250 Words On Growth

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Monday until I run out of good ones.]

I’ve been surprised that my sixties have marked a period of tremendous personal growth, by which I mean organic materials growing out of my body in new and alarming ways and places.

First, from inside my nostrils and ear canals, hairs in a riot of textures and colors intent on tickling and harassing me. Also, more startlingly, right out on the very tip of each ear, a little crabgrass patch of hairs poking up like wiry antennas craning to pull in a distant TV station.

When you’re 11 and a school nurse hands you a pamphlet titled “Your Changing Body,” they never mention that someday you’ll be shaving your lobes.

Seborrheic keratoses are brown scaly waxy lumps that, as one medical website colorfully describes, “look as if they were dripped onto the skin by a candle,” and my epidermis churns them out. They’re benign, if you consider looking like the Fantastic Four’s Ben “The Thing” Grimm benign. 

The ones I can reach, I scrape off with a fingernail. You’re not supposed to do that and it’s not supposed to work, but I do and it does. For those on my back that I can’t reach, I see a dermatologist, who freezes them off with liquid nitrogen.

At my last visit, she looked and said, “Wow, that’s a lot.” After treatment, I asked if she’d gotten them all. She shrugged as if to say, “I’m not a miracle worker. Make peace with the reality that this is how you look now.” 

***

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After the Lahaina Fire

The newspaper article in this link reports what Karen and I were up to yesterday afternoon. 

Karen's old boss, county Supervisor James Gore, called Tuesday and said he wanted to bring a busload of folks from the international "After the Fire" conference to our neighborhood, and asked if Karen could say a few words and I could provide a couple of signed copies of A Fire Story. One particular point of the visit was to show a contingent from Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii, which was wiped out by fire a year ago, what a neighborhood looks like seven years after it burned to the ground. 

Karen spoke, then I spoke, and Gore spoke. We told them our story, and assured them that if they face every day with purpose and work together as a community, they'll get through it. I gave my book to the mayor and a city councilwoman from Lahaina. The mayor, in turn, gave Karen and me little pins from their city. We told them they're not alone. 

We hugged, we cried.

I found myself unexpectedly moved--"unexpectedly" because I've told my story in a lot of places to a lot of people, many of whom had lived their own version of it. I thought I'd gotten used to it. I think this was different because it was on my turf, in a little neighborhood park that was the only plot of grass and oaks that survived the fire, and the Maui folks' trauma is still so fresh and raw. 

I'm not fond of my quote in the linked article. "Punch them in the face" was said as a joke and doesn't necessarily come across like one in print. But I think we were able to provide some real-life insight and advice that we can only hope they find helpful.

It was a good and sad event.

250 Words on Odd Numbers

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Monday until I run out of good ones.]

People like oddness.

Magicians know that most folks, asked to pick a number between one and five, will say three. Most asked to pick a number between one and ten will say seven. 

When I was young, my Grandma taught me my first lesson in art composition: objects grouped in threes are more pleasing to the eye than those grouped in twos or fours. I don’t know how she knew that, she wasn’t an artist, but she was right. We are drawn to the balanced asymmetry of odd numbers. 

One odd number is “Belphegor’s Prime,” Belphegor being a high-ranking demon in Hell whose cursed number is 1,000,000,000,000,066,600,000,000,000,001. It’s a palindrome—the same forward and back—with 13 zeroes on either side of a 666 in the middle. It’s also a prime number, indivisible by anything but 1 and itself. A similar so-called “beastly palindromic prime” is 700,666,007. Sinister!

Psychoanalyst Carl Jung and physicist Richard Feynman both extolled the prime number 137, which seemed to surface in their work more often than it should, hinting at some inscrutably deep pattern in the universe. Some scientists wouldn’t be surprised if, when the Theory of Everything that unites subatomic quantum mechanics with cosmological relativity is finally discovered, its formula has a “137” in it.

One of my favorite numbers is 51, because it’s 17 x 3 but somehow seems like it shouldn’t be. 

Of course, according to writer Douglas Adams, the Ultimate Answer to Everything is 42. How odd that it’s not odd. 

Sauce Day!

Yesterday was our first big tomato-harvesting and sauce-making jubilee. Our climate is mild enough that we'll produce tomatoes until the first frost, so there will probably be more crops and sauces to come. We freeze it and put away enough to last throughout the year!

We planted four tomatoes this season: Roma, San Marzano, Sweet 100 cherries, and Better Boy, which was new to us this year. In addition, we have a TON of basil that will both go into this sauce and be made into pesto which, again, we'll freeze and use well into next year. 

I know few things as satisfying and gratifying as picking something from your garden in the morning, cooking it, and serving it for dinner that night. 

Karen and Riley harvesting our crop. Riley LOVES cherry tomatoes; any that hit the ground are hers. I made this U-shaped raised bed, which doesn't have a ton of square footage but is efficient and sufficient for us. You can see a bit of our basil patch peeking out behind Karen.

Today's yield, which will be clean, sliced, and tossed into a pot.

Eleven cloves of garlic ready to be diced. In our family, we call that "a good start."

Everybody in the pool! We'll cook it down for a few hours now. We don't bother peeling the tomatoes (hundreds of cherry tomatoes!), but will use an immersion blender to smooth it all out later.

Added at 1 p.m.: Added some basil and hit it with the immersion blender. Then added spices, Parmesan cheese, onion, bay leaves (plucked from trees in a nearby creek). Sometimes we leave it vegetarian, but this batch has ground beef, browned in another pan (with the onion) and added. Now we just give it a few hours to percolate and thicken. Beautiful color!

Added at 6:30 p.m.: Farm to Table in about seven hours! Fresh sauce on a nest of wide fettuccini, with Romano beans from the farmer's market and a nibble of garlic bread. It was good. Very good.

Leftover sauce headed to the freezer. Depending on how many we're feeding, each container is good for one meal or more. We'll probably make another batch as big or bigger in a few weeks.

250 Words on Kids and Other Humans

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Monday until I run out of good ones.]

I love kids and kids love me. I don’t know why, but if I’m in a room with a hundred adults and one kid, that kid’s eyes will lock onto mine like a magnet. If there’s a kid in a restaurant looking over the back of their chair, they’re looking at me.   

Maybe because I look back.

I like to think kids, like dogs, are good judges of character and their attention reflects well on me, but I don’t know that.

You might say it’s because I approach the world with childlike openness and wonder, but I don’t think I particularly do and, even if I did, they wouldn’t know that.

I do acutely remember what it felt like to be a kid, which is why I never tease or patronize them. I know they can feel deep embarrassment and perceive condescension because when I was their age I could. Of course I adjust my vocabulary, but I know kids can have interesting conversations about sophisticated ideas because I did. 

Kids aren’t stupid, they’re just inexperienced and uninformed. Both conditions will be remedied in time.

I also try to get down to their level. My mother told a story about being a young girl visiting a sheep ranch. The sheep terrified her and the adults laughed, until her grandfather kneeled to her height and said, “Geez, from down here they look like monsters!” She never forgot his empathy and compassion.

Perhaps the trick is treating kids like people. I remember.

250 Words on Skydiving

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Monday until I run out of good ones.]

I parachuted out of a plane three times, which I am proud of because most people quit after one. 

I was in college. The jump school at the tiny airport—so tiny I once I drove my car onto the runway thinking it was a road—was operated out of a ramshackle hut by a grizzled Korean War paratrooper, George, who warmed his classes with an oil drum fire he fueled by squirting gasoline into it.

These days, I understand novice skydivers jump from 10,000 feet in tandem, an instructor strapped to their backs. Back then we jumped solo from 3,000 feet, using a static line that opened our chutes for us. Over time, you’d demonstrate the form and skill needed to jump from higher altitudes and pull your own ripcord. 

I didn’t advance that far. 

A year or two after my third jump, when I still hadn’t entirely retired the idea of jumping again someday, George died in a skydiving accident. He’d been sitting near the open door of the plane when the emergency chute on his chest popped open and caught the wind. In jump school he’d taught us that, if that happens, you immediately leap out the door after it. George didn’t, his chute tangled in the tail, and he fell to his death.

I figured that if my jumpmaster sensei could go out like that, I wouldn’t have stood a chance, and that was the end of my skydiving adventure. It was glorious while it lasted. 

All Done Painting the Roses Red

Before and After: a few days ago, I posted some studies I did in preparation for doing a painting I promised Karen for our living room (you may recall that her only requirements were "big" and "red"). I also promised to share the results. Well, now it's done. Pic 1 above the blank sheet of watercolor paper I gave her for her birthday two months ago. Pic 2 below is the finished art. It'll do.

The Dog That Didn't Bark

I rarely post about current events for two reasons: nobody cares what I think, nor should they, and; I've never seen a Facebook post change anyone's mind. Still, I have two unrelated observations with a common thread:

1. Watching the Democratic National Convention, I've seen Barack and Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Jimmy Carter's grandson, JFK's grandson, and all sorts of governors, senators and representatives. More are forthcoming.

In contrast, where were George W. and Laura Bush at the Republican Convention? Where were Dick Cheney and Dan Quayle? Descendants of Ford, Reagan, Bush or Bush? Where was Mike Pence--oh yeah, his former boss tried to murder him. 

It's a very stark contrast between a political party and a former political party that's become a one-man cult of personality. I think the list of people who DON'T show up is as interesting as the list of those who do.

2. Similarly, I'm fascinated by what ISN'T happening in the Middle East, namely that Iran hasn't carried out its promised retribution against Israel for the death of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Like Sherlock Holmes in the story "Silver Blaze," I am struck by the silence of the dog that didn't bark. 

Although this thought could be rendered obsolete at any second, it seems to me that there must be frantic diplomacy happening behind the scenes, probably involving the U.S. and several other countries, scrambling hard to keep the lid on this mess. Somebody's been talking to Iran and making it very clear to them where their larger interests lie.

In art it's called "negative space," the shape of the nothing around something you're drawing. Your geopolitical thought of the day: "nothing" can be as revealing as "something."

250 Words on the Odds

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Monday until I run out of good ones.]

Studying quantum physics* taught me that reality is a crapshoot.

Electrons, protons, neutrons, etc. aren’t tiny marbles that orbit and ricochet off each other. That old Bohr atomic model was obsolete a century ago. Instead, each is a nebulous cloud of space that has an extremely high probability of behaving like an electron, proton or neutron. It could also behave like a donut. The odds are never 100 percent, and whenever you try to pin one down it squirms away.

Einstein said, “God does not play dice with the universe,” but the science says She does. We are all the consequence of trillions of individual subatomic dice throws happening every picosecond of our lives. 

Those probabilities can be expressed as a wave function, like an enormous squiggly curve, just as throwing two dice produces a bell curve that peaks on the number seven. Electrons, protons and neutrons are all wave functions and we are the sum—the superposition—of all the probability waves that comprise us. I’m a wave, you’re a wave. Hello, my wave is waving to your wave.

In 1763, writer, editor, and lexicographer Samuel Johnson answered a philosophical argument that nothing truly exists by kicking a large stone as hard as he could and declaring, “I refute it thus!”

All Johnson proved was that the odds of his and the stone’s wave functions occupying the same space at the same time were vanishingly small. Whether that says anything about the reality of their mutual existence is debatable. 

* I don't assume that all my friends and readers know I got my bachelor's degree in physics, so I have actually studied quantum mechanics. I did some time in Hilbert Space. That in no way makes me an expert—mostly it taught me exactly how ignorant I was—but I think it does make me better informed than most. Also, this footnote does not count against my 250-word limit, a loophole I may exploit in the future!

I'm Painting the Roses Red...

Having finished work on what I hope will be my fifth graphic novel (the Magic 8 Ball says "Cannot predict now"), I'm taking a moment between gigs to make some art. Self-indulgent, not-meant-for-publication, just-for-fun art. 

I've never displayed my own artwork around the house, but since we moved into our rebuilt home Karen has wanted a piece for our living room that meets two criteria: 1. Big. 2. Red. We looked at paintings and prints but couldn't find one we both liked enough. Finally, for her birthday a couple of months ago, I bought her a large blank sheet of 300-lb cold-press watercolor paper and promised to put a painting on it.

Some readers and friends like seeing my process. Here's how I'm making something that's not a comic.

I thought I'd do roses since they come in red and our living room window looks out onto our rose garden. I've spent some time doing studies to try out a variety of styles, compositions, colors, etc. The thing about studies is that they're not meant to be finished pieces. Rather, they're a way of testing different ideas to see which ones work. Risk is the point. Some earlier studies were failures but I think this one is heading in the right direction. 

For this piece, I outlined the roses with a loosely brushed ink line. I wanted it to look like something within my stylistic wheelhouse without being outright cartoony, and also be graphically bold rather than photorealistic (which I'm not sure I could pull off anyway). It's not obvious in the scan, but the roses are painted in three subtly different shades of red.

Pencil.

Ink.

First Layer of Watercolor.

More Layers of Watercolor.

This study is 11x15 inches. Once I get approval from my discerning client, Karen, I'll scale it up to about 22x30. With luck, the final piece will be 1. Big, 2. Red, and 3. Not an embarrassment. I'll let you know how it goes.

250 Words on The Circle of Life

[I try to start my day writing a 250-word piece on anything. I’ll post one every Monday until I run out of good ones.]

I was born in 1960. When I was young, I knew old folks born in the 1800s. Today, many of the children I know will see the 2100s. 

How extraordinary that my life can dip one toe into the 19th century and another into the 22nd! It’s a reminder of how short history really is. An old person holds a baby who grows into an old person who holds a baby; stretch that chain a mere couple dozen times and you’re back to the days of ancient Rome. 

My daughters, who were born in the late 20th century, pointed out that bartenders hardly need to do math anymore. All they have to see on your ID is the “19” starting your birth year to know you’re old enough to drink. My girls already anticipate a day when awestruck youngsters ask them, “What were the 1900s like?” They think of their cohort as the last to remember a world with no Internet.

I once asked my mother what it was like being a teen in the 1950s, expecting colorful tales of soda fountains, drive-in movies, sock hops, and Elvis. “Pretty much like now,” she shrugged. “With better music and cars.”

I was dumbfounded until I realized I’d say the same about the 1970s. Our clothes and hair were over the top and no one had a computer-camera-phone in their pocket, but I think the experience of being a teen was pretty much the same as now. 

With better music and cars.

Tim Walz Fixed Your Bicycle

I'm really enjoying the ton of Tim Walz memes zipping around. America's Foster Dad. This is my favorite so far, although I'm peeved that Walz stole the stud-finder move that I, personally, invented. 

Related, I've read more serious articles talking about how he embodies what real masculinity is about: not the strutting, domineering, macho bully sort, but the secure, caring, quiet sort. As they say, a real man doesn't need to tell you what a real man he is. In contrast to "toxic masculinity," I saw it called "tonic masculinity," and like that a lot. 

Politics is gonna get real, there will be disappointments, and we have difficult and even dangerous days ahead, but what a relief it is to let it be FUN for a bit. 

I found this meme at https://timwalzfixedyourbicycle.com . Refresh the page repeatedly for more.

250 Words On Anachronistic Voyages

[For a while, I’ve started most days writing 250 words about random topics just to prime the creativity pump. I have a big backlog, and will post a piece every Monday until I run out of good ones.]

In Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, 19th-century industrialist Hank Morgan awakens in 6th-century Britain, where his engineering knowledge makes him a rival to Merlin. He avoids execution because he knows a solar eclipse is coming, and threatens to extinguish the Sun. Morgan then “invents” gunpowder, firearms, landmines, lightning rods and such that make him the most powerful man in the realm.

It's a swell fantasy. Travel to yesterday and be hailed as a god!  However, I don’t think it would go so well for those of us who haven’t memorized old eclipse almanacs or how to forge steel. We’re too stupid. 

Even a smart phone would be mostly useless. The music, photo, and video apps would be marvels—until the battery died. Assuming you could convince anyone that someday Columbus would stumble onto the Americas or men would walk on the Moon, what value would that information have? You’d be thought mad, babbling in a strange tongue, possessed by demons.

Yes, I have overthought this. 

If I had a modest blacksmith shop at my disposal, I think I could build a pendulum clock from scratch. Possibly a doorbell or telegraph (they work the same). Maybe a steam engine, if I didn’t blow myself up.

Probably the biggest bang for my future-knowledge buck would be in medicine. Simply understanding the Germ Theory of disease and the importance of sanitation would do a lot to improve ancient healthcare outcomes. I’d be a saint. Or a witch. Either way.

Comic-Con Commission Sketch

I'm working on the commissions I got through the Cartoon Art Museum's "Sketch-a-Thon at Home" Comic-Con fundraiser. This request was for the Mechanical Monster, one of the robots Superman fought in his 1941 cartoon and also the star of my most recent graphic novel. This requester paid a premium price, which implies some extra characters and color, so I hope they don't mind that I threw in Superman. 

This is my interpretation of how Superman looked in those Fleischer cartoons, so his costume is a little different. His build is stocky, like a circus strong man, more Charles Atlas than Schwarzenegger, so I didn't over-define his muscles. 

Ink and color pencil on cardstock. I'm embarrassed to admit how much time I spend on these; let's just say that CAM is getting a substantial donation of my time as well as the commissioner's cash.

Comic-Con Sketches @ Home

Examples of past years' efforts: Batman.

Scarecrow of Romney Marsh.

Sneak Preview: This is Comic-Con week, and although I won't be in San Diego, I will help raise some money for the Cartoon Art Museum by doing drawings for people willing to chip in $20 (or more!) for one. THE SIGN-UP SITE GOES LIVE TOMORROW! Your favorite cartoonists will draw pretty much anything you want, within the bounds of decency and legality.

I've committed to doing three, and in past years they've sold out fast. Honestly, I think I always deliver a bit more than promised in terms of the time I put in, color I add, etc. I do my best because that's the only setting I've got. In the past, I've also been talked into doing one or two extra, but don't count on that. Sign up fast! Wednesday, 5 p.m.! 

I'll be missing my friends in San Diego this year. Someone please eat a cold rubbery $8 pretzel for me.

The two garbagemen from "The Burbs."

Hawkeye.

The Plate of Tomorrow of Yesterday

\Today's Antique Store Find: a beautiful commemorative plate from the 1939 World's Fair! The World of Tomorrow! Peak Art Deco! 

Friends with long memories may recall that I posted about a nearly identical plate I found several years ago. That was before the fire. I never really expected to see another again, until Karen and I were shopping today and I emitted a strangled "AAAAHH!" while pointing speechlessly into a cabinet. Karen rushed over to make sure I was fine. I was better than fine.

By the way, I am not oblivious or indifferent to the current political drama. Sometimes that's when light posts about plates are needed the most.

On Genre

Me in the Library of Congress, just because.

I've had a quick correspondence with a college librarian writing a research paper on "genre use and promotion both in libraries and outside of library settings" with an eye toward improving how the Library of Congress categorizes books. She wanted input from authors in unusual genres and I was happy to oblige.

I answered her questions as best I could and liked one of them enough that I asked if I could post it here. I think it's a good summary of how I approach the job. I have no idea if my perspective is common or ideal. It's just mine. 

. . . . . . . 

1. What is your philosophy/reason behind creating works in various genres and subgenres? What purposes are you hoping genres will serve for your audiences?

First, just to clarify (and I suspect we’re on the same page here), I don’t consider comics or graphic novels a genre, which is worth mentioning because many people do. They are a medium that encompasses many genres, including those you mention: science fiction, nonfiction, memoir, etc.

That out of the way, I don’t know how to answer this question and I doubt many authors would. We write the stories we want or need to write. I’ve given almost no thought to which genre I’m working in or onto which shelf a bookstore or library will place my work. As Orson Welles said to a critic who asked him to analyze one of his films, “I’m the bird. You’re the ornithologist.”

That may be professional malpractice on my part.

I’ve written two graphic novels that I’d call nonfiction memoir (Mom’s Cancer and A Fire Story). Mom’s Cancer also crosses into graphic medicine, a subgenre that didn’t exist when I wrote it. I’ve seen A Fire Story described as a work of “climate grief,” which may become a notable subgenre of its own if climate change goes as projected. I’ve called my second book, Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow, historical fiction but don’t know if that’s accurate (I wanted to call it a “graphic polemic” but my publisher wouldn’t let me). My latest, The Last Mechanical Monster, is straight-up science fiction/fantasy.

Each was a story I felt compelled to tell, and which genre it fell into barely crossed my mind.

(I did devote quite a bit of time and thought deciding if Last Mechanical Monster was science fiction or fantasy and came up with an answer that satisfied me but made no difference in the marketing, placement, or audience for the book that I could tell.)

I’d say that I don’t choose genres, genres choose me.

Likewise, I give very little thought to serving an audience when writing a book. I want to tell a good story I’d want to read and nobody but me could write. I aim to make a book my editor would want to publish and my family would be proud of. They’re my audience. I’d be thrilled if many, many other people read and love it, but that’s beyond my control so I try not to fret about it.

The only time I recall worrying about a broader audience was when my editor and I discussed whether to include an obscenity in A Fire Story. We knew it would exclude us from the young reader market but decided to include the word for journalistic authenticity and because we couldn’t think of an alternative that wasn’t stupid.

Honestly, I treat all the work I do, even my fiction, as journalism. I just try to write and draw what happened as clearly and economically as I can, even if I made it all up. As a result, my approach to memoir, graphic medicine, historical fiction, and science fiction/fantasy has been pretty much the same: tell it straight, with some tone-shifting to help readers keep their bearings. A nonfiction book about cancer should not have the same tone as a light fantasy about a giant robot.

Nathan Hale--No, Not That One

A quick selfie with Nathan in the Schulz Museum's lobby before his talk.

I went to the Schulz Museum this afternoon to see cartoonist and bestselling author Nathan Hale. I know him a bit--we've done some events and eaten some meals together--and I think he's one of the nicest and hardest working people in comics. 

Appropriately given his name (yes it's real), Nathan writes and draws historical graphic novels for kids under the series title "Hazardous Tales." He's also started a new series unrelated to his historical work that looks fun and charming. He says he does about 1.5 books a year, which is a prodigious output. 

He's one of the two best comics-related public speakers I've seen. The other is Scott McCloud. He filled the museum's little theater to capacity and held his audience rapt throughout.

Nathan does what used to be called a "chalk talk," in which he speaks and draws at the same time, except instead of a chalkboard or easel he uses a tablet connected to a screen. Chalk talks are a lost art; they used to be a common tool in the cartoonists' tool box but kind of faded away half a century ago. 

Nathan is confident and polished without being slick. You can tell he's done this talk a hundred times but it seems fresh, and he's able to roll with the crowd's responses and mood. Today's subject was Lewis & Clark, and he had his young fans squealing with laughter while imparting real knowledge. 

For example, he did a fun riff on Sacagawea rolling her eyes and scoffing at Lewis & Clark's excitement to "discover" flora and fauna her people had known for centuries, then backtracked to explain how she wouldn't have actually made that joke because everything she said had to be translated from Hidatsa to French to English and back again. Toward the end he pivoted from (historically accurate) poop jokes to a moving account of how Lewis & Clark gave both Sacagawea and Clark's slave York equal votes on group decisions, a quietly revolutionary act in the early 1800s. 

Great smart stuff. If you get a chance to see Nathan Hale speak, take it, and if you're in a position to invite him to give a talk, do it. Meanwhile, I'll be working on my chalk talk.

Toward the end of Nathan's chalk talk. This quick sketch shows York and Sacagawea voting on Corps of Discovery business. Lewis and Clark are the little figures on the sides wearing fancy captain's hats.

"Poppies will put them to sleep..."

Here's a little study I did of California poppies for a personal project, nothing meant for publication. 

Golden poppy flowers are easy: four yellow-orange-red petals that fold into a cone at night and open during the day. For this piece I focused on the stem and leaf structure. The leaves are interesting, like tiny green hands with curling fingers. If you don't get them right the whole plant doesn't look right. 

The color outlines are an experiment to see if I like them. They're red and green ink drawn with a nib on watercolor paper, on top of which I watercolored. I'm not sure about them yet.

This is just a sketch I didn't intend to share, but I know some people enjoy process posts. If it turns into something good, I'll share that, too.

The Great Dictator

Photo of Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator, which should be required viewing now.

A point I haven't seen someone make yet:* for the entire Biden presidency, the right-wing has accused him of being a dictator. Just a week ago, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum was railing against the "Biden Dictatorship" on CNN. 

Yet now that the Supreme Court has handed President Biden actual honest-to-goodness dictatorial powers that he could use to murder his enemies today? Not a peep. That's because they're hypocrites who know deep down that Joe Biden is a fundamentally decent person who'd never use them. 

On the other hand, they're absolutely giddy that their guy might get to. Trump is posting lists of people he'd like to see tried for treason, starting with Rep. Nancy Pelosi, General Mark Milley, and former Rep. Liz Cheney. Think he won't do it? You haven't been paying attention. 

Look at who's celebrating the ruling and who's criticizing it. That tells you who thinks elevating presidents into all-powerful kings is a good idea and who doesn't.

.

.

*I'm sure someone has made this point, I just haven't seen it. 

Snoopy in Space Report

We had a good turnout, nearly filling the Schulz Museum's little theater. This is the beginning of the panel, when we were introduced by the museum's public program coordinator, Sara Merrick.

I had a nice afternoon at the Charles M. Schulz Museum, where my main job was to host a panel on "Snoopy in Space" with guests Bill Miklos and Dr. Jack Bacon, both of whom have decades of experience in the business of launching satellites and people into space. 

"Peanuts" has always been closely associated with NASA. The Apollo 10 command and lunar modules were named Charlie Brown and Snoopy, respectively. Also, one of the greatest honors a NASA employee can receive is a Silver Snoopy pin for their contributions to safety, which Bacon had earned. 

I see my job at these events as keeping the conversation lively and on-track, and helping the panelists make their points as best they can. You also have to keep the audience in mind; some will be very knowledgeable but others will be young and easily bored kids, which doesn't necessarily mesh with detail-oriented engineers. I think we clipped right along and put on a good show.

The panel was part of a whole day of space-related activity at the Schulz Museum, including an informational table staffed by my friends (and one daughter) from the USS Hornet Museum, as well as the museum's own "Snoopy in Space" exhibition that will be closing soon.

A good time at one of my favorite places with some of my favorite people. Got to touch base with Jeannie Schulz, museum director Gina Huntsinger, and a few friends who came out. Can't beat that.

Dr. Jack Bacon, Bill Miklos, and me. Looks like we're taking a question from the audience here. I'm wearing a t-shirt from the USS Hornet that says "Apollo 11 Lunar Team" with a picture of astronaut Snoopy. Please note that I was not actually on the Apollo 11 Lunar Team any more than Snoopy was. I'm just a fan of their work.

Snoopy in Space at the Schulz

This Saturday at 11, I will be moderating a panel at the Charles M. Schulz Museum & Research Center on "Snoopy in Orbit," with NASA expert Jack Bacon and aerospace engineer Bill Miklos, who is also a docent at the USS Hornet Sea, Air and Space Museum. Immodestly, I think I'm exactly the right person for the job because I know Peanuts, I know space, and I know the USS Hornet, whose Apollo exhibit I helped redesign several years ago. 

The panel is part of a full day of space-related activities at the Schulz Museum, including fun activities, another talk by Dr. Bacon, tables staffed by the USS Hornet and the Space Station Museum, and more! It's free with regular admission, and all the regular wonderful Peanuts art and artifacts will be there as well.

Brian says: check it out!

Graphic Medicine in Ireland

There will be a graphic medicine conference in Ireland this summer that I will not be at, but a few friends sent me this article about it from The Irish Times because they knew I'd be interested and also because I'm mentioned in it.

Mom's Cancer was in the right place and time to accidentally become a foundational text in the field of medical humanities called graphic medicine, meaning comics + healthcare. As the article describes, friends like "Comic Nurse" MK Czerwiec and Dr. Ian Williams pioneered graphic medicine after finding my book, and others like conference chair Jane Burns continue to discover it and find it helpful and inspiring. There was a time when "graphic medicine" comprised about a dozen people and we all knew each other. That's not true anymore. It's big and growing!

I remain astonished by the legacy of my family's story, not least because people still read it 20 years later. I give a few talks a year to medical students. It's routinely cited in academic journals. And it still gets mentioned in articles like this one by friends who are gracious enough to remember it. It's all enormously gratifying.

A Treasure Chest

My neighbor, Ted, is a master woodworker. His work wins ribbons at the county fair, and after the fire he made most of the tables, desks, dressers, bookcases, and other furniture for his and his wife Judy's rebuilt home. He does beautiful work.

Parallel track: I love and collect antique stereograph cards. They're like primitive ViewMaster pictures that were big entertainment in the late 19th and early 20th century. Victorians sat around their parlors peering through 3-D viewers for hours of fun. 

For years I've been looking for a little box or cabinet to store my cards in, but nothing's ever been the right size. I finally had an epiphany: maybe I could commission Ted to build me one. He jumped at the chance! With all he's built over the years, he'd never actually done a box and was eager to give it a shot. I gave him a drawing with some dimensions and encouraged him to spread his creative wings.

Here it is. I think it's fantastic. My cards fit perfectly, and I left room for more. 

Neither Ted nor Judy is on Facebook, but I wanted to acknowledge Ted's great skill and kindness publicly. It's a treasure. 

Serendipitous Art

 

I was putting my phone in my pocket after taking a photo when my finger slipped and I accidentally took another. Usually those are blurry shots of my fingers or feet and are instantly deleted, but I liked how this one turned out so much I kept it. It's a painted cinderblock wall seen through the pickets of a metal fence. If I made abstract art, this is the sort of abstract art I would make. Which I guess I did!

My Stalker

Don't look! Act completely calm and normal! Just blink twice if there's a giant Marilyn Monroe behind me. 

She's there, isn't she? I knew it! That dame just will NOT leave me alone.

Words, Images & Worlds

Here's that other podcast I alluded to: "Words, Images and Worlds" with Jason DeHart! I didn't know Jason before he asked me to guest on his show, but we have many mutual friends and he's just about the most prolific podcaster I've ever seen. Seriously, he's done hundreds of them, with some very impressive creative-type people. Also me. 

I enjoyed our conversation very much, and if you have 23 minutes to kill, you might too. Thanks, Jason.

October Sky By The Minute

I also drew their logo.

I seem to have a good side hustle in the prestigious, lucrative world of podcast guesting! I shared one podcast link a few days ago, and today drops the latest episode of "The October Sky Minute," the podcast that reviews the wonderful 1999 movie based on Homer Hickam's bestseller "Rocket Boys" one minute at a time, hosted by my friends Jim O'Kane, Hal Bryan and, for today only, me.

I love the movie and love Hal and Jim. The point of the podcast isn't to just talk about the minute of film on hand, but to invite interesting people for interesting discussions. To that end, they've landed many stars from the movie, Homer Hickam himself, and others including the president of the Estes model rocket company and an expert on picket fences (for an episode in which an errant rocket takes one out). Can't imagine why they asked me, but we ended up talking about parenthood, chemistry lab, model rocketry, and "Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow," so not the usual stuff from me. It was a nice genuine conversation and I think that comes through.

I did an entirely different third podcast that should be released soon. They were actually all recorded over a long stretch of time but are dropping pretty close to each other. I'm not doing ALL the podcasts, it just seems like it.

Dare to be Great

Here's a podcast I did a few weeks back with my friend, Shawn Langwell, about creativity and purpose, titled "Dare to be Great, Dare to be You."

Shawn is a local writer, as is his wife Crissi, and he gives talks and writes books in the general areas of success, motivation, confidence, self-improvement, etc. If you're interested in hearing me drone on for 54 minutes and 3 seconds about my thoughts on creativity, self-expression, fear of failure, and why I don't want to read your comic ripping off Lord of the Rings, this is the podcast for you! 

And I can understand why it wouldn't be. I just listened to it and even I'm sick of me. But Shawn is a good host and I think we had an interesting, real conversation.

Thanks, Shawn!

Rocketeer Catalog Launch

The cover of the exhibition catalog. It was a great show! Although all the auction pieces have been sent to their winning bidders' homes, CAM still has a fantastic exhibition of Stevens's original art.

I had a nice afternoon and evening in San Francisco yesterday, participating in the Cartoon Art Museum's launch party for its Rocketeer Exhibition Catalog, which commemorates an exhibition of "Rocketeer" cartoonist Dave Stevens's original art as well as tribute pieces drawn by other artists, including me, which were later auctioned off. Proceeds from the auction benefited both CAM and the Hairy Cell Leukemia Foundation in Stevens's memory. About a dozen contributors came to meet fans and sign catalogs assembly-line-style. 

I arrived more than an hour early just so I could walk around the waterfront and play tourist in San Francisco, because Why Not? The brown lumps in the foreground are hundreds of sea lions that have taken over some docks in San Francisco Bay. The multicolored lumps in the background are hundreds of people on Pier 39 watching them bark and bellow. I'm on Pier 41, which I had pretty much to myself.

I love the Musee Mecanique, tucked into a warehouse in the back corner of Fisherman's Wharf. It's a haphazard collection of old arcade machines ranging from the 1800s to Pac-Man. Admission is free, most of the games cost 25 cents to play. I spent $2 and had a wonderful time. Highly recommended!

Dave Stevens's sister, Jennifer Stevens-Bawcum, who oversees his archives and creative legacy, blessed the project and attended last night as well. She was lovely. I got to touch base with some friends (including the generous Scott Burns) and meet a couple of new ones, which was lovely too. CAM hosts Andrew Farago, Summerlea Kashar, and Ron Evans made us feel welcome. 

An unfortunate shot of Jennifer Stevens-Bawcum, for which I apologize, but I'm posting it because it's one of only two photos I took of the evening and it provides a nice overview of the signing set-up. Next to Jennifer is syndicated cartoonist Jonathan Lemon. Next to him is the space where I sat, and beside me was Denis St. John from Charles Schulz's Creative Associates. Behind Denis are Tom Beland and Jon Bean Hastings, and the ponytail behind Jennifer's shoulder belongs to Brent Anderson.

Cartoonists Jon Bean Hastings and Tom Beland held down the end of the horseshoe of tables. The gent standing in the background to the right of the "Gorey" sign is artist Steve Leialoha.

Here's a photo of me, Jonathan Lemon, and Jennifer Stevens-Bawcum taken by my friend Scott Burns, with cartoonist Chuck Whelon and Tina Whelon standing at right in the background.

My page--37, for anyone who's curious.

We signed a LOT of catalogs, which CAM is selling online and on site. The museum itself is worth a visit if you enjoy the graphic narrative arts. A great event in a great institution!

Alcatraz and a gull who had no fear of, or really any interest in, me. A fine day on the Bay.

EDITED TO ADD: Here's a new group photo from CAM that I'm parking here so I'll know where to find it later. Thanks!