The joy of laughing out loud

I laughed out loud at least twice this weekend. It was a good weekend.

One LOL came during the Saturday night news when the news reader breathlessly reported, "Green Bay police are looking for three men after robbing a man at gunpoint last night." From the context I understand that three men held up a man Friday night, and police hope to arrest them, but (tears of laughter streaming down my face), that's not what she said.

The other LOL has to be heard to be appreciated, so without further ado, click here:

The New Adventures of Myke Phoenix

“The universe shifted, and something dark burst from a yawning crack in the nature of being.” And with those words, the adventures of Myke Phoenix began.

A bit of an homage to all of the tropes and formats that have kept me spellbound for decades – comic books, pulp heroes, TV, movies, science fiction, superhero tales – Myke is a crusading journalist in his day job who occasionally swaps bodies with a super-powered ancient warrior named Mychus in order to battle the more challenging challenges facing Astor City, a growing metropolis. We’re not talking challenges like urban sprawl or budget restraints, of course; we’re talking giant spiders and alien invasions and a talking dinosaur bent on world domination, the kind of challenges not easily addressed by a stern editorial.

Myke Phoenix first came to me around 1990 and urged me to share his stories in a regular (monthly?) magazine, comic-book-length stories but told in text form like the old Shadow and Doc Savage stories. I completed four stories and started several others, but self-publishing was an expensive and complicated process in those days, and the stories and the idea sat on the shelf until 2008, when I finally printed The Adventures of Myke Phoenix.

The start-and-stop process of continuing those adventures finally bore fruit earlier this year with the release of The Song of the Serial Kisser and Firespiders, which pick up our story 18 years later in present-day Astor City. I am now in a position to unveil to the world that those are the first two installments of a 12-story arc full of adventures the likes of which, I hope, will

thrill and delight not only those who have been thrilled and delighted by our story thus far but a new generation of enthused Mykelings.

As these breathless words are written, I have a general map of the journey Myke and his friends will be making over these 12 stories and a plan to commit them to words over a specific time frame. The plan involves resuming the story in January with the terrifying Invasion of the Body Borrowers, followed not long afterward by the suspenseful Night of the Superstorm, and then the surprising Duck Man of Astor City, and after that by the long-awaited and near-legendary story called – but I’m getting ahead of myself.


As the story proceeds, we’ll also be following along with audio editions of each episode, for those of you who’d rather listen to stories than stare at your Kindle all day. I plan to release the first two audiobooks in early November and early December, respectively. Then watch for the simultaneous release of the ebook and audio versions of Invasion of the Body Borrowers and subsequent episodes.

Also coming this fall will be a new print edition of the original Adventures of Myke Phoenix, which is currently available only for Kindle. The new edition will include the first appearance in print anywhere of Song of the Serial Kisser as a preview for the new adventures.

If you want to keep updated on the progress of these projects, just send me a note to warren@warrenbluhm.com with the words “Myke Phoenix” in the subject line. I’ll be starting a conversation and sending out occasional emails chronicling the adventure of preparing these adventures, including early alerts when firm release dates are set. (P.S. I won’t share your email or anything about you with anyone else. The only purpose here is to keep you informed about this endeavor.) I'm also relaunching the Myke Phoenix Facebook page for more frequent updates.

I am excited to be diving back into the amazing world of Mychus the Warrior and his friends. You may not be quite as excited as I am, but you will be. You will be!

Coffee and conversation go a long way

I sat across the table the other day from a friend with whom it turns out I disagree regarding the solutions to national and world problems. We each had a cup of good coffee in our hands, and that was the beginning of an agreement.

I have found that our disagreements are over the solutions to the challenges we face, not in our core values. The tea partier and the socialist agree that it is bad for people to go hungry, that it is bad for people to do harm to others or to themselves, that it is bad to lie and cheat and steal and murder.

One side doesn’t trust big government. One side doesn’t trust big corporations. Me, I think they’re both right: I just don’t trust “big” anything.

Big loses sight of the individual. Big attempts to find solutions that are one-size-fits-all and misses our wonderful differences. Big pushes masses of snow aside and rarely notices that each snowflake is completely different from every other snowflake.

The answers to our troubles are local, specific and individual. But most of all they involve recognizing that we share the same values of common decency.

When you buy into the myths that you believe about tea partiers or socialists or Republicans or Democrats, you blind yourself to the reality that we’re all in this together. When I look past my prejudices, I find people who share the same ideals that I have, even within the ranks of big government and big corporations. The important thing is to get to know the individuals rather than make assumptions about them based on the myths.

It saddens me that a group of local folks find it necessary to establish something called The Civility Project. It ought to be common sense that we find solutions by working together in harmony rather than dismissing each other on the basis of political philosophy or religion or skin color or some other dividing factor. It ought to be common sense that understanding and accepting our differences is a key to finding common ground.

But they’re right: We have become so accustomed to being rude and angry with one another – believing that those who view life differently are not just wrong, but evil – making sport of belittling each other like playground bullies – that a refresher course in getting along can be valuable.

For what it’s worth, the next offering of this basic training in civility is scheduled 6:30-8:30 p.m. Sept. 17 in the Washington Island School Commons. If that time and place don’t work, you can learn more by visiting doorcountycivilityproject.org.

 But before then, take time to listen past the talking points and the sound bites, take time to consider what it is that the other person believes, what basic problem the other person wants to solve. You may notice that you share the same objectives even if you disagree about the solution.

I’m fairly confident you’ll find you have more in common than appreciation for a good cup of coffee.

Cross-posted to Door County Advocate

Every day we choose to create or to destroy

It’s the morning after an audience of more than 150 people came to the great mansion now called Ellison Bay Manor to enjoy a concert of chamber music, savor hors d’oerves and wine, and tour the building and grounds. I played a very small role in that event, handing out programs and pouring wine.

And this morning, I consider all of the human effort that must come together to form a single event such as this.

First a huge contingent of artisans and craftsmen must come together to build a house large enough to hold several hundred people – no, before that they must cut the trees, mine the iron, quarry the stone, carve a space out of the wilderness to set the home, then assemble the home.

Three talented men need to compose patterns of music that are pleasing to the ear. Five musicians must study and practice, each of them for years, to gain the ability to interpret a fragment of those patterns and blend their efforts to recreate the sounds that the composers heard. Food must be grown – plants and animals – shipped from miles away, processed and prepared in a way that is pleasing to the palate.

Transportation must be arranged to bring people to the door, because this was built as a home and the driveway has limited parking space – wait! A team must build each of the machines that transport us all, each machine itself comprised of many parts, each of which had to be crafted.

Thousands of people working in consort, and each contributing the talent and effort of their years of experience, to do their bit to bring a bit of beauty to the world, a bit of happiness to other people’s lives.

You might say it’s a miracle to bring that many people together to accomplish all this, or you might say it’s simply (simply! This great complicated organism cannot be described simply) the nature of humanity to work together on tasks that a single one of us could not achieve on their own, but to which each of us can contribute a unique, essential piece.

I consider the years and years that each and every one of the hundreds of people in that house brought to their contribution – and how that scene is repeated daily in thousands of place, thousands of events, individuals and teams creating beauty and utility and service for thousands of others, building something special with every breath –

And then I emerge from that place and hear the talk of poison gases and measured conversations about how many bombs are appropriate to be dropped in retaliation for the retaliation against the retaliation that began with the retaliation, and I am shocked and confused that this near-miraculous everyday creation of beauty and service is interrupted so often by similar forces marshalled to tear it all back to pieces.

Why? What leads men and women capable of building great works to tear down instead? Minds and hands work together to create unspeakable beauty. Similar minds and hands work together to wreak unspeakable horror.

We choose each day to work to create or to destroy, to encourage or to disparage. We must find a way to promote and protect the creators and to keep the destroyers in check.

Cross posted to Door County Advocate

Talking life and death with Keta

Keta Steebs and Jay Zahn, July 2012

One of the most interesting conversations I ever had with Keta Steebs was when she told me about how she’d died. It struck me so that when I got back to my car, I jotted down everything I could remember from the talk.

Four months after she actually passed away, the other day I moved one of my endless stacks of paper and found those notes. And I missed her all over again.

Keta, whose reporting and reflections about her beloved Door County graced these pages for more than 40 years, had taken up temporary residence at Golden Living Center-Dorchester while she recovered from some trouble with her lungs. I went up the hill from the Advocate office to visit her a couple of times. Both times she did her best to be her usual robust self; the second time she was also very pensive.

Not long after my first visit, it seemed, she had come as close to dying as she would before the actual time.

“I died,” she said succinctly, as she would. “It was very spiritual; the family was gathered … but then I kind of bumped back.”

From the look in her eyes, I could see that rather than being alarming or frightening, the experience had given her a sort of peace. All that remains of what she told me about that feeling are the scribbled words, “but not afraid.”

She talked that day about how much she enjoyed the letters she’d been receiving since 1973 from men who admired her work and struck up a correspondence or relationship. “But not romantic,” she said — romance had been reserved for Herman Steebs, her husband of 32 years, taken from her too early at the end of 1982.

She mentioned her dear friends Jay Zahn and Tom Groenfeldt, who often accompanied her to plays or art receptions around the peninsula. “Jay and I, Tom and I have such interesting relationships,” she said with a wistful sigh. “We just enjoy each other’s company so much.”

I remember what appeared to be genuine surprise in her eyes when she confessed, “I’ve become nice.” Reflecting on her early life and career, she said, “I used to be a —” and then she lowered her voice, and I don’t remember if she spelled out “B-I-…” or if she actually whispered the word that rhymes with witch. I can’t speak to the truth of her statement, having only known the nice Keta in the 11 years I knew her.

The conversation turned to her funeral and the accompanying meal — “I think everyone likes sloppy joes, don’t you think?” — how she planned to be cremated and how most important she wanted people to laugh that day. She did get her wish on that count; there were enough Keta stories told after the service for a full afternoon of laughter.

“I’d like to die laughing,” she told me. “Wouldn’t that be nice?” In reality, she died in her sleep, but two nights earlier she had laughed and celebrated her 88th birthday with her friends and family — close enough.


Cross posted to Door County Advocate

In which H.L. Mencken embraces The Imaginary Revolution

Thoughts on government, “Its Inner Nature,” in which H.L. Mencken endorses the themes of my book The Imaginary Revolution, available for Kindle here and in print there.

There is seldom, if ever, any evidence that the new government proposed would be any better than the old one. On the contrary, all the historical testimony runs the other way. Political revolutions do not often accomplish anything of genuine value; their one undoubted effect is simply to throw out one gang of thieves and put in another. After a revolution, of course, the successful revolutionists always try to convince doubters that they have achieved great things, and usually they hang anyone who denies it …

The ideal government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone — one which barely escapes being no government at all. This ideal, I believe, will be realized in the world twenty or thirty centuries after I have passed from these scenes and taken up my public duties in hell.

A Mencken Chrestomathy

I brought it home from the library and have only browsed so far, but I'm going to enjoy any book that offers in the first five minutes:

I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind.

* * * * *

Monarchy was fundamentally not a defender of the faith at all, but a rival and enemy to the faith. Democracy does not promote liberty; it diminishes and destroys liberty. And communism, as the example of Russia already shows, is not a fountain that gushes peace, justice and plenty, but a sewer in which they are drowned.

Beeker

Beeker Belle - the bell-shaped cat - was bigger than she should have been. This was a function of her habit of plopping herself down in front of a food bowl and emptying it. All of them. At one time we had seven cats, seven bowls. Beeker batted cleanup. Hence her nickname, The Fat Cat.

We met her when she was what? two years old? and residing in the local shelter in 2001. She was saved from what happens to unwanted cats by her uncanny resemblance to my recently passed feline friend Baxter, who (sorry guys) remains my favorite cat ever. My first glimpse of Beeker led me to gasp, well up, and exclaim, "I'm not ready for this." But I was. And we took her home. She wasn't Baxter, but she had a sweetness all her own.

She clearly had been a mother at some point in her life, because she liked to groom the other cats if they'd let her lick. When Hemi took ill last February and lost the ability to walk, and I came to take him to his final vet appointment, she was curled up on his cold back legs, having kept him warm in the night.

She had lost her prodigious appetite in recent days, and Tuesday night I found her lying in the litter box, not much interested in - or unable to find - a more comfortable place. I placed her gently in the easy chair and planned to check back in the morning. She apparently fell asleep and stayed asleep. Wednesday morning I found her with Boop - another one of our geriatric cats - curled up against her to keep her warm. Boop always means well, but he was unable to warm her up enough this time.

We had seven cats when we decided we had too many and it was time to let attrition take its course. Now we have four. Strangely, each of our losses has been the second-youngest cat. Our survivors are approximately 17, 17, 15 and 6 years old. I should probably introduce you to them now, while their stories are still progressing, instead of when there's nothing left to say.

You are not a number

One of my life epiphanies came in the last radio studio that I worked in, talking to a gay co-worker about the issue of marriage. I was, and continue to be, of the belief that of course gay people can get married; all you need is someone willing to perform the ceremony.

The issue comes down her strong desire to convince the government to recognize the “legitimacy” of the marriage by issuing a license. And then came the epiphany.

Why do you need a license to get married? Why do you need the state’s permission, in a free society, for something as personal as a lifetime commitment to another human being? Put another way, marriage is essentially a religious or spiritual ceremony; in a country that recognizes religious freedom, what is the government’s business in regulating a religious ceremony?

I am similarly puzzled by the fuss over immigration. Why does the government need to track the whereabouts of peaceful, law-abiding, hard-working people? I understand the need to monitor criminals and terrorists, but most of us are neither. What need is served by “processing” innocent human beings as they enter or leave the country?

I understand it’s more efficient to treat us all like potential criminals and terrorists, but efficiency is not the mission of a society where all are to be considered innocent until proved guilty.

All of this processing tends to group individuals by skin color, or ethnic origin, or sex, or sexual habits, or some other category. What is the point of all this? It is to create a shorthand that obliviates the individual – “those people” tend to act and think in a certain way, and by grouping them into a category, we need not do the hard work of getting to know the individual. She is a black woman; he is a white man of European descent; he is a Republican; she is gay; he is a Democrat; she is a pro-life activist; he is a Jew – from such groupings come a host of assumptions, and you need not probe any deeper to know the person.

Six billion people live on this planet, and it is impossible to know and understand them all, and so the marketer, the government and the bigot seek a shorthand.

It may indeed be true that people who seem to belong in one of these arbitrary categories tend to think and act in a certain way, but you do yourself and the other person an injustice by assuming that he or she actually thinks and acts that way before you’ve gotten to know that person.

Take care before you consign an individual to a group, because where there are no individuals, there are no individual rights – and that may eventually include the individual you meet in the mirror every morning.

In a memorable moment in a memorable bit of speculative fiction, the lead character in “The Prisoner” tires of his captors’ insistence that his name is Number Six and screams, “I am not a number, I am a free man!” That is the whole point.

Cross-posted to Door County Advocate

If not now, when?

What is it you've been meaning to do?

The time to do it is now.

"It can wait; I have time to get it done." Perhaps. But time runs out.

The time you have left is already under way.