Saturday, August 22, 2015

(VIDEO) WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?


Emily Frankel wants to know if her husband, John Cullum finds stand-up comics, and comedy shows amusing.

John  explains why he loves Shakespeare's humor.

Emily, doing a silly contortion gets him laughing. Throwing words at him (it's a game they often play), Emily gets John performing like a "Martha Graham" modern dancer.



Sunday, August 16, 2015

DISPLACED PEOPLE

I saw this picture.


I couldn't pronounce the name.  I turned the page.

I browsed into another paragraph and another. I kept thinking about the picture. I'm haunted by it.

Twelve year-old Atahurahman, crammed in a boat for 3½ months with 400 people, had to sit with knees bent, hugging his knees, as they ran out of food and people started drinking their own urine.

He's a Rohingya. no country accepts them... It's a horrendous story of slow genocide, and the world looks away.

We are more than halfway into the new year with politics, business, gossip, and entertainment based on unsolvable things like climate change and people plotting to destroy us.

This morning, as the kitchen TV displayed a murder, my husband said, "The world has gotten to be a terrible place..." Are our daily woes more woeful than ever before? We have much more news than ever before. Back when noisy, expensive, horseless carriages were taking over our streets, didn't people  feel  the world was getting to be terrible place?

Figuring if I feel this way, others feel this way about this too, I tried to get through four pages in Newsweek about displaced people.



Do you stop what you're doing and become a doer, fixer, an occupy Wall Streeter?

I can only answer for me. I have to go on doing my work, a job that has evolved from my life experiences, the job I do well. I am not a fund-raiser for any of the many major or relatively minor world woes. I do my work -- write-talking, communicating with real feeling as well as facts -- reminding you to keep a place in your mind and heart for the displaced people, especially the children. Inspiring YOU to share, or do a little or a lot of whatever you can do for your concerns about the world.

A little here and there becomes a lot.