Patch Portrait: The Laughing Monk

This week's Patch Portraits was produced and edited by Sara Fay, Andrea Hart, Carrie Porter and Allison Williams. Check back on Mondays for the next installment.

Also showcased, who talks to Winnetka-Glencoe Patch. 

In Tom Roddy's 80 years, he has escaped mental asylums five times; raised nine kids; and worked as a disc jockey, used-car salesman and journalist.

These days the Evanstonian leads a simple life. At 5 a.m. he reads at Starbucks; at 10:30 a.m. he brunches at the Sher-Main Grill; and at 3 p.m. he takes a nap. Roddy grounds his day in a mixture of meditation and prayer, sprinkled with casual philosophical conversations with strangers. Above all, he lives to laugh.

Roddy shares some of the most important as well as difficult aspects of his long life with us.

"If you don't learn to take a healthy attitude toward suffering in life...you're going to be a wretched human being because we all have to deal with this."