To my mind, the decisive test of a memorial service is whether you come away from it feeling that you know the departed person better . In services like the one I most recently attended, when I had never met the deceased, the same test applies except that I was then learning about the person for the first time.

The memorial service referred to here was beautifully planned and shaped. The setting was an old New England church, the string quartet and organ music was classic and skillfully played, the two favorite hymns were sung with gusto, and the comments of family members and friends seemed to resound in the hearts of all present.

What I always love about the sentiments expressed in this setting is the way the person’s faults and foibles are turned into loveable traits. After the person has gone, we learn to appreciate these characteristics in the context of an entire life. Things that seemed less than admirable when the person was alive, now are seen to be points that make that person’s life career more interesting. They also do not block our acceptance of him in openhearted love.

Yes, this can verge on  mere sentimentality, as if character defects and even sins are turned into harmless oddities. But I consider this approach rather like that of God as presented in the great religious traditions of the world, one who is merciful and ready to overlook almost anything in favor of the one thing necessary – love.

In this instance, the man lived 94 years of vibrant human life. He was a mover and shaker in high finance and performed large deeds for the fine arts. His espousal of great institutions for the arts furthered the life of a great city and, in fact, of the nation. As one of his sons said, “he believed in the power of the rational mind,” a credo that enabled him to accomplish much in service to the public.

In private life, he was also unusually creative. His two daughters showed the congregation some of the fine photos he had taken of things in nature. One of them was of sea shells he had recovered from the beach and revealed in all their subtle beauty. Another was of a rabbit who had shown ingenuity in finding ways into his garden in order to eat the carefully tended lettuce. To take this latter photo, the man clearly must have lain prone on the ground eyeballing Peter, the wily predator.

One of the other sons described his father as “an austere authoritative man..” “Schmoozing was not his style,” he added.

But one of the best features of the family commentary was that the adult children dared give appraisals of their father that, to some extent, clashed. One of his daughters said of him, by contrast, “He had a tender soul underneath that imperious exterior.”

She supported her appraisal by reading some of her father’s observations of the world. The latter showed sharp insights and warm sympathy with nature. The daughter said, “He believed in a religious connectedness with all living things.”

Showing the power of his imagination, she quoted him writing, “I tried to think like a duck” as he figured out how that bird would land on nearby water. Of an old tree, terribly gnarled and grown in upon itself, he wrote about it “gaining strength by growing around its problems.”

As the minister said in the final prayer before the tolling of the church bell, “Creator, he loved the world almost as much as You do.”

And as one of his age peers and neighbors said of his death, “He died a peaceful and supremely happy man.”

My point in all of these details is to convey something of the response made by other people to the fullness of a life lived long and ardently. Though not knowing the man myself, I came away from the memorial service buoyed up and inspired by life’s possibilities. My view of the world as beautiful and human life as meaningful was strengthened by this encounter with the spirit of a man who has now left us. The way he lived his life I do not take as a model for myself but I do feel awe at the sweep of his years.

At the reception and lunch afterward, talk continued about the family patriarch. The memorial service had made him present to us and fueled further discussion. Those of us who did not know him now felt as if we had. And we were taking away much material for reflection about what it is to be human and what makes for a good life.

Living long was revealed once again as a precious gift with all of its hazards. It gives you  time and world enough to continue growing and serving beyond where you thought possible.

Richard Griffin

“A meal’s not done until you have dessert.” Now that’s a rule of thumb which strikes me as thoroughly sound and worthy of adoption.

It comes from Frances Johnson, an African-American woman resident of Maryland now 101 years old. Besides her embrace of dessert, she also offers a lot of other wisdom that makes sense to me.

Her photo and that of four other centenarians appears in the current issue of Real Simple. This is not a magazine that I am normally given to reading since it’s aimed at women in search of up-market austerity and, to my mind, sometimes deserves its title.

In this instance, however, I was attracted by the opportunity to encounter brief bios of five long-lived women who are not real simple. As writer Susan Orenstein presents them, these women have lived lives marked by bold adventures and serious challenges. Their stories are well worth reading, and so are the nuggets of wisdom offered by each of them.

Frances Johnson has had a fascinating life, not without its hardships. One of the great pluses in that career was her marriage to Elijah Johnson who played in the Negro Baseball League. Known as “Buck,” he does not show up in computerized searches, suggesting that he did not achieve the fame of Satchel Paige or the other greats of this league; but we can well imagine that he was an accomplished player.

Mrs. Johnson’s advice about life ─ above and beyond the necessity of dessert ─ includes the following: “If it’s not terminal, why worry? And, if it is, you can’t do anything about it.”

Edna Anderson lives in Arizona and engages in aerobics, stretching, and weight-bearing classes. From her list of lessons about life come these two: “Volunteering gets you away from your own worries” and “There are still happy times ahead after loss.”

The oldest of the five ladies selected by the magazine, Mary Mirabito, has reached 106. This New York City native was one of 12 children born to immigrants from Sicily. Not wanting to have a large family herself, she underwent two illegal abortions. After her first husband died, at age 69 she married Tom, a family friend who had loved her for decades.

One bit of advice she offers to women seems to apply to this latter match: “Marry a man who’s more in love with you than you are with him.” And she has some theological counsel to offer: “If there’s a God, he’s one God for all of us.” After reading that she loves opera, a passion that I share, I hoped for some wisdom from the stage of the Met, but no quotes from arias made Mary’s list.

Melva Radcliffe, now 105, did not marry until she reached 68. “I was having such a good time,” says this former elementary school teacher. Travel was her main pleasure, and she ultimately visited 40 countries.

For advice she offers: “Think twice before plastic surgery ─ you might look prettier without it.” And: “Don’t go abroad and eat at a chain restaurant. Eating at a foreign place is part of the trip.”

Finally, Evelyn Yeager shares her wisdom at age 102. Known as “Tootie,” this Pennsylvanian is a longtime Phillies fan. However, she had never been to any of their games until last year when she attended one and downed a hot dog and beer.

She’s had a hard life, with many different jobs and the burdens of raising four children by herself. She attributes her survival to her ability to laugh. “I really think it is a big reason I’m doing so well,” she explains. She counsels others: “Never feel sorry for yourself.”

All of these women look remarkably well. Their smiling faces show people who have apparently coped with the challenges of long lives with grace and dignity. If our lives are written in our faces, then these ladies have strength of character.

Of the dictums shared with us by the five women, I consider the following two worth pondering the most (besides, of course, the imperative about dessert): “Never feel sorry for yourself” and “Volunteering gets you away from your own worries.”

I value them most because they point us away from an unhealthy focus on the self. This narrowing of attention proves itself the perfect formula for unhappiness. We turn to ourselves only to find dissatisfaction with our lives because they are not ideal.

Volunteering to help others has a proven record of promoting our own happiness. It often proves effective therapy for the soul, and the body too. Whatever ails us can find relief when we turn to others in need.

All of these hardy 100-year-olders have almost surely found it life-enhancing to get away from excessive concentration on themselves. At the same time, they may have found it helpful to cultivate their inner life more positively  through reflection and contemplation.

I would never call this advice real simple. But it surely rates as real valuable.

Richard Griffin

To enthusiastic applause from several hundred people assembled in the church building, Jane Fonda emerges from a side door and takes her place standing on the platform before a microphone. She does so while pulling a thin leash attached to a small white dog. She bows deeply in acknowledgement of this fervent welcome and thanks the audience.

Bewildered by all the noise, the little dog yelps. His mistress reaches down, picks him up, and cradles him in her arms for the rest of her talk.

Now in her 69th year, this stylish, dynamic woman in dark glasses  embodies a compelling ad for her popular fitness videos. She delivers a summary of her time in the world promoting her new-in-paper book, My Life So Far. Her talk, sponsored by my favorite book store, turns out to be thoroughly engaging, as is the question period that follows.

A crucial event was the death in 1982 of her father, the celebrated actor Henry Fonda. “It’s incredible when your parents die,” she recalls, “you can learn from it.” What she learned was not to have regrets, the way her father did. “It’s terrible to have regrets when you can’t do anything about them,” this daughter laments.

She recalls the other landmarks of her life. When she hit 59, Jane realized that the following year would mark a vital turning point. “I decided to face it full bore and to deal with it,” she says of the approach of the sixties. She likes to call this period “my third act.”

She admits being both famous and wealthy. Despite privilege, however, she presents herself as, until age 62, deprived of the human quality most important to her – owning herself. “For the first time in my life, I owned who I was,” she says of this breakthrough. “It meant that I was getting strong and well,” she adds.

Before that, she never had an emotionally intimate relationship, certainly not with her mother and father, nor with any of her three husbands. From the third, Ted Turner, she made a painful break of which she says “I opted for becoming whole.” About this awesome process of becoming a real human being, Jane says: “maybe that’s what God is.”

As a child, she grew up thinking she was “not good enough.” For her father, especially, Jane felt she had to be perfect. It took her 62 years to cure “this misogyny” that afflicts so many girls in American society without their knowing it. You have to get girls to reclaim their voice because they are the agents of change.

Much more of Jane emerges after the talk, when the time comes for questions. In the writing of her memoir, she acknowledges the help of the 22,000 files kept on her by the FBI. Challenged by a questioner for her support of an action of the Israeli government against the Palestinians, she regrets her decision. “I love Israel,” she explains, “but not the occupation.”

For future American elections she feels that citizens need to focus, not so much on the identity of the candidates but rather on building a grass-roots movement to change the nation’s priorities. The Vietnam War would never have ended, she is convinced, unless such a movement had pressured the U.S. government.

Women, especially must make their voices heard. And invoking language I never expected to hear in church, Jane says we all need “balls.”

About her discovery of religion, she discloses that she is now enrolled in theology school in Georgia where she lives. “I was raised an atheist,” she explains, “so I have a lot of catching up to do.” With passion, she regrets the way “the right wing has co-opted Christianity.” “It makes me happy to meet progressive Christians,” she adds.

One of the male questioners asked Jane for a hug. In answer, Jane comes down off the platform and gives the fellow a fervent embrace, an action she later repeats with a young woman.

“You have to be brave,” she advises a woman who asks about growing older. “It’s two years since I made my last picture,” Jane said. “I’m not going to have any Botox or stuff like that.”  

As a last bit of wisdom, Jane Fonda makes this affirmation: “People need their narrative heard. Move with your heart and listen with love. The great ones ─ Mandela, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, and the others ─  they had it right.”

Jane’s theme of the Third Act strikes me as a useful idea for one’s later years. A bit self-dramatizing, perhaps, for those of us never in show biz like her. But it’s the part of a play where you get to see what it’s all about. The drama’s full meaning finally emerges.

In real life, too, the last act may turn out to be the most meaningful. At least, staying open to that possibility seems worth the risk.    

Richard Griffin

I first visited Jamaica in the early 1970s. In those far-away days, many Americans associated the island with films like Dr. No, in which James Bond, Ian Fleming's macho, womanizing hero, performed impossible exploits in a colorful, exotic and unfailingly elegant atmosphere.

My own introduction to the island was somewhat more sober.  At that time, I was a Jesuit; and the island, to my puzzlement and delight, was (and still is) part of the New England province of the Society of Jesus. My hosts worked in simple surroundings on tasks that had nothing to do with the world of James Bond; but I still felt myself to be in one of the most enchanting places on earth.

Last week, some 35 years later, I returned, along with my family, to visit old friends who live in Kingston, the capital of Jamaica. We were there, not for sea and surf, but rather for renewing the pleasures of a decades-long friendship. Among the gifts of life, the hospitality of valued friends must be accounted one of the best.

Our week was full of talk and laughter-with our friends most of all, but also with their extended family and their friends, and with total strangers. There may be laconic Jamaicans, but I have yet to meet one.

The voices I heard seemed more musical to me than our nasal Yankee twang, and the vocabulary more inventive. Conversation is a pleasure, and the slower pace of life allows people time to enjoy it.

I have been told that Jamaicans relish a good speech. We had the opportunity to hear one on television last week, as Portia Simpson Miller became the first woman to take over as Prime Minister since Jamaica became an independent nation in 1962.  Her inaugural address was forceful and eloquent, full of hope and of a kind of religious intensity that is rare in American politics.

Many of the people we encountered during our visit showed themselves enthusiastic about this charming new PM who promises a new attack on the country's problems.

But they feel that she faces a daunting task. If she succeeds, she will deserve more admiration than James Bond everdid. Jamaica's geographical area is less than half the size of Massachusetts, and, with two and a half million people, it has about half the number of inhabitants. The country has a rich history and culture, of which it is justly proud. At the same time, it suffers from inadequate investment and a very high rate of unemployment.

Our hosts and their friends feel especially troubled about the failure of the school system to train children to be productive citizens. The failure rate of students at the end of primary school exceeds 75 percent. Despite obvious intelligence and ingenuity, many never learn to read and write and remain badly equipped for the jobs that are available. Illegal drug dealing and violent crime offer an alternative that too many seize.

The national government lacks the funds to remedy this sorry situation. While visiting the north coast, we saw huge freighters coming into Discovery Bay and leaving with their cargo of bauxite. It was an impressive spectacle, but Jamaica needs many more sources of work and revenue.

Because of these problems, many people have left Jamaica in the past 30 years or so; but many also choose to stay or to return. One can understand why. In the economically driven culture of American cities, people do not always take the time to be polite. In our contacts with people in various parts of Jamaica, we found them to be uncommonly gracious.

For me, when I visit other countries, the opportunity to establish contact with the local church invariably serves as a heartwarming experience. At the Discovery Bay parish, we found a vibrant community of all races and ages who made us feel welcome as we joined in worship.

When the liturgy called for the kiss of peace, we received more spirited greetings than we usually do at home.

Back in the capital city, we renewed old memories over a leisurely lunch with the archbishop of Kingston, a former colleague from the New England Jesuits.  He was one of the first Jamaicans I ever met, more than 50 years ago. Now approaching retirement, Lawrence Burke retains much of the same attractive spirit that I remember him having in his twenties.

When I left Jamaica after my first visit, I remember sitting in an airplane on the tarmac in Kingston. Harry Belafonte's voice was singing “Jamaica Farewell,” a then familiar calypso piece full of rhythm and haunting charm.

On this occasion, by contrast, there was security galore but no music. However, my family and I left filled with our experiences of this beloved island and relishing the company we had enjoyed with our supremely hospitable friends.

Richard Griffin

My memory occasionally swings back to early adolescence when, for two weeks in the late 1930s, I was a patient at the old St. John of God Hospital in Boston. I came to that institution with the mumps and, while there, caught scarlet fever. It was an ordeal to have felt sick enough with the first disease and to have my hospital stay extended by catching another.

Lying in bed during those long days, I would frequently fix my eyes on young women in starched white, well-fitted dresses, along with shoes and stockings of the same color. The caps pinned on their heads indicated the schools where they had studied and a black stripe would show that they had received their RN.

These were the nurses who took care of me and the other patients in that now gone hospital.

Dressed in those crisp white uniforms, they walked smartly into my line of vision often in the course of the day. Their figures, shaped in part by their costume, fascinated me, a boy of no sexual experience at all, but one ready to become interested. My gaze would remain fixated on these young women, and intimations of erotic desire stirred in me obscurely.

At that time I would have been ashamed of my own body, dressed in a johnny as I must have been. Almost surely I felt mixed, both embarrassed and excited, about inspection by these beautiful creatures whom I was busy ogling.

“The color white did not become popular until the early twentieth century, following the new findings about germs and their role in spreading infection,” reports John Seabrook in a 2002 New Yorker article about nurses’ attire. Many people besides me still associate the nursing profession with white uniforms, even though these have gradually been abolished since the 1960s.

As the same author explains, “Feminists began to read its whiteness as a sign not of power but of diminishment.”  It had become “a symbol of the angelic, demure, dependent woman, not of the tough, resourceful professional she really is.”

I contrast that scene from my teenage years with those I have recently witnessed as a hospital patient in late life. Now each female nurse is likely to dress in her own way. They come to work outfitted for convenience rather than in clothes designed to express their profession. Their outfits range from slacks and blouses to other forms of everyday wear.

The closest hospital nurses come to a uniform now is “scrubs,” which became popular in the 1980s. But so many other staff members also wear them, technicians and orderlies for example, that these loose fitting shirts and pants, often of a dark green, do not distinguish nurses.

Though the distinctive uniforms once worn by female nurses have vanished, fortunately the dedication and commitment of the profession has not. Nurses still bring both skill and compassion to their work as they have done traditionally. As in the case of  nuns, giving up uniforms has done nothing to lessen their high standards.

I have had recent occasion to admire nurses for their service to patients. Some of the tasks that have become routine for them used to be reserved for doctors, so their responsibilities have widened. They frequently work long shifts and show themselves remarkably patient with the likes of me, a person who can be rather ornery and complaining on occasion.

Though I have sometimes chafed at hospitals, especially for their bad food (or, more precisely, food badly presented) and little regard for patients’ need for sleep, I  never find fault with the care nurses provide. They go far to make us associate the medical profession with personal caring.

Just as I welcome the presence of so many women among the ranks of doctors ─ and count several among my regular health care providers ─ so I feel glad for the freedoms that female nurses have gained over the last few decades. They show themselves much freer to express their individual personality than in the past and that can be good for patients.

Though my focus here has been primarily on nurses who work in hospitals, I also admire those who visit patients at home. There, too, these women usually dress as they wish, rather than in uniform, something that suggests their independence and maturity. However, it is their skill and compassion for their patients that most commend them to me. I have felt privileged to receive care from them during periods of convalescence.

It would be foolish nostalgia for anyone to want the white uniforms brought back just for old time’s sake. However, some nurses and others do regret the loss of distinctive clothing. They would welcome, not the starched uniforms of the past, but rather some way of indicating that nurses are highly skilled professionals who have their own standards and traditions.

Richard Griffin

The new millennium has not cured us of ageism. It is “a persistent form of bigotry and prejudice” in many sectors of society, and even among older people themselves.

This, at least, is the view expressed in the current edition of Generations, a highly respected professional journal.  

After deciding to write about this prejudice, however, I encountered a problem. Ageism is not something that I have experienced myself. Looking back from age 77, I cannot cite a single example of bias aimed at me on the basis of age.

In fact, during recent bouts of illness, I found that members of the health care system treated me with great respect. Doctors, nurses, and others in the care network showed themselves remarkably solicitous of my well-being, and not at all inclined to be patronizing.

Also continual contact with college students and others not even a third my age has reinforced my feelings of worth.  Consistently, I find them polite and respectful of me as an older person. Though I welcome them calling me by my first name, I am often addressed as “sir” by my juniors with whom I have casual contact.

Perhaps this immunity from ageism comes from my social status. Being white, not economically impoverished, and connected with many friends may carry exemptions. If you benefit from fortunate circumstances, maybe you can escape the biases that some other people face.

On the other hand, the very idea of widespread prejudice against aged people, simply because they are aged, may have outlived its usefulness. At least that is what James Callahan suggests as an idea worth considering. Callahan formerly served as Secretary of Elder Affairs in Massachusetts and taught at Brandeis University until his retirement.

In a recent conversation, he questioned whether some professionals have a vested interest in maintaining the idea of widespread age discrimination. This question he asked, not in an accusatory spirit, but for the sake of reexamining the issue. Can it be that charges of ageism have their uses for those engaged in the field of aging?

Many agencies are responding well to the needs of older people. “Now that aging is seen as ubiquitous,” Callahan said, “businesses and other organizations are focusing on older people as a group to be served.” For money-making enterprises, old people are increasingly seen as customers like everyone else.

As with so many other issues, I find myself torn. Yes, professionals in the field of gerontology may exaggerate the presence of ageism in American society. They tend to see things through the prism of the hardships faced by older people in general. Thus the magazine mentioned earlier can easily recruit 16 experts to write on various phases of the supposed epidemic of age bias.

But there is certainly evidence that being old and poor can have tragic consequences. In the Hurricane Katrina disaster, older people ─ particularly women ─ suffered more than did others in the population. Altogether too often, they were left to shift for themselves against the forces released by broken levees and wind and rain.

This happened because they were poor, and because transport and planning were inadequate. But their chances would have been far better if they had been young and vigorous.

In the case of elder abuse, poverty is also sometimes a factor ─ but not always. At all economic levels, caregivers and family members can (consciously or not) look upon their elders as not worthy of respect. Such an attitude can prove deadly for an older person made dependent by illness or disability.

But the question of age bias remains very complex, according to another of my gurus in the field of aging, Robert Weiss, a sociologist retired from the UMass Boston faculty. “It depends an enormous amount on context,” he tells me.

In the world of work, for instance, “it’s tough to get a job in your 50s,” says this student of workplace issues. Despite some changes of attitude, industries are still reluctant to hire people middle-aged and older.

In other sectors, how older people are treated depends on their social standing. “It’s not a matter of discrimination against the aged,” says Weiss, “as that some are seen as belonging to a lower caste.” Like what happens in so many other spheres, status is what counts.

On a lighter note, some of my age peers have complained about the way they are treated at cocktail parties. “They just look right through you,” I remember a woman telling me. So long as you do not seem prestigious, you receive scant attention.

Perhaps the best authority on ageism is the man who invented the term in 1969, Robert Butler. Dr. Butler believes that “there has been some reduction in personal ageist attitudes.” However, he also finds that American society has a very long way to go toward eliminating the prejudices leveled against people on the basis of age.

Richard Griffin

This comedian ranks Boston’s Big Dig ahead of three famous construction projects of the last century. Granted, the Panama Canal, the Alaska pipe line, and the tunnel under the English Channel seem to have made some important connections: The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans; the North Slope of Alaska and its south shore; England and France; all seem impressive enough.

But we are truly awed to think of what the Big Dig connected: Dorchester and the Financial District!

This is one of many jokes that stand-up comic Jimmy Tingle recently told to an audience of some 150 people in a church hall. His performance has led me to reflect on the art of comedy and what makes us laugh.

Though he has appeared many times on national television, this 51-year-old entertainer has not yet become the household name he deserves to be. Perhaps his reputation as “political,” and more specifically, “liberal,” limits his big-time invitations. But I consider him one of America’s best comics, right up there with Garrison Keillor and Jon Stewart.  

His routine about the rise of a first-class stamp to 39 cents is a work of art. The constantly increasing cost of this postage supplies a renewable riff for him on American values. He envisions the year when he hits 150 and that stamp costs six dollars. But, he will claim, it will enable you to send a letter anywhere in the American Empire ─ Iraq, Iran, Syria, wherever.

For Tingle, as with other skilled comics, words as they appear in the script are only part of it. The sound of his voice has a vital function; so does the timing of his words and sentences. Pauses play a crucial role in any good comedian’s presentation.

If you could see Tingle’s face as he delivers a line, you would appreciate that line’s true meaning. He knows how to screw up that face in anguish, to pull down his forehead as he frowns in doubt or look aghast in feigned horror. His facial expressions thus become an integral part of the comic message.

Sometimes he will trudge along the stage, as the celebrated mime Marcel Marceau is fond of doing. He knows how to make like a duck, waving his bent arms up and down. The man can twist his torso to indicate a person in psychic difficulty.

All of this serves his ironic view of life and the world around us. He loves to talk about the way things have changed since his boyhood. For instance, Columbus no longer holds the place that his teachers led him to believe. Now he envisions the Vikings coming to New England after first landing in Newfoundland.

Armed with a case of Tuborg, those hardy warriors work their way down the coast on badly marked roads so typical of Massachusetts and run into some of the highly stressed people of our state. Six of these Vikings stop and get married on the Longfellow Bridge.

Since he was speaking at a Catholic parish, Tingle directed some of his jokes toward people who belong to the church. Not all members of the parish had welcomed the choice of this particular entertainer. Someone was said to have scrawled on a poster advertising his appearance “A liberal comedian for a liberal church.”

In his riff, Tingle asked if there were any “cafeteria Catholics” in the audience. Some hands went up. He then extended the title, affirming the existence of cafeteria Protestants, Jews, Buddhists, and others. He even claims that some people are cafeteria atheists.

For himself, he likes to walk down the line with an imagined tray in his hand: holy water, fine; candles, I’ll light one; discrimination against gays, definitely no; and God loves each one of us unconditionally, oh yes.

Jimmy Tingle does not consider himself a fan of Pat Robertson, the religious broadcaster who recently announced that, after all, Jews can get into heaven. That, as the comic sees it, will enable St. Peter to leave his post at the golden gate where he has been waiting for 21 centuries. Now, thanks to Robertson, we know that St. Peter can at last enter the abode of the blessed.

Fortunately, Tingle knows how to offend some people but he does so with grace and style. Being a comic with religious and political convictions cannot be altogether easy. I suspect he wants his members of his audience to think as well as to laugh.

His persona ─ that of a fellow who has grown up working class, and had to recognize himself as an alcoholic ─ gives him credibility. It may enable him to get away with statements that would be regarded as simply offensive if they came from someone who grew up economically privileged.

The most important factor, however, remains the humanity of the man, his art, and his angle on the world that enables others to laugh at themselves and the often crazy world in which we all live.

Richard Griffin