JOHN CLEESE's ADDRESS TO U.S. CITIZENS

I couldn't resist passing on this little note from the noted comedian ...

In light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (excepting Kansas, which she does not fancy).

Your new prime minister, Tony Blair, will appoint a governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded.  A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:  You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary.  Then look up aluminium, and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.

The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'favour' and 'neighbour.'  Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters and the suffix 'ize' will be replaced by the suffix 'ise'.

Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up vocabulary).

Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication.  There is no such thing as US English.  We will let Microsoft know on your behalf.  The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of 'ize'.

You will relearn your original national anthem, "God Save the Queen".  July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.

You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent.

Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you're not grown up enough to handle a gun. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler.  A permit will be required if you wish to carry a
vegetable peeler in public.

All American cars are hereby banned.  They are crap and this is for your own good.  When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.

All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left with immediate effect.

At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables.  Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

The former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline)-roughly $6/US gallon.  Get used to it.

You will learn to make real chips.  Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps.  Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.

The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager.  American brands will be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.

Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as Good guys.  Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters.   Watching Andie MacDowell attempt English dialogue in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" was an experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.

You will cease playing American football.  There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer.

Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies).

Further, you will stop playing baseball.  It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America.  Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable.

You must tell us who killed JFK.  It's been driving us mad.

An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).

Thank you for your co-operation.

Sincereley, John Cleese

My father's voice

He's made it safely through brain surgery.  My father, that is.

Shot by a friend and photographer Dick Gotschall, this photo was taken last night after the operation. 

Location:  my father's hospital room at Aultman Hospital in Canton, Ohio.  The nurses must have bent every rule in the book to make this photo happen.

Then again, why am I surprised?  People who meet my father think he is one of the nicest guys they've ever met. 

They probably would have done even more for him had he asked.  Seriously.

The photo includes (L-R) my Aunt Betty, Aunt Martha, Pastor Eugene Sommers, sister Marjorie Denlinger, brother Richard Denlinger, mother Magdalena Overholt, second sister Rose Miller. 

And, of course, at the center, the star of this whole show:  my father Earl Denlinger.  :-)

My father's operation went better than expected.  The shunt -- to drain the excess fluid causing pressure on his brain -- was installed successfully in a one and a half hour operation, as opposed to the four they planned.

The surgical team did one correction afterwards, going back in and taking a kink out of the shunt shortly after they finished the operation.

To the left, my family gathers around his bed.  I'm told my father was already cracking jokes as they shot the photo.  Such a kidder, he is.

My brother Richard reported that my father continued his recovery today, although he was in a great deal of pain, with some nausea.  All par for the course in this type of operation.

And the doctors plan to send him home on Thursday (today).

                         *     *     *

I've somehow been able to keep teaching here in Los Angeles across the last few days.

What was profoundly unexpected was the outpouring of support I got from fellow colleagues.  

On Monday night, I sent a short email out to all the faculty at my school requesting their thoughts and prayers for my father. 

In response over the last two days, I've received well over 30 emails and cards -- even one all the way from the East Coast from the founder of our school -- all expressing warm thoughts and prayers.  Gentle pats on my shoulders.  Quiet expressions of support from people I passed in the halls.

And so I taught for the past two days.

I imagined my father's life cradled in the energy field of God's grace as he went under the knife.

My father, who laughs so much, and who brings joy to the lives of those he touches. 

My father, a little frightened during our last phone conversation the night before, yet trusting with the same quiet faith that has nourished him over 70 years.

I am truly grateful and blessed. 

                        *     *     *

Several email responses to my last blog deserve to be posted here.  This one from a boyhood friend, Gerald Biesecker-Mast, a boyhood friend and communications professor at Bluffton College.

In the past couple of years, and especially in the past few weeks, I have actually thought about your father quite a lot.

I have been dwelling on a very particular memory—that of having been with you at your parents' place overnight, and rising on a Sunday morning to hear your father's voice reading the Scripture.

While the rest of us are getting dressed, combing our hair, and getting some breakfast, your father is surrounding us with the ancient words of Scripture.  He is speaking in a sacramental manner, a kind of chant.

I have thought about this memory partly because I am increasingly aware of how important the physical voice is in the revelation of the Divine.

I think that one of the great harms that fundamentalism brought about was our coming to understand Truth as some kind of disembodied abstraction  that we either accept or reject—like the four spiritual laws.

And then the Bible is this Book that we look at privately, quietly, in the expectation of discovering little bits of turth that we can somehow apply to our lives.

But these texts are voices from of old, and they come to us from places that exceed our comprehension.  Our only chance of being transformed by these texts is to have them spoken to us, to listen to them, and then, of course, also to study and discuss them and argue about them.

I have started reading the Bible to my children, partly because of the memory of your father's voice.

Bless him.

                        *     *     *

And then three entries in direct response to my last blog entry.

The first again from Gerald.

I'm sorry that you still experience so much antagonism with your family and church background.

I realize how fortunate I am that my parents made a decision somewhere along the way (after they met my wife Sue, to be precise) to affirm my life's choices, even though these choices did not fit their original expectations.

I seldom have nightmares anymore, although just the other night I had one featuring bishop Fred Hostetler, my childhood nemesis.

I am fortunate to be working within a progressive wing of the Mennonite church, and to feel perhaps great continuity than your presently experience between the convictions that conservative Mennonites were trying to live out in a rather reactionary way, and the convictions that shape the church and academic community I presently work within.

                        *     *     *

Another from actor Bill Brown, who lives and works in Northeastern Ohio -- he's a fine writer about my father's age, who emails his throughts regularly.

You may recall that Lynn and I met your parents at the Lake High School opening of your stage adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities.  They were most cordial to us.  I got theimpression that they took some pride in what you had done.

But it is hard to overcome the disappointment of parents as to lifestyle.  I had one such experience with my father.  I was studying for the ministry and, indeed, had four quarters of study in seminary. 

I had been struggling for over a year as to whether I should continue and, after much prayer, thought and discussion with my wife and mentors, I elected to drop out of school.

I never had a quarrel with the church, nor did I dislike seminary.  I simply came to the realization that I was not called to the pastoral ministry.  And over the years I have come to realize that this was the right decision.

My father wrote me a three-page letter when I dropped out of school, saying essentially that not only was he crushed, but he felt others who were supporting my entrance into ministerial studies would also be hurt. 

We had a long discusssion about this in the Summer of 1998, and I think we made our peace on this issue.  He died a few months later so I was glad we talked. 

I believe that Pop was from a generation where the parents made plans for their kids and often were unhappy when the children didn't live out their dreams.

Although you may not be the conservative Mennonite your folks desired you to be, I still get the impression that, down deep, they love you and are proud of you.

                        *     *     *

And from Tamara Rosenberg, a fellow artist here in Los Angeles.

Just read your most recent blog entry and I feel compelled to comment.

You stated up front that you do not like to discuss your upbringing and yet, in this particular entry, you discuss it so eloquently, powerfully and poignantly.

I must insist that your greatest and most unique contribution as a writer could potentially spring forth from that which you most resist writing about.

In comparing your experience with one on par to a child of the Taliban, you crack the politicized walls separating "us" and "them." 

Repression is repression, no matter what literature you use to justify it and the resulting scars on society are essentially the same.  And it happens within our own boundaries in the same manner as it does abroad (though George, et al, would have us believe otherwise).

Forgive my impudence, but I'd feel remiss if I did not suggest that you expand upon your current thesis regarding the overall effects of any kind of fundamentalism and submit the resulting material for publication. 

The Atlantic Monthly comes to mind....

Best wishes,
Tamara

                        *     *     *

And finally, from an essay I wrote in 1999 while I was still teaching at Hoover High School in North Canton, Ohio.

Since childhood, I have loved hearing my father’s laughter.  An important part of dinner involved telling the latest jokes we hadheard. 

Dad always told the funniest ones, with the butt of the joke usually being himself, and he laughed harder than anyone else. There were even times when a joke was so funny that – and this is a literal report – he literally rolled on the floor laughing.

It took me several years of teaching before I realized that my father’s pedagogical methods really work.  Laughing and learning are not too far apart. 

Laughing at yourself is a requirement for any good teacher, sincestudents distrust anyone who takes himself or herself too seriously.  They want to see that their teacher is human before they will follow his or her example. 

So I’ve made humor part of my curriculum. 

Although my jokes don’t always work as well as my father’s did, my students are kind.  “At least you try to make jokes, Mr. Denlinger,” one of them told me recently. 

Although he never entered the teaching profession, my father’s example still inspires me.

Babe on the Beach

No, that's not my child.  That's my new nephew, Patrick Ryan Denlinger.  I'm at the Santa Monica Pier.

Several weeks ago, I got a call from my brother Richard.  He and his wife Tina were in Pomina, CA, having just picked up their newly adopted child.  The mother is "a 22-year-old English major who's living with a 37-year-old man."  

My brother asked me if I cared to come see the baby and visit with them.

I did.  I really enjoyed myself.  I took photos of the baby.  Then more photos.

During the next two weeks, while waiting for the red tape to clear, Richard, Tina, and Patrick spent a lot of time with me.  It was nice to have them here.  They seemed surprised that I would spend so much time with them. 

It was even nicer once Tina's parents flew out to join them, bringing niece Katrina and nephew Caleb from North Canton, Ohio.

Richard was the first member of my family to visit me. 

I've been living in Los Angeles since August 2001.

                         *     *     *

While my brother's family was here, and immediately after they left, I created a music video.  I'm still placing the last photos.

In the video, I contrast the photos of the child and family with photos from my past:  childhood, adolescence, and departure. 

My nephew and niece are quite photogenic.  And Tori Amos's lyrical song "Winter" captures my emotions perfectly.

Richard and Tina were so taken by the video that they've asked for a copy, once I complete it.  They offered to pay for it. 

So I'm sending a disc of the video back to them.  They said they plan to send it to the family as a Christmas present.

                         *     *     *

Shortly after my brother's family left for home, I received a friendly letter from my brother-in-law.  The most conservative one in my family. 

He was pleased to hear about the time I'd spent with my brother and his family.  He was concerned about my soul.

I guess he just couldn't restrain himself. 

Thanks, bro.

Should I have written him back to tell him that I completely disagree with his world view? 

One in which women are encouraged to submit to their husbands in daily life as they do to God?

One that has more in common with the Muslim Taliban than it does with American democracy? 

As a teacher, I promote independence, self-realization, and risk-taking in young women.  This man's faith promotes dependence, repression of self, and actions based on fear.

Is it any wonder that his letter infuriated me?

                         *     *     *

I don't like to talk much about my departure from the world of my childhood.

It comes up occasionally when someone here in Los Angeles hears that I "grew up Amish." 

Actually, I was raised Conservative Mennonite.

The sound of the word Amish immediately evokes a world that includes a simple lifestyle, happiness, and tranquility -- not necessarily in that order.

That may be what an Amish person experiences.  They have a documented escape valve called rumspringa.

My reality was anything but simple.

Trust me, there's nothing nostalgic about the experience of the Conservative Mennonite world.

Nor is the exit from that world much fun.  The intense psychological pressure to stay -- from friends, family, and other members of the faith -- is well-nigh unbearable.

Especially if you're a woman, as my cousin is. 

Especially if you're told that the only way you can be truly certain of eternal salvation is by remaining within the world of your childhood.

Never mind the panic attacks.  The guilt.  The fear.  

The only thing I really knew was that something was wrong with a world that discourages education.

                         *     *     *

I don't like to talk much about my family, but tonight I'm going to.

It needs to be said.

"Your family fought you every step of the way," remarked one of my friends who saw me leave my childhood community of faith.

They did.  Kindly.  Sweetly.  Bluntly.

My family is convinced I'm no longer a Christian believer.  They're wrong, but I've given up trying to correct them.

People will believe what they want to.

I couldn't stay.  There were too many questions.  

I knew the Story I'd been taught since childhood was wrong.

And so I left.

                         *     *     *

The real discovery was talking to children of fundamentalist Muslims.  Reading books written by the children of Hasidic Jews.  Looking at art created by the children of radical evangelicals.

Shock. 

We all had the same experience.

The perspective is the same.

Every fundamentalist movement -- whether Christian, Jewish, or Muslim -- obsesses over the same issues:  the place of women in society, and the control of sexual behavior.

Why is that?

                         *     *     *

I don't like to talk much about my faith because it's essentially a private thing.  I know intimately the psychological pressure of evangelicalism. 

Nothing coming from George Bush and his cronies surprises me -- it's just the intolerance of my childhood writ large.

When someone told me recently that God sent Hurricane Katrina as a punishment to Mayor Nagin for tolerating gay pride parades, I wanted to throw up.

That's not my God.

I guess said person got the idea from some evangelical magazine.

Perhaps said person's God should sharpen His aim. 

If the US Military can send a smart bomb into Saddam's basement, surely the Lord of All Intolerance could kill fewer innocent people when he goes after an enemy as thoroughly mediocre as Nagin.

                         *     *     *

One of my cousins just wrote me -- a young woman who is brilliant, talented, and uncertain about where she fits into the universe.  At the age of 18, she's left her childhood home to join the real world.

I applaud her bravery and determination.  I wish I had left in my teens.  It would have made my present life so much simpler.

There.  I've said it.

                         *     *     *

Hair is grey and the fires are burning,
So many dreams on the shelf.
You say I wanted you to be proud of me,
I always wanted that myself.

When you gonna make up your mind?
When you gonna love you as much as I do?
When you gonna make up your mind?
Cause things are gonna change so fast,
All the white horses have gone ahead,
I tell you that I'll always want you near,
You say that things change, my dear.

                                     ~from "Winter" by Tori Amos