How could anyone properly prepare for the Giant Paper Check Press Conference, where reporters pepper the winner with a litany of “what next” questions? The surprised and freshly minted tycoons are always so cheerful at this most public moment, but afterwards things tend to go off the rails as relatives clash for control of the windfall and an excessive amount of media scrutiny exposes a host of personal weaknesses.

It often ends badly.

What if the winner this time decides to start out with sadness and regret? Perhaps an acknowledgement of the enormous challenge involved in suddenly managing hundreds of millions of dollars would lead to a new level of understanding of the tremendous responsibility that wealth carries with it. People would see that being on the receiving end of such a mammoth cash deluge is really as much a cause for grief as joy. Sympathy would be the order of the day. Condolences would be offered. Sincerely.

Well, probably not, but my advice to the winners is the less said, the better. Keep your answers short, in the range of five syllables per answer. Or seven.

Yes, Haiku short.

I
Lottery winners
squander their fortunes quickly.
Mine will take some time.

II
No one needs so much.
Yes I am undeserving.
Just like you would be.

III
Smiling muscles ache.
It’s an exhausting pastime,
handing out money

IV
I will buy houses.
Relatives who don’t need them
still must be appeased.

V
This burdensome win
has made me melancholy.
What lucky numbers?

Write a press conference haiku for the Powerball Winner.

Dear Dr. Babooner,

Just this week I finally graduated from college. Yay for me!

I’ll never forget my feelings six years ago when I arrived on campus here at St. Capricious (Go Windsocks)!

I was all excited about becoming an English major and learning to write like F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was my goal to create books so complete and intricate and memorable, no one would ever be satisfied with a movie made from one of them. I thought I was doing all right until my finance professor pointed out that if movies could not be made from my books, I would be a starving unknown, forever.

So I switched to Finance with the goal of landing a job on Wall Street. My professor told me if I played my cards right, I could retire by forty. But then the recession hit and what with the investment bank bailout my dream of a career in Finance suddenly didn’t seem so noble.

So I switched to Social Work. Social workers are extremely decent people who work harder than corporate CEO’s for NO money at all, or close to it. They’re probably as close as you’ll get to Ghandi in the USA in 2013. I wanted to be just like them, and I felt great about it until I met some social workers who had become jaded. That was kind of disappointing, because there’s nothing sadder than an idealist who has lost her ideals. She’s got nothing left but an untethered IST. I didn’t want to be like that.

So decided to become a chemical engineer. In the process I found out that I love chemicals but I don’t care so much for math.

So I finally settled on communications, because no matter how bad everything gets, we’ll still need to talk to each other, right? I specialized in journalism, so for a class project I wrote an article about how experienced reporters are losing their jobs and having to work for half their previous salary, or for free.

So I switched to biology. Which was really interesting until I discovered how much it had to do with handling dead things. Ugh.

Anyway, by this time all the friends I’d made as a freshman had graduated and I was still not done.

I sat down with my academic counselor Jeremy, and we looked at all the degree-parts I had completed, and we decided with just another semester’s work I could design my own degree in Communobiological Chemfinancial Emotivity.

So that’s what I did, resisting the temptation to go into counseling because Jeremy is SO AWESOME.

Anyway, we just had our graduation and just before they gave me my diploma there was this commencement speaker – a really well-known singer songwriter. He was so cool and so … with it … I realized during his speech that I had wasted all those years. What I really wanted to do with my life was to write songs and play the guitar!

Dr. Babooner, I’m fresh out of college and depressed. I’ve just thrown away a ton of time and even more money to wind up at a place I really don’t want to be. I wish they had let me listen to my commencement speaker when I was a Freshman. It would have spared me a lot of grief.

Sincerely,
Robert Zimmerman (no, not that one). (at least I don’t THINK so).

I told Robert that it didn’t seem to me there was any actual profession that could spare him grief. His commitments are so tenuous, the only job description that would truly fit him is “rolling stone”. But that’s just one opinion.

What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?

Henry St. Claire Fredericks was born in Harlem and raised in Springfield Massachusetts, but his world turned out to be much larger than that. The wide-ranging career he has had as Taj Mahal is clear evidence that there is much to be gained by indulging a curious mind – he’s an accomplished artist and a world music scholar. The skill he exhibits today is a testament to the many influences he has absorbed along the way.

Taj Mahal drew inspiration from his father’s record collection, his stepfather’s guitar, and his neighbor’s style, just to name three things that went into the mix.

He’s also a man of the Earth, having studied agriculture in the ’60′s. Apparently he has milked many, many cows, and is one of those people who could sustain himself off the land given the right tools and enough time.

Searching for a Taj Mahal live performance on You Tube, I found this gem, which was uploaded in 2008 but it’s actually a recording made in Bonn, Germany in March of 1995.

He’s 53, but must have been spending some time out in the field, wrestling more cows. Look at those arms!

Here’s a quote from Taj Mahal’s website:

“I didn’t want to fall into the trap of complacency. I wanted to keep pushing the musical ideas I had about jazz, music from Africa and the Caribbean. I wanted to explore the connections between different kinds of music.”

How do you avoid complacency?

Hey Mr. C.,

We’re just about to get out of school for another year and I can’t wait. Whenever May comes around I start to think about much fun summer is going to be and I kind of lose track of things, which is too bad because that’s exactly when we’re taking all those tests.

This year I was really sweating it in English class because Ms. Filbert-Nutt got this idea that we should all memorize the same poem – this thing by Robert Frost about a yellow brick road somewhere in the forest or something. I’m not too good at remembering things, probably because I’m kind of old, for a sophomore.

Anyway, she told us in September we’d have to learn it, and as soon as you felt ready to recite it you just had to tell her and she’d give you two minutes to do it in class. Alicia Bombardo did it the very next day, of course! I kept putting it off, and by the time March came around she started calling on people who hadn’t done it yet. I had to use my fake sore throat voice a couple of times just to get a pass.

So I thought I’d managed to dodge it completely, but then last week when we were doing the essay part of our year-end exam, it turned out she wanted us to write it on the test paper! Longhand!

And it was just my luck I was sitting a little behind and just off to the side of Stephen Craft. He’s kind of smart but he’s also wiggly and he’s got these really thick arms and he kind of hunches over his papers when he writes. So I was only able to get a glimpse of word groups here and there while he was writing it out.

It’s not easy to copy from someone’s paper when they’re all fidgety like that. Especially if the teacher is as fussy about cheating, which Ms. Filbert-Nutt is.

Anyway, I did my best. But when she gave me the paper back I had a “D”, with a whole bunch of question marks scribbled around my answer to that poem question, along with this note: “What happened here? Talk to me!”.

Here’s what my paper said:

Two woods diverged in a yellow road,
And travel I could not sorry both
And long be one, traveler I stood
And as far down one looked as I could
Bent to where it in the undergrowth;

Then just the other, as took as fair
And better having the perhaps claim
Grassy it wanted, and because was wear,
Passing the that as though for there
Worn about them really had the same,

Both equally and morning that lay
Step in no leaves had trodden black
Another first marked I for Oh the day!
Way how on knowing leads yet to way
Ever should I come if I doubted back.

With this telling shall I be a sigh
Ages somewhere and ages hence:
Roads a wood diverged in two and I,
Traveled the one I took less by,
Made the all and has that difference.

So now I have to have this meeting with Ms. F-N and I think my whole grade kind of rests on it. Mr. C., I’m wondering if you could help me think of something good to say that isn’t too false, but isn’t totally honest either. Something with just enough spin that it could keep me from flunking my sophomore year. Again!

Your pal,
Bubby

I told Bubby that I try often enough but I’m not a very good liar – whenever I tell a whopper people see through me right away. All my excuses tend to fall flat so I didn’t think I could help him. He wrote back and accused me of making that answer up, which, of course, was true. But he asked me to pass it along.

What should Bubby say to improve his grade?

That means today is the 406th anniversary of the Jamestown colonists’ “what now?” moment, in which a feeling of reality-based dread that eventually settles over many jubilant proceedings – a reaction also known as buyer’s remorse.

Not that they had actually purchased anything. The native people who were already in the area apparently weren’t using the Jamestown site because they recognized it wasn’t good for agriculture. But the natives could be wheedled and cajoled into handing over supplies. Things changed when the needy visitors proved unable to care for themselves and became even more demanding of support in this harsh new environment.

That’s not a way to win friends and influence people.

In the ensuing years, most of the colonists died from sickness and starvation. Their replacements resorted to cannibalism, documented in firsthand accounts from long ago and recently confirmed by archeologists who dug up the skeleton of a 14 year old girl. She had apparently died, been buried, exhumed, and finally had her brains scooped out for sustenance.

Ugh.

Never underestimate the power of hunger to make you do bad things.

It is easy at this distance to look down on the unprepared-for-survival people of Jamestown, and to tut-tut over the failure of their leaders. But with only a moment’s reflection I realized that I am in no way qualified to provide useful guidance in several key areas:

• The growing and harvesting of food.
• The killing and butchering of wild animals.
• The construction of buildings that could withstand more than a light breeze.

Were they clueless and lazy? I suppose. But given the chance to provide survival tips, I could only show the people of Jamestown a couple of things.

• How to surf the Internet.
• How to sit in front of the TV.
• (Internet and TV not included).

Not only are these totally useless skills, they do absolutely nothing to support healthy brain development. Which means I wouldn’t even come in handy at suppertime.

Dropped into the wilderness, how would you survive?

Beechly thinks it’s OK for buoys to be joined together.

Greetings, Constituents!

I’m sending this special message so I can go on the record as being in favor of it all along before Governor Dayton signs the same sex marriage bill into law later today.

Many have accused me of being evasive or downright wishy-washy on the marriage rights issue, claiming I have split words while trying to stay acceptable to people on both sides of the debate at a time when decisiveness and leadership were sorely needed.

I don’t know what those people are talking about.

I, for one, have always striven for transparency on this question – and I believe I have been as clear as the water on beautiful Lake Opaque when it comes to same-sex marriage.

Here’s a section from my formal position paper on the issue, released almost exactly one year ago:

Most of the living creatures in my district are, as you know, fish. Walleye don’t get married, and don’t seem to want to get married. Frankly, I don’t think they even know who the fathers or mothers are of all the fish they produce – it’s really wanton and free under the lake surface with all the things they do. Fish sexual identity is just so variable, I don’t think any one set of rules can apply down there. And by “down there” I mean underwater. AND I also mean “down there.”

So I am going to declare myself to be predominantly aquatic on issues of affectional relationships.

Some will say that identifies me as a free thinker. Others will say I am endorsing natural law. But one thing I know – there are fish in the Bible, lots of them. Mostly they’re just being pulled out of the water and eaten by disciples and such, but I assure you that what they’re doing under the surface today they were also doing back then, so my position is kind of scriptural, if you need it to have that sort of connection.

Many of my political opponents called that a “fishy” position, or suggested that I was “all wet,” which simply proves that they are lazy critics. Anyone who declares himself aquatic on the sexuality question is fishy by definition.

And “all wet”? What could be better? My district is nothing but lakes, rivers and swamps. So I won’t run from it. I can’t! Especially those wetlands in springtime. When your boots start to take on mud and water, there’s no question – you’re not going anywhere.

The mind of the voting public is changing, and any politician who refuses to respond to that will soon be left lying on the dock, gasping and wheezing and flopping around helplessly, waiting to be picked up by a dog or kicked into the weeds or taken home and thrown in a tank by some kid who doesn’t care anything about fish and will cry for about 10 seconds when the inevitable belly-up situation develops.

No thanks.

I’m pretty sure I was in favor of this all along, so today comes as a moment of vindication. We win?

Sincerely,
Your Congressman and fishing buddy,

Loomis Beechly

How do you handle a slippery fish?

A religious order was founded in her name. You can visit them in Waukesha, Wisconsin of all places. But this is no summer getaway to the Dells – the schedule is rather severe.

I’m not inclined to believe stories of miraculous healing, especially when the recovery was supposedly a favor granted in response to an extra measure of religious devotion. But it is encouraging to think that a sudden, positive change is possible, especially when a severe illness is diagnosed.

This experience of having multiple visions apparently took Julian to a sunny place, theologically – away from a vision of a wrathful God to one more interested in peace and love, leading to the writing of these famous lines: “Sin is inevitable, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Which led, in turn, to the writing of this song by Sydney Carter – one I know from the work of Ann Mayo Muir, Gordon Bok and Ed Trickett, but done here by a German group called the Ohrwurm Folk Orchestra. (Ohrwurm is the German word translated as “ear worm”, which describes to perfection the kind of song that gets into your head and becomes impossible to remove).

Name a song that comforts you in times of trouble.

The colorless, odorless, heat-trapping gas was tracked in samples taken at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory to be over the 400 parts per million level for an entire day – a dreaded milestone passed in an increasingly rapid march towards melting polar ice, higher ocean levels, and global climate change. Much of it is traceable to our compulsion to free carbon from storage and burn it for our own prosperity and enjoyment.

Here’s a song about it from New York Times blogger Andrew Revkin.

Despite the songs and charts that try to call attention to it, climate change does not seem to capture the popular imagination as easily as space alien invasion, random street crime, gender identity confusion and the government taking guns away from law abiding citizens. This is inexcusable in a country that is so skilled at scaring itself.

I went to see Hitchcock’s The Birds at a movie theater last week.

Now there was a guy who knew how to sound an alarm. If we were able to perceive the increase of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere in the same way Tippi Hedren saw the accumulation of crows on that jungle gym, maybe we could drum up a little more urgency on the issue.

What scares you?

This government job you have takes you on the road pretty much 365 days a year. It seems there’s no plan to bring you back .. ever! That would be a deal-breaker for many.

“You can work me to the edge of exhaustion,” you imagine yourself telling your overlords, “but don’t keep me at the office on Mother’s Day.”

Unfortunately, the Cassini Spacecraft doesn’t have the option of making such a demand because “the office” is a vast airless vacuum all around the giant planet Saturn. And Mother’s Day? Not a big observance for machines that are not born as much as they are imagined, designed and assembled by teams of engineers.

Still, I’d like to think that even a bag of bolts can feel wistful, so it seems fitting that our lonely wanderer Cassini found and beamed back this lovely rose – beautiful to look at but maybe not so wonderful to experience first hand.

This lovely flower swirling around the North Pole of Saturn is 1,200 miles across. Forget for a moment that the deep crimson folds could be traveling at 330 miles per hour. A pretty thing is still a pretty thing, even if touching it would peel the skin off you.

Still, picture the excitement of two space scientists as they spotted this one in the viewfinder! Particularly if it was around Christmas and they were in the habit of conversing only to the tune of “Lo, How a Rose Ere Blooming.”

It could happen!

!) Lo, there’s a Rose on Saturn.
At least it looks like one to me!
That clearly is the pattern.
What other flower could it be?
That’s no geranium!
It needs some fertilizer.
For it is … so far from the sun.

2) Let’s not begin debating
whether Saturn has a rose.
You are hallucinating.
This much everybody knows -
A flower can’t survive
in space’s icy regions
where nothing remains alive.

3) What fragrance has this blossom,
So bright and beautiful and fair?
From here it looks so awesome!
Vibrant and fresh, though without air!
It decorates the sky.
The gentle Rose of Saturn
As seen through Cassini’s eye.

When have you seen something that wasn’t really there?

I even like Joel’s lyrics, though some passionately contend that his writing and everything else about him is terrible.

This might be true. My Billy Joel opinion is more of a feeling. He meets the man-with-two-first-names rule, which is a basic requirement for pop stars (Michael Jackson, Elton John, Tony Bennett, Dean Martin, etc.).

I’m not interested in writing a defense of his sound and his style, but Joel’s songs are catchy and he’s just about my age but he still looks good, which is not that easy. Plus, I admire anybody who can play the piano and sing at the same time.

But finding the courage to say I like Billy Joel in public may be as close as I’ll ever get to knowing how it feels to be a state legislator from a conservative part of rural Minnesota who is voting for same-sex marriage today. You know you’ll get slammed for it, but what the hell? Sometimes you just have to admit that fair is fair.

Plus, he’s been around so long. Here’s one of my favorite Billy Joel songs, recorded decades apart so you can have him with a full head of hair, or without.

Been to any good restaurants lately?