David McBeth (dmcbeth@utm.edu) from 192.239.147.163 at 09/25/96 01:59PM
comment
    As a northerner, I find very little about the South "funny". I do find many things humorous. I think people who can't laugh at themselves now and then are probably rather sad and lonely. Though I have lived in Tennessee four years, I have spent 17 summers in Maine and feel much more like a New Englander than a Southerner. In my little corner of Maine there are two sayings which express the local feelings toward summer visitors. "Summer people, some are not" and they speak of people who were born there and people "from away". I don't think humor necessarily comes out of ridicule or a misplaced sense of superiority. Rather, humor comes from the ability to step back and look at yourselves as other might see you. I try to teach my drawing students to step back from their work and see their drawings as others might rather than keep their noses so close to the paper they can't see the "bigger picture". I think that is one thing humor can help us to do.