Lightning Bolts in the Hands of Zeus

Plus barrels of fun and lots of heart

Axel Wilhelm Christiansen died at the age of 89. According to his obit he was “a successful plumber” known for his “kind demeanor,” and those two things go together quite nicely, for to be an unsuccessful plumber with a kind demeanor is little consolation to the person with a clogged toilet, while being a successful plumber who is unpleasant is a trial even when a hearty flush is restored. Of the two, of course, one would choose the grouchy success over the nice failure, as happens often in life. If you are to get a heart bypass would you want your surgeon to be successful yet dour, or happy yet clumsy?

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A man named Paul Wendell Danforth died in Des Moines at the age of 94. He would say, “I’m feeling marvelous” when greeting people well into his 90s.

His obit says he lived a life of “gratitude, faith, family and service to his community.” That’s a powerful foursome to have in your pocket. To wake up and think about what you’re thankful for is balm to the heart. A nourishing faith is comfort for the soul.

And what can take the place of family? Although there are what’s called “black sheep” in every family if you go back far enough. On my mother’s side there were three sisters—my mom’s mom and her two sisters—and a brother. The brother was the black sheep, gambling, drinking and the like, and went off one day and no one knew where. One of my mom’s aunts, the youngest one, was close to the brother and missed him, but that’s how life goes sometimes, the missing, the hole in the heart…but then, one day out of the blue (blue being the color of surprise for some odd reason, more on that below) the brother showed up at the family home…missing one arm…and the only one there was the oldest sister, the mean one, the one who would have beaten Jane Eyre with a stick if she had shown up in the Brontë novel, and she refused to let him in the house, told him he was not wanted there, and to never darken their doors again. He never did, and when the youngest sister found out what her older sister had done, she never forgave her.

Somehow it doesn’t seem like Paul Wendell Danforth would give that kind of reception to a black sheep in his family who showed up years later wanting to make things right. He would have embraced him like the father embraced the prodigal son.

Back to “out of the blue.” Why is blue the surprise color? The complete idiom is “like a bolt out of the blue,” meaning you’re there under a blue sky, the birds are singing, and all seems right with the world, when for no apparent reason a lightning bolt shoots out of the sky and immolates the tree you’re sitting under, or the cheese sandwich you’re about to eat, or maybe even you if you’re holding a golf club, but in any event it’s a shock (so to speak).

That’s how the Greeks thought about it, the lightning bolts, thrown by Zeus when he was miffed, which was a lot because the Greek gods were just like us, only bigger and more powerful up there on Olympus.

Zeus was a real punk, especially to poor Prometheus, who brought fire to the earth to benefit mankind. Zeus chained him to a rock and had an eagle swoop down, peck out his liver and eat it. Overnight Prometheus grew a new liver, and the whole thing repeats for eternity.

Yes, a barrel of laughs, that Zeus.

Prometheus Bound, oil on canvas by Jacob Jordaens, 1640

Better is “The Beer Barrel Polka,” the song popularized in WWII by the legendary Andrews Sisters. That’s the one where we roll out the barrel and we’ll have a barrel of fun and keep the blues on the run!

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Over in Cochise County, AZ, a man named Roy Zuckerman died. He was 91 and died of “natural causes,” which is a curious phrase implying that nature is out there ready to cause death, but what is so natural about it? Is it just the running down of the machine, the car’s transmission giving out so you roll to a stop on the highway of life? The heart stops its gentle thrum, it’s had enough, and in having enough you have had enough, too?

Pascal said the heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of. So I guess when it decides to stop it has its reasons, but we know nothing of it until it actually stops, and by then we’re beyond doing anything about it.

So take good care of your heart now, kids, and you could have good run like Mr. Zuckerman, who served in the U.S. Army in Korea, in the Signal Corp, and learned Morse Code, which is a dying dodo of a skill to know anymore, but was handy during the fight against the commies in the North. Later he went to Japan where he met and fell in love with a Japanese woman named Mitsue Kezuka. They were married, which was not an easy thing to do in those days, as the Army discouraged and sometimes prevented it, and if you want to see what that was like there’s a movie called Sayonara starring Marlon Brando which has a subplot involving Red Buttons and Miyoshi Umeki as a soldier and young Japanese woman who fall in love and have all sorts of trouble, and it ends tragically in the movie, but triumphantly in life, for at the Oscars that year Miss Umeki won the award as Best Supporting Actress.

Miyoshi Umeki

Thus, always remember the wisdom of that song from Damn Yankees, a song Pascal himself might have hummed had he lived long enough to see the show:

You gotta have heart.
All you really need is heart.
When the odds are saying you’ll never win
That’s when the grin
Should start!

Quote of the Week

“The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.” – Edith Sitwell