New research reports that, thanks to smartphones, kids are smarter today than their ancestors ever were. “Technology,” the article said, “is expanding the American IQ.”

Psychologist Steven Pinker says, “Progress is a fact... we are smarter, richer, and healthier than our ancestors. This is not a matter of optimism; it is a matter of looking at the data.”

The research went on to say that, by modern standards, an average American born in 1910 would have a modern-day IQ of around 67. Which is below the threshold for intellectual disability.

A hundred years ago, according to research, kids were stupid.

Which is absolutely true. Take my grandmother. Bless her heart. A hundred years ago, as a little girl, she would awake every wintery morning to build the family fire with kindling and newspaper. She did this without help. By herself.

What a low IQ.

Next, she would light a kerosene lantern before going outside to feed and water the animals and collect eggs in the henhouse. Pa gave her this

job when she was 7. She’d never missed a day of work, except when she had scarlet fever and diphtheria. What a dolt.

She was also responsible for gathering laundry on Fridays. During the wintertime, laundry hung on the line, frozen stiff. It froze your clothes into weirdly rigid shapes, but somehow, because of science, the cold air actually freeze-dried them. Then you collected the board-like clothing and hung them near the fire to soften. How stupid.

After a morning of chores, it was time for school. That’s when the real work began.

Firstly, the girl was responsible for her little brother and her sister on the walk. She was the oldest girl, which meant she was practically a second mother.

School was four miles away. So, not that far. Heck, she walked six miles just going to town. Seven miles whenever Mama sent her to the post office for…

In light of all the negative headlines, civil unrest, and the international political upheavals, I know many of you are anxious to know what I did for National Kiss a Ginger Day.

Or maybe you missed this particular holiday.

Truth be told, I had never heard of this specific hair pigmentation festivity until recently. I am a ginger, so when I learned of this special occasion I planned on celebrating by listening to Willie Nelson records and watching Carol Burnett reruns.

National Kiss a Ginger Day, however, turned out to be a disappointment. For starters, hardly anyone knows about this important holiday.

When I asked my wife, for example, if she knew what today was, she smiled and handed me a full trash bag.

“Garbage day,” she said.

I spent the rest of the morning breaking down cardboard boxes.

When the garbage truck arrived, as fate would have it, one of the sanitation workers happened to be a redhead. He was a large guy with a bushy orange beard, riding on the back bumper.

“Do you know

what today is?!” I called out.

He leapt off the truck, then spit. “Monday,” he replied.

“No,” said I.

Then I told him today was National Kiss a Ginger Day. The man grew silent. “Have a nice day, sir,” he said.

In the grocery store, I asked the cashier if she knew what today was. The woman shook her head and replied, “Should I?”

I said it was National Kiss a Ginger Day.

We just stood there staring at each other. I was waiting for her to make the first move. She looked me up and down, as though she were buying a horse.

“I have a sore throat,” she finally said.

The lady teller at the bank was also a redhead. I was thrilled. Actually, her hair was more auburn, but this definitely counts. I smiled at this woman and asked if…

When you’re having a bad day, think of her.

She was born in Agawam, Massachusetts. One year after the Civil War. The daughter of Irish immigrants.

They were poor. It’s hard to imagine how poor. Her mother routinely skipped supper to feed her three children. Her little brother was sickly. Her father was an alcoholic, and beat them.

When she was 5, she contracted a bacterial eye disease. She laid awake at night, with painful infections that made her nearly blind. At age 8, her mother died from consumption. At age 10, her father decided to abandon his three children.

The state split up the siblings. She and her younger brother were sent to an overcrowded orphanage-hospital and almshouse in Tewksbury. Her sister was sent to live with an aunt.

Tewksbury was more prison than orphanage. It was the stuff nightmares are made of. A place where inmates were sexually assaulted, where there were reports of cannibalism. The institution was inspected by the

state, time and again, but the powers that be always turned a blind eye.

Only a few months into their stay, her brother’s health deteriorated, and he died of tuberculosis.

And just like that, she was alone.

She slept in flea-infested bunks. She ate bad food. Orphanage workers often shaved little girls’ heads to keep the lice away.

Meantime, her vision kept getting worse. She underwent two eye operations that didn’t work.

Finally, her eyes got so bad they sent her to a hospital for more operations. Those didn’t work either.

While in the hospital, instead of being treated as a patient, she was made a lowly chambermaid.

She helped the nuns empty chamber pots, launder soiled sheets, and bandage open wounds. Orphans occupied the lowest rungs of society in those days. She was little more than a serf.

Her eyes worsened. The hospital…

I see her on the street. She is a hospice nurse. I know this because she is standing directly beside her company SUV, which is covered in vinyl logos, parked outside an older house.

She is mid-40s, wearing scrubs. And crying. Face-in-her-hands crying.

There are other people standing on the porch of the home behind her, they are crying, too. Everyone is sad.

It is a gray day. I am walking my dog. Well, actually, my dog walks me. Marigold (blind coonhound) pulls at the leash like a team of draft oxen. If I were riding a skateboard right now, we would already be in Northern Quebec.

I should leave this young nurse alone. I know this. When people cry, they really just want to be left alone. But I have too much of my mother in me to let anyone cry without sufficiently annoying them.

My dog and I stop walking. I ask if she is all right.

I know what her answer will be, of course. Everyone answers this question in the most politely dishonest

way possible. “Of course I’m alright,” most people would say. “I’m good,” people will say. It’s what society teaches us to say. Put on a brave face, lie through your teeth, and fake it till you shake it.

But she doesn’t do that. I suppose this woman has seen enough bereavement in her career to feel the need to apply proverbial lipstick to the proverbial pig.

She blows her nose loudly and speaks. “No, I’m not okay.” Then she laughs.

I don’t know what else to say, so I just sort of stand there. Feeling stupid. Wondering what kind of cuisine they eat in Kuujjuaq, Quebec.

“Sometimes it just gets to you,” she explains.

Marigold is attracted to the woman’s voice. So Marigold drags me to the woman. Marigold has no manners.

The woman stoops and begins to stroke Marigold’s smooth, black, seal-like…

The annual World Happiness Report recently ranked the happiest countries in the world. The U.S. dropped to number 24, its lowest position in the report’s history.

“That gradual decline is… especially driven by people that are below 30,” says University of Oxford professor Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, editor of the report.

The report went on to say that, if you assess only Americans below 30, the U.S. wouldn’t even rank in the top 60 happiest countries.

So, what IS happiness? What’s the official American definition? Even our American dictionary is unclear.

The dictionary says happiness is “the state of being happy.” But if you look up “happy” in the same dictionary, it says: “a state of happiness.” The writers of our dictionary are evidently the same people who write the U.S. Tax Code.

So, for this column, I have consulted the happiness experts.

To learn more about happiness, I first travel to the happiest place on earth. Mayberry County, North Carolina.

I interview local sheriff, Justice

of the Peace, and civic-choir member, Andy Taylor. Sheriff Taylor says he believes happiness comes from generosity.

“I firmly believe,” says Taylor, “you can’t give something without feeling good; it’s just like lighting a candle with another candle—you’re spreading light.”

After our interview, I catch a plane bound for Canada’s smallest province. Once I reach the Garden Province, I interview local author and schoolteacher Anne Shirley.

Shirley knows about the struggle for happiness, she was raised in an orphanage in Hopetown, Nova Scotia, before moving to The Island as a girl.

That said, Anne is not currently "happy with my tardiness. Her infuriated face is even redder than her shock of red hair.

Finally, she calms down, and we start the interview.

“Happiness?” Anne begins. “It's been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly…

Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done. In America, as it is in heaven.

Bandage our wounds. Apply salve to each sore. Balm to each injury. Ointment to each bruise. Antiseptic to our bleeding lacerations, and medicine to our open gashes.

Undamage us. Or better yet, teach us to undamage ourselves. Show us how to heal.

Teach us the language of kindness, a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

Show us how to talk to one another again. Without bias. Without agenda. With words of understanding. With sentiments of peace.

And, most importantly, teach us to listen. Teach us to hear without judgement. Teach us to speak without decision. Teach us to see without partiality.

Teach us prudence. Teach us rationality. Teach us non-assumption. Teach us fairness, reluctance, and restraint. Teach us composure.

Show us how to be gentle, we cannot do it on our own. In fact, evidently, we cannot do it at all. Not without help.

Namely,

because we are angry with everything right now. Angry with each other. Angry with people we’ve never met. Angry with things that don’t even exist.

Angry with systems. Angry with ideologies. Angry with foolhardiness, selfishness, and the inability to reason. Angry with idiocy in general.

Help us to love one another. Help us to find beauty in each fellow human being. Beauty within each soul who crosses our path today. Teach us to find beauty in our enemies.

Open our eyes, so that we may see each person’s intrinsic loveliness, instantly. No matter how different from us this person might be. No matter which group this person belongs to.

Teach us to put others’ needs above our own. Teach us to be considerate. Teach us to show our children how valuable they are. Teach us to give, even when it hurts. Teach us to love like…

A crowded restaurant-slash-bar. There is a band in the corner, playing music loud enough to threaten dental work.

An older man is on the bench beside me, waiting. The hostess tells us it will be a 40-minute wait for a table. Then she hands us both beepers.

The older man is quiet. Watching the frenetic insanity of modern life move about.

The patrons are mostly young. It’s a bar. So people are happy. They’re doing what happy people from their generation do. They take selfies for no apparent reason. They snap photos of their food when it arrives. They rapidly thumb away on their screens, largely ignoring the people in their party.

The older man is just taking it all in.

There is a family of three on our bench, also waiting for a table. Mom is talking loudly into a phone via Bluetooth. Dad is fiddling with a smartwatch, maybe playing a game? The kid is wearing massive, padded headphones that swallow his head, listening to tunes, blissing out.

Nearby, a group of young women

in heels is huddled together, staring at someone’s phone, laughing at a video, but not conversing. Their phone volume is cranked so high you can almost hear it above the band.

Which is really saying something inasmuch as the band is playing “Truck Yeah” by Tim McGraw. And if this isn’t the worst pop-country song ever written I’ll kiss a grown man’s astrological sign.

The older man finally flashes me a smile. We notice each other amidst the madness. Two humans. Stuck in chaos.

He is missing a few teeth. His nose looks like it’s been broken a few times.

We introduce ourselves. His name is Joseph. He has an iron handshake. His skin is weathered, like he’s been outside a lot. There are tattoos on his forearms and hands.

Joseph says he’s meeting his daughter here. But he feels weird being out…

The 20-year-old girl is sleeping when we enter her hospital room. But her mom tells us to come in anyway.

I’m carrying my fiddle case. My friend Bobby is carrying his banjo.

The patient is sleeping on her side. We see her violent red ponytail spilling down her shoulders. There are cords and tubes exiting her body from all angles.

The girl’s kid sisters rush toward us to give quiet hugs. Then, Bobby and I hug her mother.

The young patient hears all this commotion. Hark. Fair Juliet awakes.

She opens her eyes. She sees me. She smiles. The 20-year-old girl sits up in bed and, without saying anything, opens her arms for me to embrace her.

There are green Band-Aids on her inner forearms, from where nurses have endlessly searched for new veins. And she has lost weight since I last saw her, which was only a few weeks ago. She is a tiny sparrow.

We embrace. I am careful not to squeeze too

hard. I can feel her ribcage beneath my arms.

“You’re here,” Morgan says in a half whisper.

“How’re you doing?” I say.

As soon as the words exit my mouth, I wish I could take them back. What a pig-ignorant question to ask to someone who just spent Christmas and New Year’s Eve in the ICU. How are you doing? What an bonehead.

Morgan smiles and answers, “I am doing great!”

I’ve never heard say things weren’t great. Not once.

She’s paralyzed on her left side. She uses a leg brace to walk. She is nearly blind. She lives on a form of life support called total parenteral nutrition (TPN), which is a feeding tube that supplies nutrition directly through her bloodstream, mounted in a backpack, which she wears all day, every day.

Currently, however, she has a blood infection. The infection…

The old timers in my childhood used a word I never understood. The word was “Providence.” The old timers couldn’t give me an exact definition of this word. Probably because it had more than two syllables.

To be fair, Providence truly is a difficult word to define. Even now, when researching this column I couldn’t find a concrete definition.

One dictionary called the word “archaic.” Which is true. Today the term is so outdated that, if you’re a younger reader, I’ve probably already lost you.

So I’ll explain Providence by telling you how the word was invoked by the rural people of my youth.

Okay. Let’s say there was no rain, the world was dry, farmers were losing money. It wasn’t “bad luck.” It was Providence. And when the rain finally began to fall; also Providence.

When two people fell in love? Providence. If someone got cancer and died, people prayed for the family to receive solace in Providence.

Job promotion? Providence. Finding $20 in your coat pocket? Big-time Providence. The electricity goes

off? Divine Providence.

My people, you see, did not believe in good luck, coincidences, or even flashy miracles. There were no mistakes. There were no accidents. It was all Providence.

To my people, life was a trapeze act. Mankind was always swinging recklessly from trapezes, back and forth. Sometimes man fell, sometimes he didn’t. Either way, there was a divine reason for everything—good and bad. You weren’t supposed to know the reason. That’s Providence.

The thing is, nothing makes sense in life. Not a single thing. I’ve been trying to figure the world out since I was a kid but I’ve never been able to.

I went through a period of sad living, when I believed this universe was against me. I lost faith in everything: in people, in goodness, in miracles. For a while I quit believing in God. I told him…

There were 26 of them, altogether. High-school kids. Not one cellphone among them. Neither were there TVs, airpods, gaming devices, or tablets. No tech at all.

It was a party. An apartment downtown. The kids gathered here sometimes. To blow off steam. To socialize in-person. They heard their ancestors used to do this. Their ancestors called it “hanging out.”

What a weird term.

Some teens were cooking in the kitchen, using cookbooks made of actual paper. They were books manufactured before the paper bans of ‘84.

Most kids had never seen a paper book before. They had only heard of them. Other kids were lounging in various nooks and corners, drawing, writing, or making art on their black-market notepads.

Light music came from a record player someone scored in an antique store. The music was Louis Armstrong. They had never heard anything like it. In fact, they had never met anyone who could actually play an instrument. Today, most kids interested

in music used AI-composition software. Although in the mall there was a humanoid bot who could play violin.

So they were breaking the law. Gathering here. Being without phones. Going phoneless was a crime in their society. A misdemeanor.

Mandatory phone laws had been established long before they were born. The laws were intended for safety. “Real-name registration,” “ID-linked SIM cards,” and “biometric data” had only been concepts 50 years ago, but now they were a global thing.

Even so. It’s a well-known fact that teens rebel.

Teens must rebel. It’s their DNA. Teens have been rebelling ever since two teens named Adam and Eve got the ball rolling.

These particular teens called themselves the “Luddites.” A name they found an antique history book. The first Luddites, they read, were rebels from old England, textile workers and craftspeople, at the dawn of the Industrial Age.

The original Luddites…