"Use All The Crayons!" newsletter No. 10
Today's emphasis on kindness & Fred Rogers ... just because
Today’s edition: Because the world could use it on most days but really, really use it on some days … an emphasis on Fred Rogers and what his message means to the world …
Colorful Living Tip of the Day (I) …
882: Put the words “Do one really good deed” on a weekly to-do list and then make it a mission. You’ll find someone who needs help and will be surprised by how much better you’ll both feel.
Aspirational Kindness Observation …
World will be a better place when all those scheming to find the means to an end instead worked on finding an end to the means.
Most recent blog post
“Laughing while America screams”
Arnold Palmer: On This Day in …
1980 -- Palmer uses an 8 iron on the 144-yard sixth hole at Indian Wells Country Club during the 1980 Bob Hope Desert Classic to score his 10th career ace.
Today’s Reason to Visit Latrobe, Mister Rogers’ REAL Neighborhood …
It’s as close to the feeling pilgrims who visit Bethlehem get but without ever having to leave Westmoreland County.
Zeitgust Word of the Week (a word I made up with the goal of getting it into a dictionary) …
Slimitators: Impressionable teenage boys and girls intent on looking like fashionable Hollywood anorexics.
Days Until Pittsburgh Steelers Come To Latrobe for Training Camp: 202
What to do today in the Laurel Highlands …
• Visit the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning & Children’a Media Center at St. Vincent College. It has museum-quality displays dedicated to the life and mission of Fred.
• Book a spring stay at Nemacolin, one of America’s top all-season resorts just one hour south of Latrobe. The resort is being featured in the current season of “The Bachelor.”
• Step outside and with social distancing in mind patronize one of Westmoreland County’s many stalwart businesses that were closed in the hopes of easing the holiday pandemic surge. (Westmoreland Co. Chamber of Commerce.
Colorful Living Tip (II)…
560: Don’t take this wrong, but if you know more quotes from “The Art of War” author Sun Tzu than you do Fred Rogers you’re probably a jerk. Here’s one from Fred: “Knowing that we can be loved exactly as we are gives us all the best opportunity for growing into the healthiest of people.”
Today’s post …
The kind of weirdo we should all aspire to be
There are a lot of crazy rumors about Mr. Rogers. He was a Navy Seal. An Army sniper. A garishly tattooed killer. He was none of those things.
What was Fred Rogers? Let me tell you …
Fred Rogers was a real weirdo. That is he was the kind of person whose behaviors were at odds with the rest of us normal folks. He was that kind of kind.
He wasn’t the first. Notable weirdos include Jesus Christ, Mother Teresa, John Lennon and Yoda. Oh, and most canines are weirdos, too. Like Fred, most every dog reflexively likes everyone he or she meets without first googling their name to determine status or means.
Weird, right?
So he wasn’t the first weirdo, but these days it seems fair to wonder if he was maybe the last. Who besides Fred, who died in 2003, seems capable of making kindness contagious?
Kindness, civility, compromise — these are all dismissed as prissy attributes, weakness, by leaders proud to boast their familiarity with bellicose quotes from Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War.”
How many know that it was Fred who when asked to list the three sure ways to ultimate success said, “The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind …”
The third way? I forget, but it’s a safe bet it has more to do with kindness than killing.
An ordained Presbyterian minister, Rogers presided over just a handful of wedding ceremonies. One of them was for a Pittsburgh woman who was a show set designer; Mister Rogers was her boss and she used a deifying adjective to describe him. She was recalling describing the pre-wedding tumult when she locked everyone out of the room and was seriously thinking of bailing.
Then Fred knocked on the door. She let him in. “He started fixing my hair and telling me how this was meant to be. All my stress began to melt away. Truly, he was just so Christ-like.”
Ever work for a boss you’d describe as Christ-like? Do you know any aunt or uncle worthy of the description? How about clergy? Any popes fit the bill?
How about you? Ever done anything Christ-like?
Those are some big shoes to fill.
Well, sandals.
How about this? When was the last time you did something that could be described as Fred-like? Seems less daunting, doesn’t it?
In an era where we’re apt to like only the likable and the like-minded, he was going to — damn the torpedoes! — like you if you liked it or not.
Here’s an example:
I’m friends with a guy who woke up feeling entitled to surliness. An invasive doctor appointment awaited. Traffic sucked. The weather was bitter. Who wouldn’t be in a sour state given those circumstances?
I can think of one guy.
“I was the world’s angriest and most unhappy man,” my friend said, “and the last person you want to see when you’re feeling like that is the world’s kindest man. But that was my fate. I ended up bumping into Fred Rogers.”
Unbeknownst to either, they’d simultaneously parked about a block from the same doctor’s office where each was being treated.
Maybe he could sense my friend was in a bad mood because Fred proceeded to do everything to bring some sunshine to cheer up this sour stranger. He was polite, cheerful, conversational, encouraging — silly even.
It was all very suspicious behavior.
“He kept making eye contact in the waiting room. I’d look up from my magazine and he’d be looking right at me. He’d say, ‘Hello!’ Happened 3 or 4 times. He was so relentlessly cheerful it felt like I was being punked. If it had been anybody but Mister Rogers it would have been really, really weird.”
Call it defiant kindness.
And it worked. He said, “He cheered me up. I’m living proof it’s impossible to be angry about anything after talking to Fred Rogers.”
The pity is that most of us would have stoically ignored or been alarmed even had it been anyone but Fred Rogers.
Ask yourself: Who’s the weirdo: The guy who recognizes a pained soul and works to heal it, or the one who refuses the therapy?
It’s a mindset we must overcome.
Join me. Let’s make the world a better place by being really weird. Weird like Fred.
Because we need to make being really, really nice really, really normal.
My YouTube video …
“Fred Rogers and the Benefits of Being Defiantly Kind,” my 2:12 YouTuber on Fred.
Colorful Living Tip (III) …
1,001-plus: The future of mankind will be brighter when its history is graced by more kind men. And women!
Oddly enough …
Minnesota Metropol-ICE: Ice fishing on Mille Lacs
John Lutgen swears he’s not crazy, not like some of those maniacs who’ll ice fish when it’s really, really, really cold.
“No, I’m not like that,” he says. “I usually wait until it warms up to, oh, say, around 5-below zero. I won’t be out there fishing when it’s 30-below like some of these guys.”
So, no, he’s not crazy.
Just don’t try and argue the point with people unfamiliar with deep winter ice fishing customs.
“Yeah, I remember I had one guy up from Texas who wanted to ice fish,” he recalls. “We were driving along and he said, ‘So when will we get to the lake?’ I said, ‘We’ve been driving on it for 20 minutes.’ He freaked. He thought we were just on some great big field.”
Welcome to Mille Lacs, the massive 132,000-acre (20 by 15 miles) central Minnesota lake that is to rugged ice fishing what the sunny Riviera is to posh pampering.
It has it all, well, at least compared to what the frozen primitives who huddle around desolate holes in other less advanced winter climes have.
Mille Lacs, about 80 miles north of the Twin Cities, has plowed roads with street signs, pizza delivery, regular trash pick-up and cheery residential communities of warm homesteaders -- all built on a seasonal and ever-shifting foundation of 36-inches of semi-solid ice.
From about Thanksgiving through the end of February, it’s a veritable Minnesota metropol-ICE.
The Page 1 “Crayons!” Pledge (still applies)
The Book Is STILL Free
That’s right. Free. Anyone who wants a copy mailed to his or her home, no charge, is welcome to one. Just ask.
Author Chris Rodell, of course, encourages you to buy it and hopes you’ll support him and the people who distribute, promote and sell books. But if you’re one of those Americans who are out of work and having a tough time, or if you know a US serviceman or woman who might benefit from a book that aims to brighten daily lives, then Rodell wants you to get in touch at storyteller@chrisrodell.com.
He doesn’t believe a book that, at its heart, aims to help people be happy should be withheld from anyone over a few dollars. “It’s said the best things in life—love, friendship, laughter—are free,” Rodell says. “I don’t presume this book is among the best things in life but, by God, there’s nothing to say it can’t keep good company.”
And finally …
“Crayons Tip no. 1001” …
“Learn the fine art of knowing precisely when to quit.”
About …
Chris Rodell is the author of six books, the most recent being “Undaunted Optimist: Essays on Life, Laughter & Cheerful Perseverance.” Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge says, “Rodell writes about life the way Sinatra sings about New York, unflinching about the gritty realities, but with abiding affection and relentless positivity abut the future.”
A swashbuckling freelance writer since 1992, Rodell has rassled alligators, raced Ferraris, jumped out of cloud-cruising airplanes and in one week gained 20 pounds eating like Elvis.
Besides unconventional biographies on Fred Rogers and Arnold Palmer, his other books include “Use All The Crayons! The Colorful Guide To Simple Human Happiness,” and “The Last Baby Boomer: The Story of the Ultimate Ghoul Pool,” a 2016 satiric novel about the life and death of the last baby boomer (winner of the ’17 TINARA Award for best satire).
He is a sought-after and entertaining motivational public speaker and as seen in this 2015 clip the recipient of the greatest author ovation of all-time.
Rodell lives in Latrobe with his wife Valerie, their daughters, Josie and Lucy, and a small loud dog named Snickers.
He’ll write for anyone who’ll pay him. He is a PROSEtitute.
All Chris’s books can be purchased through www.ChrisRodell.com
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