Dodge poetry: a dream that was too good to be true?

When I found out that the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation withdrew funding for the next Dodge Poetry Festival, it felt like the wind was knocked out of me. To cope, I headed for my laptop.

In an effort to show people what the festival offered I started a series of columns that featured interviews with poets showcased in past festivals.

Even though the bi-annual poetry bash that was organized by Jim Haba went off without a hitch for more than 20 years, in the off-years I waited with bated breath for the next one. The Dodge Poetry Festival always seemed too good to be true.

Thousands and thousands of poetry lovers convened in one place--a place that wasn't too far from my home. Top poets from around the world gathered to read their poems to fans, and to each other.

I was in heaven every time. To paraphrase Robert Frost, why is it that nothing gold can stay? I'm not the only one who was left gasping for air after hearing that the next festival was cancelled.

Poet Jane Hirshfield was featured at the Dodge Poetry Festival three times over the years and was scheduled to appear in 2010.

"I was devastated when I heard it had been canceled," she wrote in a recent e-mail to me. "It just seemed terrible that the body of knowledge and excitement that go into this festival could be lost--for American poetry, a huge blow. I myself attribute what I think has been a large resurgence in interest in poetry in more recent years to the Bill Moyers public television specials about the Dodge [Festival]."

Hirshfield was born in New York City in 1953. She was in the first graduating class at Princeton University to include women. She went on to study at the San Francisco Zen Center. Her many books include "After," "Given Sugar, Given Salt" and "The Lives of the Heart."

The following is from an interview that I conducted with her in 2006. The first topic we discussed was the three-year period Hirshfield spent in a Zen monastery where she was instructed to do nothing but practice Zen. This meant poetry would have to leave her life for a while. But the hiatus only created a deeper connection to poetry within her.

Gene: How did that [break from writing poems] affect you?

Jane: My feeling at the time was that I would never be much of a poet if I didn't learn a great deal more about how to be a human being... It's very difficult to say how anything affects you... But I think that it affected everything because so much of Zen practice is about learning to pay attention to not only the inner world, but also the outer world... Learning to give your full attention is at the very heart of Zen practice and also, it is at the very heart of poetry.

Gene: In your book of essays, "Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry," you wrote that "any good artist's work is to find the right balance between independence born of willing solitude and the ability to speak for others." Who is it that you mean to speak for?

Jane: I don't make any presumptions about that. Basically, whenever I am writing, I am always working out something, which I need to understand more fully or experience in a more multidimensional way... You don't write poems because you have an answer. You write poems because life has presented you with a question and the poem is the only way to address that question. So I suppose the others that I speak for are anybody who is made the same way that I am.

Gene: In your poem "Mathematics" you ask, "Does the poem enlarge the world, or only your idea of the world?" Would you expand on that?

Jane: That was an actual question, which was asked of me in a question and answer session... It struck me as one of the most interesting things that anybody has ever said to me. So it became the seed of this poem in which I answer how can you tell them apart... Is there a knowable world besides the world we know? How could you separate that within our consciousness? I could say yes or no to either. I could say yes of course a poem enlarges the world. But then somebody could say which world? It's truly metaphysical.

Gene: Where does your desire to write come from?

Jane: I was born as one of those people always hungering to live more deeply. This is also why I read other people's poems. This is not just about my own writing. It's about what poetry can do for any of us.

Gene: Which is?

Jane: Magnify and clarify our existence and allow us to travel through an expanded world.

For those of us who hungered to "live more deeply," who searched for clarity, it does seem like the Dodge Poetry Festival was too good to be true. We may have to wait with bated breath for much longer for the poetry to return this time.

Contact Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation:
163 Madison Avenue
Post Office Box 1239
Morristown, NJ 07962-1239
Phone (973) 540-8442
Fax (973) 540-1211

info@grdodge.org

Bringing poetry to the masses: a talk with Billy Collins

The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation has pulled back funding that was allocated for the 2010 Dodge Poetry Festival. Metaphorically speaking, that leaves the roughly 20,000 poetry fans who endured four rainy, fall days to attend last year's festival out in the cold.

To illustrate what we would be missing if this one of a kind cultural event disappears from the landscape, I am writing a series of columns featuring interviews with some of the legendary writers that have stood on the festival's stages.

Billy Collins is one of the best selling poets in the country. In 2001, Collins' skill was recognized big time when he was named U.S. Poet Laureate. Collins and The Dodge Poetry Festival share a common goal: to bring poetry into the lives of more people. To that end, Collins put together two anthologies of poems that he hoped would catch the ears of high school students: "Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry" and "180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day." I talked with Collins about these books and the thrill he gets from writing.

Myers: Is there a poem of yours that seemed to come to you out of left field, that's different than most of your work?

Collins: I think a lot of them come out of left field in that you never can see them coming. The inspiration for a poem usually takes me by surprise. When you are asked to trace back your thinking and reverse the process, sometimes it's very hard to say what got a poem started. Other times it's very clear, like a quotation or a statue you saw.

Myers: Now that you've said statue, I am thinking of your book, “The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems.” [The poem is called “Statues in the Park.”]

Collins: It was a specific conversation I had with someone. We were walking in a park... I forget who the statue was, but it was a man on a horse and the person I was with asked me if I knew about what one hoof up or two hoofs up meant. [According to the poem, a statue of a horse rearing up on its hind legs signifies that the man on its back died in battle. If only one leg is raised, the man died elsewhere from his wounds.] I had never heard that. But I recognized right away [that would make material for a poem], because it had to do with death. It had to do with something common, like statues or parks, and it had a kind of code to it that was interesting... I right away leapt on that as having possibilities for a poem. And I think after you've been writing for a while, you get better at recognizing what little thought is worth developing and what one is just worth leaving behind.

Myers: How did you get better at recognizing the makings of a good poem?

Collins: I think just practice, trial and error, and spending too much time on poems that weren't going anywhere, trying to force poems into being. Through that frustration you realize that you can't completely force a poem into being. It has to sprout or grow on its own. You just nudge it along.

Myers: With poems that are very specifically laid out, do you plan those in advance or is it all just a ride that you don't expect?

Collins: It's kind of a combination. I don't think too far ahead. I certainly don't determine the tone. I might have a subject matter, say with that “Statues in the Park,” I knew that the subject of the poem was going to be statues in the park. It might have drifted away from that at some point. But I never know where a turn is going to take place. Turns or shifts are very necessary in my poems because the beginnings of my poems are uninteresting. Sometimes I know, here is the subject, statues in the park. But I never know the resolution. And I would say that 90 percent of the thrill of writing is moving toward an unknown destination which you are actually going to create. The poem is kind of a pathway to its ending. It's the only way to access its own ending, and that progress through the poem to the ending is the most compelling part of writing for me.

Myers: Why are the beginnings of your poems uninteresting?

Collins: I tend to start simply. I don't want to assume anything on the reader's part. So, I start with something that everybody knows or a simple declaration, like I am standing here at the window with a cup of tea. You could look at that two ways: I am luring the reader in by giving the reader something easy to identify with, or I'm expressing a kind of etiquette - I don't want to get ahead of the reader. I want to keep the reader in my company. If you look at the first three or four lines of many of my poems, they are pretty flat and ordinary. The hope is that having started with something simple and common, that gives the poem potential for improvement (laughs) so that it can get a little more challenging and move into more mysterious areas as it goes along.

Myers: Like the eye chart analogy that you used in the introduction to “180 More Extraordinary Poems for Every Day?” [Collins said that a poem designed to grant easy access to the reader is set up like an eye doctor's chart with the large "E" at the top standing for more easily discernible lines and concepts that get harder to see as the poem progresses to the bottom.]

Collins: That is exactly it. The first few lines are the big "E" at the top of the chart. I want everyone to see the big letter and then we can proceed. Then at some point we will reach, what in the eye chart would be called illegibility. In the poem, it would be called mysteriousness. This is where the poem has moved into where poetry belongs, which is the area of the ineffable.

Myers: Writing a news story, I would be scared that if I started with a "flat" lead (beginning) the reader wouldn't go further.

Collins: I think that readers of poetry are often delighted to encounter a poem that begins without mystifying them. So many poems challenge the reader in the first few lines. If a poem begins in difficulty, I don't see how it can change its coloration. I suppose all of my poems have the same pattern—that you begin with something rather flat. But the attempt is to put the reader in a multidimensional area in the end.

Using ice cream to pull back the veil

There is one scenario that will always make me sad if I run it through in my head. Picture a little boy, let's say he's about 8 years old. It's a hot summer day and here comes the ice cream truck.

At the sight of it, the boy races to tie on his sneakers as his mom hands him a dollar. (Can you still buy ice cream for a dollar?)

The rest of his friends are done with their transactions and are walking away from the Good Humor truck with red, white and blue rocket ice pops, Nutty Buddies and ice cream sandwiches.

But the little boy we see from a first person vantage point races down his stoop and into the street just fast enough for the ice cream man to notice him. He waits.

The boy buys a Fat Frog or a Bubble O Bill. (They are both the same thing: ice cream with a chocolate back and a gumball for a nose.) The boy is victorious - smiling with a green tongue as the truck drives away.

As he heads up his driveway with his treat, his dog startles him. He jumps and drops the ice cream.

The truck, with its carnival like siren song, is gone. If I were a method actor, that is the trick that I would use to bring tears to my eyes. No other scene could make me sadder quicker. Not the time I failed the parallel parking part of the driver's test, not getting dumped, not even sitting in a cubicle all day selling whatchamacallits.

Why is that? I certainly ran faster and spent more money to please girls. And I certainly never felt like I missed the boat (or ice cream truck as the case may be) more than in my previous sales career.

It's as if the events of childhood and the feelings they bring pass through a magnifying glass for most of us. "Enjoy it now, kid," relatives said. "These are the best days of your life!"

Even though people of all ages are wired the same - physically experience emotions and sensations in the same way - we seem to become jaded from just being around. Our passion fades.

Psychotherapist Wayne Allen agrees that children are more "in the moment."

"That's why they can be having a tantrum one moment and giggling with pleasure in the next," he said.

He adds that people stop experiencing life spontaneously as they gain a sense of past and future.

"They begin to question their experience, its validity, and pack onto it what others have told them they ought to be experiencing and feeling," Allen said.

Judgment tempers joy and then the responsibilities pile on. Concerns over rising gas prices and car insurance payments override the thrill of driving.

Of course judgment isn't a bad thing. It's needed for living and dealing with others safely. That is why we don't want a kid behind the wheel of a car.

But we let this evaluation process take the wind out of our sails when we over-think things. That's when it reaches a point of diminishing returns.

Turning back the clock on this feedback loop isn't an option. But we can hit the reset button and recapture the joy of youth from time to time, according to Allen.

"Commit to freeing one's spirit, to fully and completely experience life," Allen said.

We have all heard about the importance of being in the moment, but being there and taking it in without worry is easier said than done.

Picturing a child filled with joy from something as simple as ice cream contrasted with the random, real world events that sometimes cause him to drop that ice cream helps me to peel away the layers and open myself up to the moment.

One of the greatest joys of my life is in jeopardy

The bi-annual Dodge Poetry Festival started in 1986 thanks to funding from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.

The first festival drew less than 5,000 people. As word spread that number grew to about 20,000.

In January, the Dodge Foundation announced that it would not provide funding for the next festival, which would have taken place in 2010.

Poet and Dodge Foundation director Jim Haba was at the helm every time. He crafted each festival to be both “a work of art” and “a good party.”

The biggest names in poetry took part: Billy Collins, Mark Doty, Robert Bly, Lucille Clifton, Jorie Graham, Coleman Barks and Gwendolyn Brooks, just to name a few.

Just like any good party, there was food, music and great conversation. Poetry fans got the inside scoop on what it’s like to create poems, how to read poetry and the lives of poets from the poets themselves.

There were numerous venues where poetry lovers could share their own poems, take workshops or listen to music throughout the day.

But the highlight of each day happened in the main tent—a tent that could accommodate 2,000 people. Under its big top, the most amazing, logic-defying feats were pulled off with ease.

Only in this tent would it make sense for the penultimate hip hop group The Roots to be the warm-up act for a 96-year-old man who had no props, but the podium and his cane.

That man was poet Stanley Kunitz and he brought the house down that night with a poem about Halley’s Comet.

Not only did the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation cut funding for the next festival, it was also reported that Haba resigned.

Many fear this could be the end of America’s largest poetry festival.

In an effort to show people what they might be missing, (I say might because the township of Montclair has approached the Dodge Foundation with an offer to host the event) I am writing a series of columns that will feature interviews with some of the poets who came to Haba’s parties.

Coleman Barks is a poet and translator. His translations of Jalal al-Din Rumi—a 13th century Sufi poet–are the best selling poetry books in America.

Thanks to the Dodge Poetry Festival, I had a chance to speak with Barks about how poetry can make life more spiritual.

Gene: Your translations [of Rumi] remind me of Buddhist writings.

Coleman: There was a strong Buddhist influence in Afghanistan in the 13th century. Rumi’s father’s school has lotus motifs on the columns, which means that they were big into meditation. Coming down the Silk Road, Buddhism, Sufism, Hinduism, Judaism and Christianity met and produced this very beautiful, flexible form that Rumi worships within. He did not divide people up into religious groups. He sees everyone as being part of a single family.

Gene: Have you been to Afghanistan?

Coleman: I have. In March of 2005 the State Department sent me over there.

Gene: What was that like?

Coleman: It was exciting! I didn’t know where I was—meaning that I just didn’t acknowledge that there was danger. But there was. Everywhere that I went there was an SUV with automatic weapons in front and an SUV with automatic weapons behind and I was in the middle. It was amazing. I found myself in the Afghan Ministry of Culture reading a poem of Rumi’s and everybody in the room – all of the cabinet ministers – were saying the poem in Farsi as I said it in English. They knew that poem so well. It was a magnificent cultural experience. I’ve never been in a culture that honors poetry like the Persian-speaking world does. It feels like home to me, or it feels like the Dodge Poetry Festival!

Gene: Why is it that Americans don’t have this appreciation for poetry?

Coleman: We haven’t found the use for it that they have. It comes up in conversation. They have chunks of it memorized. That’s an unusual thing for the United States… For grown men to recite poetry to each other.

Gene: In a culture where poetry is pervasive, how does that change the culture?

Coleman: It gives them a soul place that they can meet…That is a meeting place that we don’t have.

Gene: What do you think Americans are looking for when they pick up a book of Rumi?

Coleman: I don’t know why Rumi has been so popular over the last 10 years. My translations alone have sold over 500,000 copies, which is amazing in the poetry world. As for why that has been happening, there is some kind of place where we have been lonesome for a certain kind of human being. He’s an aesthetic and he is wise and he has a kind of gentleness… those qualities come through and I think that that nourishes the psyche.

Gene: What do you think people look for when they pick up your poetry?

Coleman: Gee, I don’t know. I had a humbling realization once, numerically. Rumi sells 100 copies a day. My poems sell 12 copies a month, worldwide.

Gene: It seems like, in a lot of your poems, people are not alone. There is always more than one person in the poems. Does that go back to waking up on the cot by yourself in school? [Referring to a poem in which a young Barks wakes up alone having slept longer than his classmates]

Coleman: That kind of emptiness that I felt in kindergarten was profound. I think that friendship is a beautiful thing, but the deepest truth is that we are alone. And that aloneness is absolute.

Gene: That reminds me of a Rumi poem that you translated.[You thought union was a way / you could decide to go. / But the world of the soul follows / things rejected and almost forgotten.]

Coleman: The mystics say that love has to fail… [Rumi’s friend] has to leave Rumi alone so that he knows that the friendship is not the deepest knowing. It’s one of the great human enigmas that somehow on the other side of our love there is something that is even deeper than that.

Gene: How important is spirituality in your everyday life?

Coleman: It’s the whole thing. I love that old story about a theologically inclined bunch of fish who schooled together and discussed the possibility of the existence of the ocean as they swam in it. They divided up into study groups as they tried to figure it out… I’ve felt that mystery my whole life.

Gene: What draws you to a poem?

Coleman: I guess it’s an image that comes to me first. The first poem that I was drawn to write was about an image of laying back in a river, so that your ears are under water and your eyes are out of water. You have an underwater world that you can listen to and an out of the water world that you can see. The underwater world seems to be further away. You can hear around the bend. You can hear a motorboat coming. That way of being in two places at once is an image of how it feels to be me. I feel like my ears are underwater most of the time!

We are all passengers on a plane

It strikes me as strange that people can feel so lonely on this densely populated planet. To make my point I have an exercise for you to try. Pay attention the next time a plane flies overhead.

Let your imagination take over as the roar of the jets fills your ears. Picture the people on board and try to picture individual passengers specifically.

Who are they? Maybe one is a young magazine editor from Iowa who is flying to New York to visit her mom. See the editor in your mind as she looks out the window and down upon the Meadowlands. She is looking out in order to give the couple next to her privacy.

The couple appreciates the privacy as they reel from dizziness caused by the flu. You can take this thought experiment as far as you like. Let's say the couple caught the bug while visiting the husband’s family on their farm two hours west of Des Moines. They slept outside during their visit because she’s allergic to sheep that are often sheared in the kitchen.

In the cabin, the captain and his copilot tease each other about their divorces as they sip coffee and tend to their gauges. The captain keeps it to himself that he gets along well with his ex-wife and doesn’t tell his copilot that he’s heading to her house for dinner when the plane lands.

A rookie flight attendant brings more Cheerios to the red headed toddler who is awestruck by his first plane ride. Beyond picturing the passengers and what they are doing at the moment they are flying overhead, conjure up their pasts as well. What led them to this moment?

While the copilot had military experience, the pilot went from flying Cessnas to corporate jets before finally getting hired by Continental, a career move he now questions because of extensive company budget cuts.

The toddler is the apple of his mother’s eye and he knows it as he focuses on stacking Cheerios in the driver’s seat of his toy fire truck.

His dad focuses his camera on the wing of the plane outside his window as it slices through the clouds while his mom watches him stack one Cheerio after another. She is looking forward to showing him off to his grandma in a few hours.

This could go on and on. What are their expectations for their trips? Who will they see? The point of the exercise is to illustrate how connected the planet’s 6 billion inhabitants actually are.

Because we are wired to be social animals isolation scares us so we tend to exaggerate feelings of loneliness. The emotions that drive us to be social have an important function. But the illusion of isolation can be a nasty side effect.

Playing this game not only illustrates how many of us are at hand crisscrossing the planet at any given moment, it also highlights how much we all have in common with one another.

All parents can empathize with what it’s like to travel with a toddler. Most of us in the workforce feel the pressure exerted upon us by today’s economy and everyone could use a break from time to time.

Picturing the lives of others as they streak across the sky is a way of gaining perspective. We may not always realize it, but at any given moment, many of us are in the same boat.

What is happiness? (Part 3)

So our definition of happiness is building. It is the result of things that are external to us, like our surroundings. It is also the result of the choices we make as members of various communities. It can come from simple things like seeing a baby smile, but also from complex concepts, like justice.

Defining happiness might be the first step toward understanding it. But it might even be an unnecessary one. As my mother-in-law continued her e-mail, she told the story of my brother-in-law, Ben, when he was 2:

“When Ben was 2 or 2 and a half...somewhere in that age range... we asked him why he was always so happy. He considered the question carefully and said ‘I just decided to be because it feels better.’

“Allan [my father-in-law] and I remember that because he said it at a time of our lives when we were so incredibly busy that we didn't stop to think about topics such as our happiness. When he said that I realized that I was very happy and that part of it was the fact that I was so busy and involved and felt that I was contributing.”

What is happiness? (Part 2)

“How would you define happiness?” I asked friends and family in an e-mail...

The first reply was from my mom, “Happiness is seeing my grandson, and him saying ‘Grandma,” she wrote.

So, Mom’s definition is on par with Webster’s. My friend John is a library director.

“I think of happiness as momentary and uncertain. It is joy (a more spiritual value) that sustains me even in the darkest times and in the most painful circumstances,” he wrote.

The difference in how one defines happiness while looking at a baby’s face is strikingly different than how one defines it while looking at a wall of books.

John added an important layer to the discussion. Is happiness different than joy? The joy I write about in this column often points to more substantial events like a baby learning to walk than fleeting, funny moments, like said baby slipping on a banana peel and then landing on a whoopee cushion. But is there a difference between the two in the moment?

“This is a stream of consciousness rather than a definition but here goes,” my mother-in-law writes. “I really do believe that happiness is a state of mind and a decision. ‘Things’ give me transient satisfaction but the feeling that I am contributing to the world in some way, whether it is through paid employment or how I treat the people I meet or deal with everyday, I am happy.”

Actually, many philosophers agree that this is an integral part of deep happiness. To illustrate this they concocted a thought experiment in which there exists a pleasure machine.

Much like the movie The Matrix, the perfect pleasure machine allows people to plug in and experience whatever experiences they think will make them happy. Want to be a rock star? Poof! You’re a rock star.

The experience would be perfect. It would seem tactile and real in every way to those who are plugged in, and yet the majority of people say they would opt out. They would rather live their real lives. Philosophers believe this is because people want their lives to add up to something.

So it is more than a positive emotion about your current condition. Life only adds up to something through our toil and that means that happiness is more than being satisfied. It’s not just a situation that we find ourselves in—we have to contribute to it.

If Aristotle had e-mail, I am sure that he would love to contribute at this point in the discourse.

“Happiness would be the result of living a just life,” he’d click out on his keyboard before spilling his late night coffee across his open-toed sandals.

A just life, in Aristotle’s view, would be a life that is built on careful decisions, in accordance with one’s beliefs.

"Living a life that is loving and giving in the light of eternity," writes poet Sander Zulauf who was one of my great teachers in college.

What is happiness?

In 1825, when Noah Webster assembled his first dictionary, he defined happiness as “the agreeable sensations which spring from the enjoyment of good.”

Today, Princeton’s Wordnet Web site defines happiness as a "state of well-being characterized by emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy” or “emotions experienced when in a state of well-being.”

According to those definitions, happiness is a positive emotion that is the result of your current situation.

But is it the byproduct of someone’s disposition? Is happiness something that exists against sadness?

NPR correspondent Eric Weiner also thought those definitions fell flat and decided to hunt down happiness in his book, “The Geography of Bliss.” His first visit was to Ruut Veenhoven director of the World Database of Happiness.

It might come as a surprise to you–as it did to me—but Veenhoven’s research indicates that most people in the world are happy. Weiner worried, however, that the way researchers gather data is suspect. How did they test whether or not people are happy? They asked them!

Instead of hooking up test subjects to monitors or bugging their homes, researchers simply asked people, “How happy would you say you are these days?”

Weiner was skeptical. Rest assured, Veenhoven advised, “You can’t be happy and not know it. By definition, if you are happy, you know it.”

Irish it up for me!

“The Irish are among a select few remaining on the earth in whom an alternative, soul-filled approach to ordinary living is still alive,” author Thomas Moore.

Soul may seem at odds with green beer and red hair. But Irish soul isn’t lofty. It’s rooted in real life.

Irish soul is tough and scrappy. It comes from a people whose pride kept them strong in the face of colonization. It helped them claw their way up from the bottom at Ellis Island.

Pride in my Irish soul swells my chest to this day.

The potato famine sent my ancestors across the pond and we made our way to Queens, NY.

We worked with our hands until the mechanic and mailman (my grandfathers) met their wives in the vicinity of Steinway Street.

It was then and there that the life I know took hold and a huge family started to bloom.

Essentially, my life has been one long family party.

With more than 50 cousins, there was always an occasion to get together.

Parties were done right and anything done right was institutionalized.

My parents hosted Christmas Eve parties. Christmas Day was at one aunt’s house and Easter was held at my other aunt’s. Uncles hosted the summer barbeques.

But we weren’t just partying. We were strengthening family bonds, continuing traditions and nurturing new branches of the family tree as it grew.

Considering the “deep soul” of the Irish, Thomas Moore writes, “It basks in tradition and finds its heaven in family…”

The majority of my large family stayed close over the years. Even family members who moved away stayed in touch because of the love we have for one another. It was visible at each party.

There was love for the ones who needed a ride; love for the ones who outdid themselves with the preparations; love for the ones who always came.

Because of the love we have for one another and the high priority we place on family, favorite drinks were on hand and the spare bed was always offered.

Everyone had the chance to hand their coffee back to the host without worry and say, “Irish it up for me.”

Happy or heading toward happiness...

Wynton Marsalis talking about his book, "Moving to Higher Ground: How can Jazz change your life:"

"The blues is many things–a musical form, a distinctive sound, a universal feeling–but above all, the blues is survival music. It’s message is simple: things are never so bad that they can’t get any better. It’s about crying over something, actually wailing–and it’s about coming back. The words may be sad but the dancing shuffle (the definitive rhythm of the blues) is always happy or heading toward happiness. The blues is about what is–and what is has demons and angels sitting at the same table. That’s a bitter-sweet and realistic message about life that everybody needs, that everybody can hear and respond to. I’ve heard people respond to it, all over the world."

The smiling exercise

Ever notice the feeling you get when you are walking around with a smile on your face? I usually feel a little bit goofy, a little self-conscious. But my fear is allayed the minute I come in contact with another person.

The same smile pops up on their face.

“Why are you smiling?” they ask through their own goofy grin.

If I have an appropriate answer, a conversation starts. If I don’t have an appropriate answer, the smiles grow even bigger.

“I don’t know,” I say sheepishly as my smile takes over my face.

“Oh? OK,” they say as they follow the beam of their own smile on down the hall.

Unlike frowning, people don’t always need a reason for smiling. No matter if it’s their own smile or someone else’s.

I don’t always have a reason, because sometimes I am just smiling as an exercise.

There are three simple rules to the smiling exercise:
1) Do it on purpose. 2) Do it more often. 3) Start in the morning.

I emphasize smiling on purpose emphatically. Sure, it’s an automatic reaction that our bodies handle on autopilot, but smiling on purpose jump-starts the feeling of giddiness.

Smiling on purpose also allows us to dispense smiles more often, like Pez from a Pez dispenser, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sad person holding a Pez dispenser!

Lastly, I say start in the morning because that is when we tend to grump around like “adults.” I don’t mean like adults who have amassed accomplishments that they are proud of like family and careers.

I’m using the connotation for “adults” that kids have in their inflection when referring to the slouching beasts who stand around the coffee maker sighing and groaning -- hands tucked into their backs to better support the weight of the world.

One morning smile will jettison you and any bystanders into the light of the new day.

Ways to start enjoying your commute!

By Gene Myers

According to happiness research professionals—and yes, there are such people—people are most unhappy when they are commuting. If your commute takes an hour, that two hours a day adds up to almost 22 days a year spent being miserable.

But what choice do we have? Surprisingly, there are more than you’d think. First off, take control. Don't drive into a jam if you don’t have to. Does your job offer flextime? If so, then why not work out a schedule that would allow you to skip rush hour altogether?

If that’s not an option, track your trip virtually. Local TV and radio news stations can be of some help, but Google Maps (a Web application that you can install on your cell phone) and Web cams can show you jam-ups in real-time.

No way to avoid the congestion? You can still make your situation better. It’s your car—your space! Wish you had more quiet time to think? They make aromatherapy scents that you can plug in to your car’s cigarette lighter.

Why not turn off the radio and listen to yourself breathing deeply with the help of a soothing sent? Not the meditative type? Crank up the loud, obnoxious music they won't tolerate at home.

OK, singing in the car—who hasn’t thought of that? But have you ever considered exercising in the car?

On the eHow Web site, Sports and Fitness Editor Kristen Knight offers some creative ideas.

“You may think it's impossible or even silly to try to work out in your car, but a few simple exercises can help you burn calories, reduce stiffness in your joints, and may even have you laughing your way along the highway,” she writes.

Step 1: Squeeze and release: the most common exercises that can easily be done in the car are called isometric contractions. They involve squeezing or activating your muscle, holding the contraction for a few seconds, then release.

Step 2: Release tension in your neck and shoulders with shoulder shrugs. Lift your shoulders up toward your ears, hold for 8 to 10 seconds, and lower. Repeat.

Step 3: Keep your tush from getting numb by squeezing your gluteal muscles, hold for a count of 10, then relax. Repeat.

Step 4: Strengthen your inner thighs. Place a small pillow between your feet. Try to lift the item off the ground and squeeze your legs together at the same time. You can also place the pillow or other soft object between your knees and squeeze.

Step 5: Toe raises will help work the muscles on the front of your shins. Lift toes, hold 10 seconds, relax and repeat.

Step 6: Place a bag or stack of magazines on your lap to perform heel raises. Lift heels, hold for 8-10 seconds. Relax then repeat.

Step 7: Hold onto the handle above window and engage the biceps as though you're going to pull yourself out of your seat. Hold for 8-10 seconds, then relax. Switch seats, if possible, after a rest stop to work the other arm.

Step 8: Squeeze your abdominal muscles as though you're trying to touch your ribs to your stomach, then release and sit up tall.

Or, you could get a mental workout. Your local library has plenty of books on tape and CDs that you could listen to during the commute. You could learn a language, become enlightened listening to the Dalai Lama or catch up on guilty pleasures like Danielle Steele.

There’s one more element to consider. If you’re like my wife and you spend that hour commuting on a bus or train, you have even more options to choose from. You could plan your day or the week’s meals and shopping. You could get a jump on your workday using a laptop. You could even watch DVDs on the laptop.

If you use mass transit, you have one other option that isn’t available to those of us who drive. You could nap!

If sleeping the ride away is your pleasure, there is an iPhone application called iNap. The program uses the phone's built-in GPS to track your location and it will set off an alarm when you near your destination.

I’ll leave you with this Roy M. Goodman quote: “Remember that happiness is a way of travel — not a destination.”