Dad died on my birthday in 2020. The pandemic kept me from attending his funeral in person.
Mom’s funeral came almost a year later. Today, October 1st, 2021.
Sad as we are, there is finally a sense of closure. We celebrated both of their lives today. It was a beautiful service. And loads of people were there.
It was also a time to mourn. Grief at such a time is proof of love. And the evidence was there of how much both of them were loved… by neighbors… by friends… And by family.
We will all heal, but we will also never forget.
My Mother’s Funeral
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Struggles in Technological Stew
Have you ever gone swimming in a giant bowl of beef stew? No? That’s what I am doing at the moment.
I am in Iowa right now. My laptop computer is in Texas. I am writing this on an old Samsung Android that royally screwed up my WordPress editor in the last software update.
While desperately trying to add pictures to the first attempt at today’s post, I randomly reposted two old posts by accident.
Ànd I still can’t add a picture.
Ah, life! Swimming in stew. Running head-first into the potato chunks of misfortune.
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Doing the Necessary Work
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On the Road to Iowa
We will be on the road starting tonight and driving till probably some time in the afternoon tomorrow. Six of us in one RV Motorhome. My mother’s funeral starts just after midday on Friday. I am sad. But looking back on a life of 86 years and eleven months, it was definitely a rich, full life worth celebration.
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Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
It is, of course, one of the most powerful, masterful, and best-known pieces of music ever written.
Mozart completed the “little serenade” in Vienna in 1787, but it wasn’t published until 1827, long after Mozart’s untimely death.
The Serenade is incorrectly translated into English as “A Little Night Music”. But this is and always has been the way I prefer to think of it. A creation of Mozart written shortly before he hopped aboard the ferryman’s boat and rode off into the eternal night. It is the artifact that proves the art of the master who even has the word “art” as a part of his name. A little music to play on after the master is gone to prove his universal connection to the great silent symphony that is everything in the universe singing silently together.
It is basically what I myself am laboring now to do. I have been dancing along the edge of the abyss of poverty, suffering, and death since I left my teaching job in 2014. I will soon be taking my own trip into night aboard the ferryman’s dreaded boat. And I feel the need to put my own art out there in novel and cartoon form before that happens.
I am not saying that I am a master on the level of a Mozart. My name is not Mickart. But I do have a “key’ in the name Mickey. And it will hopefully unlock something worthwhile for my family and all those I loved and leave behind me. And hopefully, it will provide a little night music to help soothe the next in line behind me at the ferryman’s dock.
Filed under artwork, cartoons, classical music, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, Hidden Kingdom, magic, metaphor, music, Paffooney
Horatio T. Dogg… It’s Finished!
The book I have been using as a demonstration of my writing process, showing you the second edit of each chapter at one chapter per week, is now finished. It is also published and available on Amazon.
The book is a novella, meaning it is only about 15,000 words. I have not shown you the last few chapters on Tuesdays, but if you have been reading every chapter in order, it isn’t too much to expect to charge you 99 cents to get the whole thing from Amazon, is it? Not everything in life is free. At least, not in my experience.
The next Tuesday offer will be The Necromancer’s Apprentice, either another novella, or a short comic fantasy novel.
Filed under humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney
Islands of Identity
Who am I?
Why do I do the things that I do?
No man is an island. John Donne the English poet stated that. And Ernest Hemingway quoted it… and wove it into his stories as a major theme… and proceeded to try to disprove it. We need other people. I married an island girl from the island of Luzon in the Philippines. She may have actually needed me too, though she will never admit it.
When I was a young junior high school teacher in the early eighties, they called me Mr. Gilligan. My classroom was known as Gilligan’s Island. This came about because a goofball student in the very first class on the very first day said, “You look like Gilligan’s Island!” By which he meant I reminded him of Bob Denver, the actor that played Gilligan. But as he said it, he was actually accusing me of being an island. And no man is an island. Thank you, Fabian, you were sorta dumb, but I loved you for it.
You see, being Gilligan on Gilligan’s Island was not a bad thing to be. It was who I was as a teacher. Nerdy, awkward, telling stories about when I was young, and my doofy friends like Skinny Mulligan. Being a teacher gave me an identity. And Gilligan was stranded on the Island with two beautiful single women, Mary Ann and Ginger. Not a bad thing to be. And I loved teaching and telling stories to kids who would later be the doofy students in new stories.
But we go through life searching for who we are and why we are here. Now that I am retired, and no longer a teacher… who am I now? We never really find the answer. Answers change over time. And so do I.
Still Reeling…
My mother is gone. And I will recover from it… eventually. But today I am still sad.
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Danny Kaye
Archive photo from the Los Angeles Times
My childhood was shaped by television events like the annual showing of The Wizard of Oz and classic movies on Friday nights when I was allowed to stay up past my bedtime to watch the whole thing. I have told you before how much I loved the comedy of Red Skelton. Another comedian who shaped who I am through his wondrously manic movie performances was Danny Kaye.
One of those Friday movie classics that really struck home was the wonderful, kid-friendly movie Hans Christian Andersen.
1952 movie poster from Wikipedia
The movie was about a storyteller from a previous century and embroidered his biographical story with his famous children’s stories in the form of songs. And Danny Kaye could trip through multi-syllabic, fast-paced musical numbers like no other rubber-faced clown I have ever seen. I wanted to be such a story-teller from a very early age. I even wanted to write the kind of stories that could be made into songs. Let me show you a few of the bits that amazed me and killed me with laughter.
This song from the Inspector General was doubly engaging because the corrupt businessmen were trying to poison the character Danny played with the wine he was supposed to drink during the drinking song.
The movies Danny Kaye was in were mostly about the musical comedy. But sometimes they were just about the music. He appeared in musicals like White Christmas with Bing Crosby and stage musicals like Lady in the Dark which won him awards on Broadway. He made movies about music like The Five Pennies and A Song is Born. He always said he couldn’t read music, but he demonstrated perfect pitch and scored a number one hit with The Woody Woodpecker Song recorded for the animated cartoons of Walter Lantz. How cool is that?
And you already know that The Wizard of Oz is my favorite movie of all time. In 1964 Danny became the host for CBS’s annual showing of the film. He was able to do funny songs that made you snort your hot cocoa through your nose from laughing, and he could also do beautiful ballads like these.
I will always take the opportunity to watch a Danny Kaye movie one more time, whether it comes on YouTube or a Netflix oldie or a $5 DVD from the bin at the front of the Walmart Superstore. And I will always think of him in his role as Hans Christian Anderson.
Oh, and he was a very funny comedian too when he wasn’t singing, as in The Court Jester and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
Filed under autobiography, comedians, humor
Catch a Falling Star 
Humble Pie
The difference between who you want to be and who you are is humbling.
The recipe for humble pie requires good, clear eyesight.
And you need a reliable mirror that only shows the flaws in the reflected image, not in the mirror itself.
And you need to look at every detail in the whole of you. Even the secret things that you tend to conceal from everybody, especially yourself.
And writing a novel, if you do it right, is a form of baking humble pie.
The good and the not-so-good is reflected in reviews, which are often written with mirrors that have flaws.
But what you see, if you are honest with yourself, can show you that, even though you are far from perfect, you are exactly what you are supposed to be.
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Filed under artwork, autobiography, commentary, empathy, feeling sorry for myself, irony, Paffooney, self portrait, strange and wonderful ideas about life