This past Sunday, I had the pleasure of preaching at my church, Oakhurst Presbyterian in Decatur, Georgia. Our transitional pastor, Katie Ricks, asked me to do the sermon because this past Sunday was Holy Humor Sunday. Holy Humor Sunday, also known as Bright Sunday, is a day that originated in the Christian tradition to celebrate joy and laughter.  It is observed on the Sunday following Easter and serves as a time to reflect on the idea of celebrating laughter and joy. This tradition, although new to me, is a delightful one.  The goal is to infuse worship services with elements of ..read more

  Drs. Doo Hickey and Squeeze and The Children’s Hospital at Piedmont   A 17-year-old boy claps his hands as he lies in bed. He has a big smile on his face, a big, honest smile that stretches from ear to ear when he laughs. His eyes are closed. However, sometimes, he opens them to look at us. When he looks at us, he chuckles even louder.  He's laughing because I asked him to count to three. He's expecting me to do a trick when he gets to three. However, in the middle of the countdown, "someone" farted. "T," that's what I'll call our teenager, claims that it's me. Whatever, I d ..read more

Photo From the last day of the Cool Fool School I was sitting in the clown workshop when one of the students glanced at me. She and her scene partner had just finished doing a scene for the class. They were at that part of the exercise where the performers discussed the scene they just finished. She paused to think as she looked at me, then pointed to me and said, "I was thinking of the Laban exercise that you mentioned yesterday. I was trying to put some of those ideas into the scene I just did". I smiled; I was pleased to see someone taking the ideas I discussed in the class I taught yester ..read more

A photo from one of my workshops with the Emory University Woodruff Scholars I've done this trick many times before. This time, however, I'm doing it in front of about 100 full-ride scholarship college students from Emory University. I asked them to count from 10 to 1 in a language they chose. As the students count down, I balance a chair on my face for their entertainment.  It was such a pleasure to work with these young people. These are the Emory University Woodruff Scholar Program students, 100 or so high-achieving full-scholarship students from the University. This past w ..read more

Someone smashed my car window. Broken glass was everywhere! My car was parked in a public lot, and someone decided to break my window after I parked it. I don't know who did this. I was only away from my car for a few hours. It happened in a public car lot. Now, I had to spend the rest of my day addressing this problem. I had to clean up the mess to make the car drivable, and then I had to drive somewhere where I could vacuum the rest of the glass out of the vehicle. Breaking something can be easy; repairing it will take work. I cleaned the shards of glass in my car by thoroughly vacu ..read more

After our introduction to Laban Effort Actions I walk from the parking deck across the university campus and approach the medical school building. The destination is familiar. We have met in this building several times over the semester. I open the door and walk into the halls of Emory Medical School. I am at the university to co-teach students at the medical school as part of Emory's Arts and Social Justice Fellows Program. I've been a hospital clown for many years, so I'm familiar with being a clown in a medical environment. That said, this is a school, a medical school. The halls ..read more

Over the past several weeks, I've enjoyed playing in a different playground. I got the clown around with the Atlanta Opera. Doing this work was a special treat for me. It was my second opportunity to work with the Atlanta Opera. Three years ago, I did two shows with the Atlanta Opera. These shows were at the height of the Covid pandemic. When we did these shows in 2020, we were in the deepest part of the Covid pandemic. We were months away from the first COVID-19 vaccine. The show in 2020 had lots of Covid precautions. I had to wear a mask and keep a distance from everyone. Several of the per ..read more

As I played, the music was a line of performers singing and dancing along. They all replied, "It's Alright "!. This started as my version of the Curtis Mayfield song "It's Alright." It's one of my favorite tunes to play in the hospital. At home in Georgia, people sing along. For them, it is a gospel refrain from the black church, and they are eager to join me in singing. This time, however, my chorus line of performers is not a group of black folks from the American South. It's Kajsa from Sweden,  Farhad from Sweden, Sibu from South Africa, and others. In this instance, it's less So ..read more

Today, I noticed that the avocados at the grocery store are a pretty good buy, five avocados for five dollars. That's cheaper than they have been. In the past, I would load up on the avocados at this price. But I don't eat a lot of avocados. I would always buy avocados because my daughter, Grace, liked them. Sometimes, she would have avocado toast. But mostly, she would use them for guacamole. She would cut the avocado and add garlic and other items to make delicious guacamole. She was good at this. It became one of her signature "go-to" cooking items. What's changed is that Grace is in coll ..read more

Recently, our clown team has been seeing more adult patients at the hospital in Columbus. It is a refreshing addition. However, it also offers an additional challenge. We use the same skill set for adults and children, but there's a different dynamic, a different vibe when dealing with patients in their  60s as opposed to six-year-olds. That said recently, dr. tiny, and I were in an adult unit. The charge nurse identified a few patients we could visit. The one patient that got my attention was an adult woman. At first glance, she looked like she is in her 60s. She was lying in her bed w ..read more