<p>The setting is Pete's Fine Fruits & Vegetables and the poem has to do with the humiliation of standing in line and waiting...and waiting more. Finally, Pete's son Theo is ordered by his father into a repudiation of all the anger that spilled over the edges and redeemed the situation by a simple act of kindness toward a frustrated woman and her boy.</p>

The setting is Pete's Fine Fruits & Vegetables and the poem has to do with the humiliation of standing in line and waiting...and waiting more. Finally, Pete's son Theo is ordered by his father into a repudiation of all the anger that spilled over the edges and redeemed the situation by a simple act of kindness toward a frustrated woman and her boy.

<p>The setting is Pete's Fine Fruits &amp; Vegetables and the poem has to do with the humiliation of standing in line and waiting...and waiting more. Finally, Pete's son Theo is ordered by his father into a repudiation of all the anger that spilled over the edges and redeemed the situation by a simple act of kindness toward a frustrated woman and her boy.</p>

Episode 40: Ordinary Gallantry

John's podcasts and poems are frozen still moments recorded as mental photos that run in the reader's imagination like full films. As both participant and chronicler John removes himself from the action, makes his observations quickly (and hopefully cogently) and then escape. If John is a good observer, he sees things that by themselves are extraordinary revelations about each of us which seem as caricatures rooted in ordinary life and amplified by the focus of each person's mind on the "other" … ourselves. In other words, if a kid is "an indefatigable nose picker with bluster all his own" we get a complex message about human behavior that we got from an unmentionable source: us. Long after hearing  John's podcasts and poems, the scenes he describe live "rent free" in the reader's mind.

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John's podcasts and poems are frozen still moments recorded as mental photos that run in the reader's imagination like full films. As both participant and chronicler John removes himself from the action, makes his observations quickly (and hopefully cogently) and then escape. If John is a good observer, he sees things that by themselves are extraordinary revelations about each of us which seem as caricatures rooted in ordinary life and amplified by the focus of each person's mind on the "other" … ourselves. In other words, if a kid is "an indefatigable nose picker with bluster all his own" we get a complex message about human behavior that we got from an unmentionable source: us. Long after hearing John's podcasts and poems, the scenes he describe live "rent free" in the reader's mind.

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Episode 40: Ordinary Gallantry

Episode 40: Ordinary Gallantry