"It's Always Something"

Gilda Radner’s most memorable line resonated because life often seems like a series of dramady sketches. We all have so much in common as human beings yet some insist on being drama kings because they crave attention, power or wealth. Most people are content with a smidgen of each and find their wealth via health and warm friendships.

Jim Seals, of Seals & Crofts, died yesterday at 79. Both of the folksingers were members of the Baha’i faith, a rather interesting little religion with a lot of sensible guidance to life that amounts to ‘be kinder to each other.’ Drama kings are always quick to denounce sensible beings and occasionally persecute them.

I tend to think about my friend who retired to a little village in southern Mexico. He did well in a financial industry, struggled with health issues including a misdiagnosis, and has been struggling with additional divorce and family issues in recent years. It’s always something.

He’s got a wicked sense of humor, is generous to a fault and certainly doesn’t deserve these struggles. He’s been offline since late February so I worry about him.

Another friend who lives near Tampa had a stroke late last year. A social worker, also with a sense of humor and compulsively kind. She sounds better and stronger every time we speak. Her main struggle is with her speech but her joie de vivre remains firmly intact.

A couple I know who live nearby here in Eugene contracted Covid last month. They didn’t require hospitalization, but they did have to wrestle with a few symptoms. The lady of this pair used to be essentially a middle school social worker after an earlier foray as an English teacher. An articulate punster, she discovered we were related via common ancestors centuries ago, among the earliest European immigrants to these shores. It’s always something.

There’s a family in Atlanta - she a techie, he a musician - wrestling with some long term health issues too. What is it with this aging stuff? Why must so many have to struggle to maintain their life forces on this planet? It happens to the nicest people and it hardly qualifies as fair.

My friend near Buffalo was who I thought of first when I heard about the mass shooting in Buffalo. She’s recovering from a near death experience last year. We talked last night. She’s as bright and funny as ever. We discussed mortality issues and our kids and grandkids. She lost a mother and a beloved niece in the past two years. It’s always something and life just isn’t damn fair. But she’ll outlast the gloomy medical pronouncements because the life force remains strong in her.

We first met 24 years ago, online in a topical AOL humor group and offline a few months later when the humor group held a Big Ass Party near Chicago.

And one of my oldest and dearest friends, who lives near Concord, CA, lost a son about the same time I was decimated when I lost Marlene. Humans are more alike than different; some losses don’t ever grant full recovery. Nor should they. We can only revel in the good memories that abounded while they lived.

One of my kids was dropping off work-related stuff in downtown Portland. As she waited for an employee to open the door she was struck from behind, repeatedly, by a crazy lady, gaining a whiplash and concussion from that unprovoked ordeal. That occurred near Easter but she seems well-recovered now.

And there’s other friends, in Seattle, Baton Rouge, Northern California, Ketchikan, family members in Florida, New York and Massachusetts, each wrestling with health demons. Not all are seniors, though most are.

It’s always something that’s gonna get each of us, too.

it’s for them I make planters of succulents and flowers in the past two months. The beauty of each of them is part of the design.

So far, only 4 out of more than 100 creations have been attacked by slugs. It’s always something.

So I worry. About them. About other close friends here. They don’t deserve this shit. Nobody deserved the pandemic and yeah, I lost some friends to that, too.

But while we live, we laugh. We add beauty to the world with our work, our creative impulses and talents, and especially with our myriad of kindnesses.

Therein lies the remedies to all the madness.

Insurrectionists? Kindness. Mass shooters? Kindness. Second Amendment zealots who never saved a life with their semi-automatics? Yep, kindness is the answer.

Extreme radical white supremacy violence must be countered with more kindness.

Forthcoming attacks by the violent ones? Double up your kindness.

Lawmakers sucking up to the extremists? More kindness, please.

How can we trust lawmakers like Marjorie Taylor Greene who openly defends speaking at white supremacist conventions, threatens her Congressional peers, lectures the public that premarital sex is wrong and being gay is wrong then hires Milo Yiannopoulos - a gay man who advocated pedophilia - as her intern? After she had several adulterous affairs with members of the gym she ran.

Do you fight that craziness with logic and reason and actual Bible passages? No, with kindness.

It’s bad enough that a major political party has spent the past 42 years denouncing government and the past 22 years claiming elections are fraudulent. Now we encounter police who refused to take on a mass shooter, blocked parents from trying to save their kids and Border Patrol officers had to directly disobey the cop in charge to take out the shooter. And two states away, more police officers refused to save a drowning man. Plus the top court in our justice system is being torn asunder by extremists. These are all representatives of your government. Do we just despair and give up on government altogether?

No. Commit more kindness. You may not thwart an act of violence. We may not stop another bullying, scheming, traitorous sexual predator from becoming king, but we sure can improve the world with more kindness.

This isn’t that old advice to ‘expect the worst but hope for the best.’ We have to keep demanding the best from our representatives and public servants while giving our own best via kindnesses.

How does the cornerstone of democracy - majority rule - get recast as a weapon? Simple. Liars do stuff like that all the time. It’s a waste of time to debate such silliness. So go be kind to someone else who needs it.

Sometimes I just have to laugh at the pronouncements of former war criminals in our own government advising other countries how to make peace. Though it still stuns me that many in government take this enfeebled morally blank dude as a brilliant authority. Is there any other way to counter such bullshit? Nope. Kindness will have to do.

Do not shrink from darkness, bring more light.

You can’t outcrazy the crazy or uncrazy the crazy. You can’t use sensibility to stop dividers from trying to destroy the United States. You can’t stop asshole seditionists from being pardoned. Per a longtime brilliant court analyst, we may be witnessing the last 3 years of our democracy. So whatever comes next you might as well make it kinder.

Don’t get me wrong. You don’t ignore the dividers nor surrender when they come for you (or your retirement savings). But along with your defenses, add more kindness to others.

Sure, we can message better, if you want. You can despair about the terrible things done by corrupt people. But do not emulate them.

It’s because of the kindness of others I’ve lasted this long and kindness is what has made this life worth every second (even the depressing ones). I never expected to sell all my potted plants. I expect to give a bunch away to nursing homes and similar places. Not because I want praise. Not because I’m better than anyone else. I’m not.

I want the world to be a better place, a more beautiful place. That’s what kindness is and does. Try to pry it out of my warm, live hands.

It’s always something when you bring the kindness. Take time today to reach out to those you care about and those you worry about.

Why not?

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The guy in the middle, in the doorway, provides the lead vocals, but stick with this bit of fun.


And….. this.