Fog, low clouds and rain today. Walked on a different beach today while the rain let up for a few minutes and some friends showed up with their dog. All the humans wore masks. The dogs ran back and forth on the cobbles like crazy, rolling and chasing each other as if in wild delight, rain or no rain. The other dog was happy to swim after a thrown ball and Dot gave it a try but never got out to actually swim but came close, letting the little waves wash up over her shoulders and wet her face, then backing up so that she would have her feet firmly on the good earth. She doesn’t have the water dog instinct but she is getting more and more comfortable in the water. Crows, and eagles watched her from the shore and gulls wheeled overhead. She is more than sixty pounds now but still flops around like a puppy and the gulls seem to taunt her from the sky. She got good exercise today. Jan and I carried camp chairs down and set them up under cover and ate sandwiches for lunch before we had to get back for one of Jan’s many phone meetings back home.

We had a fine time watching the dogs and seeing friends we haven’t seen in weeks, Even if we couldn’t get close or see their faces through the masks it was good to share their company for a few minutes and see that they were well.

We spoke to our son, Finn last night and he is getting ready for a big show that he is taping with a friend. It is not his usual stand up routine but something new that will address the new life during the virus. The tape will be shown along with other comedians work at a fund raiser for front-line medical providers on May 1st. It is a virtual gathering and fund raiser. This is the new way of things and Finn is happy to have the opportunity. I don’t know what his new material is yet and hope to see it when it shows. Finn is always reticent to share new work with me, and I don’t blame him. There is a stage with all creative work when you can’t really talk about it, I know this well because if it doesn’t get the response you want, it just shatters your confidence and can make you go back an tweak it when that is the worst thing you can do. Especially my feedback because I am not anyones target audience anymore. Finn knows that I’m too old, too eccentric, and way too close to him to be a good judge of contemporary humor. I think almost everything he does is funny. He was a funny baby. We used to call out for him to do “Monkey Boy” and he would shake his head and scratch under his arms before he could speak whole sentences. Then there was the “big diaper dance” which always KILLED. So you see, I’m not that great of a judge of sophisticated club scene hipster humor.

When I was a little boy, we lived in Montclair, New Jersey and my parents took in a family who were refugees from Hungary. We also took in a pair of twins, but they were not able to stay with us long because their psychological damage made them extremely shy, they needed a quieter less rowdy house than ours, and the social service organization found them a more suitable place, or at least that what the children in our family were told. The family which stayed with us were survivors of the Shoah or the Holocaust and in the greater New York area they had many friends who were survivors. They had gatherings at our house and my parents made sure my older siblings sat in on these gatherings. My parents also had friends who served in the war and one friend in particular who had been a doctor in the army who had married a jewish woman who was liberated from one of the camps. This Doctor had treated her when she had been pulled from one of the mass graves. She held a piece of jewelry on which she had etched the words in English, “I live!.” This American doctor treated her and then married her. They too would come to these parties. The only thing I remember from these gatherings was that there was a lot of smoking, drinking, and a lot of laughing. I also remember the stories that my parents told me afterwords.

My parents wanted us all there, even me. to bear witness I suppose. The one story I remember was a story that my parents found very odd. Odd because the survivors found it so hysterically funny. It was full of irony I suppose, studying it now. But it always makes me think about how much people need to laugh even in a dark way, the tension that must be resolved, even in the face of the darkest circumstances.

The story concerned a fat man. He was hugely fat. He was Polish I think. He went into the camps and he was possibly three hundred pounds. Immense. Chin, upon chins. He had a terrible time in the camp, but he survived. I can’t remember what camp it was but it was awful. He lost all of his family but because of his weight he did not starve to death. Yet by the time the Americans came and liberated the camp he was skin and bones. A skeleton. Nothing but bones and flaps of loose skin. He was wandering around the streets of the camp stunned that he had survived. The American soldiers were throwing chocolate bars off of their trucks and everyone was going crazy to get them. People were clambering to get chocolate, and of course the former fat man raised his arm up from the crowd and called out for some chocolate. The army private heard all the voices yelling for chocolate and tired of throwing the bars one at a time just heaved a case of chocolate bars off the truck. And of course the case hit the formerly fat man on the head and instantly killed him!

The whole table gathered at our house dissolved into laughter. Tears of laughter. Wheezing plumes of cigarette smoke, and choking down drinks from coming up their noses. They loved this story. The American chocolate bars killed the fat man. Of course it did!

I’m not saying my parents understood it then, nor do I say I understand it now. Maybe it had something to do with the fat man being Polish or maybe it has some cultural coding that made it clear that the fat man was a buffoon. I don’t know. I think it had more to do with the chocolate bars being American, and the rich irony of that… but whatever it was, there was something sweet and delicious about being alive for them in that story.

I have tried to understand almost all my life what the key to humor is, All I know is that provoking laughter requires tension and release and other than that it requires a delicate sensibility to what an audience is feeling at the moment. It’s not slight of hand, but I think it is closer to real magic.

Soon Finn, will be making pandemic jokes. we all find things funny in this when there are things that are not funny at all. This is part of how mysterious life is and how great our transformative powers can be. Love, Humor, Genius, Courage and Patience, I capitalize them because they name our greatest weapons in this war.

At least that’s what I think… those things and Chocolate.

Hard rain, my neighbor

takes out the garbage in her

bright pink underwear.

jhs

Here is a reading I did this morning from P.G. Woodhouse, which got me thinking about humor. Dot got so excited she had to go outside. I hope you like it. Again I’m sorry about my goofy accent.