute in naked.  If you liked the original, you’ll love the sequel.

See the pyramids along the Nile,
Watch the sunrise on a tropic isle,
Just remember darlin’ all the while,
You belong in Gainesville.

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail