Searching for Harvey

"Pooka. From old Celtic mythology. A fairy spirit in animal form. Always very large. The pooka appears here and there, now and then, to this one and that one at his own caprice. A wise but mischievous creature. Very fond of rum-pots, crackpots, and how are you, Mr. Wilson?"

Definition of Pooka as read by Mr. Wilson to Veta Louise Simmons in Harvey, by Mary Chase

I am mighty sick of Winter. I know the calendar suggests that it is technically Spring, but anyone believing that Spring has come to Humptulips County must have an abiding belief in the Tooth Fairy or in Pookas. I just returned from lunch and our wind has, if anything, gotten colder and more piercing than it was this morning. If Spring has come to Humptulips County, it is playing hide and seek with the residents.

I am more than ready for Spring and want it to come out of hiding. This Winter has been one of cold weather and an even colder economy. I will long remember this Winter both for its length and for the extent of its depressive manifestations. I am more than ready to run it out of town - on or off a rail.

This country needs Spring in a bad way. Now I am not completely nuts and am aware that the coming of Spring will not, in and of itself, cure the economy, but if its coming helps to put a smile on people's faces and gives them a little hope in the ever-renewing cycle of life it might just help the economy's recovery by the slightest bit. So there is even more reason to be anxious about Spring this year - more than the usual reason of simply being at one's wits end because the sun hasn't been seen in a clear blue sky at any time during the last 150 plus days.

The usual harbingers of Spring here in Humptulips County are calling out to little avail. The chorus frogs on my property sing their little hearts out every evening as they have since mid-February. Their singing seems, somehow, more desperate this year than exuberant, but sing they do each and every evening in a choral incantation to Spring. There were buds on many of the native rhododendrons and azaleas, and some of them have even survived the late frosts by clinging still to branches. Whether all of them will finally bud is open to question, but the sight of them still stirs hope that Spring will yet come forward. Last week, I saw my first robin and then, a day later, barn swallows darted around my car as I made my way home down our lane.

So I know that Spring will come, but this year's arrival seems unusual. This Spring appears to be playing hard to get as if to make up for some previously perceived slight. This Spring first hints with a brief warm breeze and then hides behind days-long, cold wintry winds. This Spring is flirting with us for reasons as yet unknown. This Spring isn't yet, and, when it finally arrives, may be as brief as the life of a Mayfly.

Nevertheless, I am eager for Spring to arrive, in whatever shape, form or guise it may eventually take. Perhaps our crummy economy has over heated my anxiety that something warm and pleasant should enter my life and I am simply too impatient for my own good. Perhaps my over-eagerness is the cause of my present dismay, and Spring will arrive in its usual manner - on the wings of a blustery warm wind sprinkling light rain as it blows by.

I remain confident that Spring will come this year, no matter how brief it may turn out to be; I just wish it would hurry up and get here for I am good and ready. Spring is not a will-of-the-wisp, but is real, both in terms of weather and emotional uplift. I just know it will be here eventually.

For I do believe in Pookas, as I have seen one. I had the privilege of seeing Helen Hayes, Jimmy Stewart, Peggy Cass and Jesse White revive Harvey as a stage play in 1969 and saw the play in Ann Arbor, Michigan before they took it to Broadway for a brief run. At the end of the play as the rest of the cast left the stage after taking their bows, Jimmy Stewart stopped his exit, returned as a solo to center stage, apologized to the curtain at stage rear for forgetting, and then motioned for Elwood P. Dowd's friend to come forward - and that was when Harvey's hat walked onto the stage and Harvey took his well-deserved bow to the audience. It was a piece of stage magic that I will always hold dear, and I much prefer to believe there really was a Pooka under that hat and smoke and mirrors played no part.

If I can maintain my belief in Pookas, I can certainly believe in the coming of Spring even in this most difficult of years.

A Rant: Whither or Wither the American Spirit?

"This perpetual change which goes on in the United States, these frequent vicissitudes of fortune, accompanied by such unforeseen fluctuations in private and in public wealth, serve to keep the minds of the citizens in a perpetual state of feverish agitation, which admirably invigorates their exertions, and keeps them in a state of excitement above the ordinary level of mankind. The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle. As the same causes are continually in operation throughout the country, they ultimately impart an irresistible impulse to the national character. The American, taken as a chance specimen of his countrymen, must then be a man of singular warmth in his desires, enterprising, fond of adventure, and, above all, of innovation. The same bent is manifest in all that he does; he introduces it into his political laws, his religious doctrines, his theories of social economy, and his domestic occupations; he bears it with him in the depths of the backwoods, as well as in the business of the city."


Alexis de Toqueville, Democracy in America


I find myself greatly perplexed by the current level of doom and gloom in our country. In so saying, I am not admitting to a level of idiocy beyond the reader's ken, since I fully understand that these times are, indeed, truly and deeply troubled. In fact, these tiimes are more ominous than anything I have seen in almost 40 years of legal practice, and this recession is strikingly different from the three or four previous ones that I have weathered. And, the quintessence of their difference is the depth and volume of doom and gloom abroad in the land.

My perplexity stems from the disconnect between what I have always been taught about the unquenchable nature of the American spirit and the unmeasurable depths of the slough of despond in which many of our economic leaders seem to find themselves trapped. I have always been taught - and I firmly believe - that the American spirit is highly resilient. Not only do I believe that it is highly resilient, but I also firmly believe that it will rebound and eventually triumph.

As trite as that picture may seem to some, it has amounted to a capital "T" Truth during my lifetime. Take our previous national slough of despond which has become universally known by the simple sobriquet of "9/11". As I said to many friends in the weeks following that beautiful late Summer day, it was as if a great greasy pall hung over the United States, the source of which were the smoke plumes we could see rising through the New York City sky in the days following. While the image of the smoke plumes was more potent when seen in person, it was nearly as mesmerizing on a television screen. While the pall lasted, it was an almost physical presence in our lives.

And then it was gone and life returned to an approximation of the past.

The American spirit rebounded after 9/11 despite an administration that tried to use it to instill fear as a means of ordering our life. The American spirit rebounded after the Great Depression and World War II, and that experience yielded a deeply talented generation of men and women who began the long period of growth we enjoyed throughout the last century. The American spirit rebounded after the Vietnam War despite its questionable morality, lack of focus and goals, and the despair and anxiety it unleashed on my own generation.

Other examples of the dominance of the American spirit are easy to find, but it is not my purpose to list them all. I simply wonder where, within the confines of our economic leadership, the wisps that remain to them of our American spirit may be hiding. It certainly isn't evident in any of their doings or speeches. It isn't evident in their faces. In fact, their slumped shoulders and dour expressions evidence anything but the American spirit. They have forgotten who they are and, more importantly, they have forgotten where they live.

Seen from a great height, it is apparent that the United States is currently mired in nothing more than one of the "frequent vicissitudes of fortune" that de Tocqueville sees as the crucible of our national spirit. It will end. While being caught in a vortex of bad news and economic pain is not a lot of fun on a daily basis, similar past experiences have always proved instructive to the national spirit. Americans long ago learned that while bad times are not enjoyable, we can still profit from them by taking to heart a good lesson hard earned. Americans have always had the knack of turning a period of despair or pain into the beginnings of a period of sustained benefit. The trick is to find the hard lesson at the core of the problem, to learn from it, to execute the changes necessary to move on, and to get on with life.

But to find the hard lesson and begin the learning and healing process, one has to search for meaning instead of spending his or her day wallowing in the pain of the moment. A massive communal wringing of hands is not conducive to learning; wallowing in woe is a waste. Most of our economic leaders are having a good wallow. Not only is the wallowing almost universal, but the current crop of executives would much rather return to the past and learn nothing from the present, apparently unappreciative of the opportunity that the present dilemma gives us.

Yes, I did say "opportunity". We have a wonderful opportunity to: recognize that no regulation is just as bad as over regulation, and to realize that the mid-point of a pendulum swing is better than either extreme; wean ourselves away from foreign oil and to develop native energy sources that will allow us to be truly independent and in control of our own destiny; abandon a health care system that is the most expensive in the world yet leaves far too many of our fellow citizens without any health care whatsoever; learn the goals to be sought during the next century and begin the hard work of attaining them.

And if that isn't enough of a list of opportunities, think longer than the next century. Dream big dreams! Dream of manned spaceflight to another planet - it is not only a possibility but it may be the only real salvation of a species living on an overworked and depleted planet. Dream of unmanned spaceflight to other galaxies and eventual colony ships to the planets found by that unmanned exploration.

In other words, remember de Tocqueville's observation that the core of our character is innovation. What we had doesn't work any more. That flivver is broken down in the middle of a dusty road. Get up, grab a wrench and fix it. Get in the damned thing and drive it to the next available auto shop, take it inside, reinvent it, and drive out in whatever your imagination has allowed you to create. Some of the by-products will be duds, providing humor and honing our ability to laugh at ourselves. But some of the by-products will be things of beauty. They will be this generation's version of the plane piloted by Wilbur and Orville Wright at Kittyhawk.

But to get there, the wallowing of our economic leadership must stop and the learning must begin. We need to recognize that while we may be sitting in the middle of a train wreck, we are alive amid the wreckage. Things could be worse - and they will be if the wallowing continues.

In short - as my grandmother was fond of telling me when I was in despair over some youthful crisis or other, get over it . I no longer remember any of the crises that caused her to speak her piece; I only remember her words. She almost always followed "get over it" with "get on with it."

It was good advice then, and it is good advice now.