250 Words on Burning Out and Fading Away

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

“It’s better to burn out, than to fade away. My my, hey hey.” —Neil Young, born in 1945.

There’s an idea baked into rock and roll—a refrain, if you will—celebrating the idea that growing up is the worst thing that can happen to you. Better to go out in a blaze of glory like Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Sid Vicious or Kurt Cobain, a tragic Peter Pan, than to be wheeled on stage wheezing your greatest hits when you’re over the hill. As James Dean said, “Live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse.”

Which sounds dramatic and romantic until you grow up and still want to make a living.

“Hope I die before I get old,” sang The Who’s Pete Townsend, born in 1945. Sorry, Pete.

“I’d rather be dead than sing ‘Satisfaction’ when I’m 45,” said Mick Jagger, born in 1943. He said that in 1975. The Rolling Stones toured in 2024. Guess what their encore was.

John Lennon had a different perspective.

“I hate it,” Lennon said. “It’s better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out… Making Sid Vicious a hero, Jim Morrison—it’s garbage to me. I worship the people who survived. Sid Vicious died for what? So that we might rock? No thank you! I’ll take the living and the healthy.” Sadly, John didn’t get to grow old. 

As someone who hopes to tell stories and get better at it until I’m ancient, I’m biased toward Lennon’s take.

* * * 

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE! I am sharing these little "250 Words On" essays via Substack, which will email a new one to your In Box every Tuesday morning. Just follow this link and enter your email address. It's free, and I promise to never use your address for evil purposes.

Schulz Event Report

 

Shot by Karen from the back of the museum's intimate theater while I talked about the original Mom's Cancer webcomic.

I think my Mom's Cancer: Anniversary Edition book talk and signing at the Charles M. Schulz Museum yesterday went very well, and folks who attended seemed to agree.

About three dozen people came, just about the size museum staff and I anticipated, with both friends and strangers in the mix. It's a weird collision of worlds having cartooning friends, old high school friends, Facebook friends, long-time social friends, neighbors and family gathered in the same room but I'm grateful to them all--maybe especially to those who didn't know me at all but came anyway! They asked good questions at the end and then bought enough books to make Leo from Copperfield's Books glad he came. 

Speaking from behind a lectern that has Charles Schulz's name on it never gets old.

Signing books for folks out in the museum's Great Hall. Copperfield's had copies of all of my books on hand, which is rare and greatly appreciated. I didn't really clock that I'd been seated directly beneath the gaze of Charles Schulz until the friend who took this photo, Mike Harkins, pointed it out to me. That' ain't bad, either.

Many thanks to Copperfield's and everyone at the Schulz Museum, who know how to run a good event and always make me feel very welcome (including sending me home with an unexpected bag of swag)! It all made for a great day.

Signing at the Schulz

Friends! I'm giving a talk and signing books at 2 p.m. next Saturday, May 16, at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, Calif., and I hope you'll come! Over the years the Schulz Museum has been like a second home to me--I've done a ton of events as a cartoonist and been a charter member since it opened--and Jeannie, Gina, Jessica, and other management and staff have always been supportive and terrific. I love the place!

I'll be talking about the Mom's Cancer: Anniversary Edition in the museum's theater at 2 o'clock, then signing books provided by heroic local independent bookseller Copperfield's in the Great Hall as long as they'll let me. The talk is free with admission, and the museum itself is worth a visit if you have any interest in comics and "Peanuts." 

This is the final public book event currently on my calendar (I do have some radio and podcast stuff coming up and will keep you posted). It'd mean a lot to see you there! 

Roadrunners Beware!

On our morning walk through the neighborhood this morning, Karen and I encountered a coyote boldly trotting down the middle of the street. It wasn't a complete surprise--neighbors have spotted it (or maybe a pair of them) before--but it was our first sighting. We suspect it was heading from an open field (good rodent hunting!) to a nearby creek.  

Interestingly, it was being loudly harassed by two crows who dive-bombed and chased it down the street. I wonder whether the coyote killed a crow; they are smart birds with long memories, and they definitely perceived it as a threat. 

250 Words on Living on the Edge

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

“Innovation occurs at the intersection of things,” wrote Eben Bayer in A Brief History of the Future. “The greatest opportunities are in chaos. There is a maximum opportunity to change everything.”

Bayer captured an idea I’ve heard called “The Fisherman’s Credo”: you’ll find the most fish where water conditions change. Fast to slow, shallow to deep, warm to cold. Life thrives along the boundary where drastically different environments collide. 

I think it’s especially true in science and the arts. Someone who can meld ideas that have never been combined, or make connections nobody has ever made, is onto something good. 

That’s one reason I’m ambivalent about young cartoonists going to school and paying good money just to learn cartooning, or journalists just to learn journalism, or business majors just to learn business. I can see the practical value. But I wonder if there’s more value in nurturing some unrelated interest or passion and then bringing that to your cartooning, journalism, or business. 

In my case, my education and former work in science is the secret sauce that flavors everything I do and helps my creative work stand out. I know other cartoonists who are physicians, nurses, attorneys, archaeologists. Nobody else could make the comics they do, and I think that’s the goal: developing a unique voice. Telling stories only you can.

Working the seam where different ideas clash doesn’t guarantee success, but it almost always yields something interesting and worthwhile. Whatever makes you distinctive and weird also makes you valuable. 

* * * 

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE! I am sharing these little "250 Words On" essays via Substack, which will email a new one to your In Box every Tuesday morning. Just follow this link and enter your email address. It's free, and I promise to never use your address for evil purposes.

Potpourri

The game show "Jeopardy" has a category called "Potpourri" that is a catch-all for random answers. This is a Potpourri Post of questions.

1. Because we live in Earthquake Country, Karen and I have an app that alerts us when an earthquake is imminent (based on the fact that sending phone messages at the speed of light is faster than the speed of seismic waves through the Earth). In fact, we were both awakened by an alert at 2:42 a.m. last night. 

My question: why is it always the middle of the night? There's no geological explanation, but the odds of me being jolted out of bed by my phone screeching at me like a trumpet of doom are greater than random chance would suggest. 

BTW, we never felt the quake, which was a 4.6 some distance away.

2. Karen and I recently took a flight and had trouble getting the "TSA Pre-Check" notation to show up on her boarding pass. After a call to a helpful (really!) TSA representative, we learned that Karen had made a typo in her Known Traveler Number. Once corrected, we had no trouble.

But she'd been using that wrong number for years! Flying all over the place, back and forth across the country, using an incorrect Known Traveler Number that, until now, always granted her access to the Pre-Check line. 

My question: how safe should I feel flying our friendly skies knowing that apparently any random combination of letters and numbers has a good chance of speeding you through airport security?

I'll take Potpourri for $600, Alex.

250 Words on Homegrown Food

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

When I was 9, my grandparents took my sister and me to visit friends of theirs in Phoenix, Arizona as part of a month-long swing through the western states. One morning they let us pick grapefruit and oranges from trees in their yard. Then they halved the grapefruit, squeezed the oranges into juice, and put them on the table for breakfast.

Although I’d eaten apples off a tree and tomatoes and strawberries from a garden, this was a thunderclap of culinary novelty! An entire meal, harvested for free, “farm to table.” Wow!

I’ve always gotten tremendous satisfaction from growing my own food. Oh, not much of it. Karen and I aren’t farmers living off the land. We have a small suburban yard with a smaller raised planting bed, but every season we fill it with basil and tomatoes to produce enough green pesto and red pasta sauce to last the rest of the year.

We’ve tried other crops: squash, beans, peppers. They’ve been hit and miss for us—usually miss. Tomatoes and basil are reliable and versatile.

You also have to account for what the neighbors are cultivating. We never need to grow zucchini or lemons because we can count on friends begging us to relieve them of their burden. It’s a nice hyper-local barter economy.

There is nothing like sitting down to dinner and saying, “This meal was in our garden this morning.” It tastes better, must be healthier, and feels like the way food should really be prepared.

* * * 

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE! I am sharing these little "250 Words On" essays via Substack, which will email a new one to your In Box every Tuesday morning. Just follow this link and enter your email address. It's free, and I promise to never use your address for evil purposes.