Graphic Medicine 2026: Baltimore!

While many of my cartooning colleagues gathered this weekend in San Diego for Comic-Con International, I was across the country in Baltimore for the 2026 Graphic Medicine Conference. Although I love Comic-Con, I think I got the better end of the deal. 

Graphic medicine is a field of medical humanities where comics intersect healthcare. It’s a big field, from public health to journalism to narratives like my book, Mom's Cancer. It brought close to 200 doctors, nurses, academics, librarians, cartoonists and others to Baltimore to share projects, research, results, stories and ideas.

I signed up for the conference too late to join any panels or workshops, and wasn’t sure I wanted to spend the time and money to fly across the country without a real reason to. Karen convinced me I didn’t need any more reason than wanting to hang out with my friends. “Life's too short. Just go.” 

It was the right call. I did hang out with my friends and also made some new ones. I saw interesting new creative work and am taking home a load of inspiration (and books). I managed to participate in many other ways than sitting on a panel, both within sessions and the perhaps-more-important time outside of them. 

I was also gratified to see that Mom's Cancer is still very relevant and useful to people working in the field, which is nice to know as we release its 20th anniversary edition. Graphic medicine people are the best. 

Photo dump ahoy. Apologies for the high percentage of selfies.

Most of the conference happened on the Johns Hopkins University's Homewood Campus, though we also ventured across town to the famous hospital. I don't know how many campuses Johns Hopkins has in Baltimore--seems like a dozen. This town is peppered with Johns Hopkinses.

A beautiful campus of Federalist-style brick buildings and grassy quads. Because it's summer the campus was pretty dead, except for knots of touring high school students. As I remark every time I travel east, brick architecture enchants me because we have very little of it in northern California. Ours all fell down in 1906.

At the Thursday night reception/social hour with keynote speaker Dr. Nathan Gray and graphic medicine champion Dr. Brian Callendar. Can't swing a dead cat without hitting a doctor.

Also at the reception, I connected with my friend Maia Kobabe, author of the most-banned book in America GenderQueer, and Maia’s collaborator on their new book Breathe, Sarah Peitzmeier. Sarah is the Ph.D. kind of doctor. There were a lot of them, too.

Dr. Nathan Gray gave the opening keynote talk on Friday. He wrote and drew a graphic novel titled The Human Remains (it's a tricky title with multiple meanings) that will be released in November but I have had the pleasure of reading (and blurbing) it already. I think it's a terrific book and Nathan was an excellent speaker about his own experience as a comics-creating physician.

Harvard medical librarian Matthew Noe, cartoonist Ellen Forney (Marbles), and Dr. Michael Green, who's been at the heart of graphic medicine since its beginning. I'd asked them if I could take their picture and they were winding up to pose when I snapped this one, which I thought had a lot more life and personality than the stiffer portrait that followed. Hope they forgive me.

A large atrium space was dedicated to vendors, including my friend, RN, and graphic medicine co-originator MK Czerwiec. Her excellent book Taking Turns is an oral history in comics form of her tenure on an AIDS ward in the 1990s, while her new book, LB & Me, is about her creative connection to cartoonist Lynda Barry. MK also won an Eisner Award for her editorship of the book "Menopause," and did me the favor of writing a new Introduction for the 20th anniversary edition of Mom's Cancer.

Friday night ended with an opera recital inspired by Dana Walrath's graphic novel about her mother's experience with Alzheimer's Disease, Aliceheimers. Dana wrote the libretto; that's her at the music stand, narrating. Music was performed by a pianist, who's obscured by the piano, and a very talented soprano. If I had their names handy I'd give 'em. The performance was held in an auditorium in the hospital that was originally an anatomy theater, with medical students in steeply banked pews looking down at human autopsies. I think the setting enhanced the haunting themes of Dana's opera.

A selfie at one of the sessions on Saturday: Dr. (MD) Alex Thomas, Dr. (Ph.D.) Meredith Li-Vollmer, cartoonist Ellen Forney, and me. You may not know their names but trust me: this is a murderer's row of prodigious graphic medicine work and talent that, in their own ways, have made big differences in a lot of lives. Meredith, who works for Seattle and King County Public Health, gave an excellent day-two keynote. 

Saturday included this panel about the new book Keywords/Keyimages in Graphic Medicine, to which I and 40-some other people contributed essays. Left to right are editors Lisa Diedrich and Briana Martino, then contributors Anna Mukamal, Paul Flippen, A. David Lewis, Maia Kobabe, MK Czerwiec, and Ebru Ustundag. They actually invited me to join the panel before it began but I declined, both because I was unprepared and knew from experience that eight people on one panel was WAY more than enough. It went very well, and I had a chance to say a bit at the end. It's a neat academic book on how graphic medicine works formally, along the lines of Scott McCloud's analysis of comics.

Fulbright scholar Maria Jose Mompeán Mejías came from Spain to study graphic medicine in the U.S. for a year, and is heading back home right about now. Photo by Brian Callendar; Dr. (Ph.D.) A. David Lewis provided the photobomb. Maria Jose said very nice things about Mom's Cancer, which was great but didn't quite register until I sat in on her talk....

....which contained a generous portion of Mom's Cancer. In this photo, I think she's looking over at me to see how I felt about what she was saying. I felt great. She's brilliant. 

I did have a rare "Marshall MacLuhan in Annie Hall" moment on Saturday. I was watching a panel when, during Q&A, one of the speakers referenced a bit from Mom's Cancer. Because it was unplanned and off the top of his head, he didn't quite remember it right. I caught moderator MK Czerwiec's eye; she read my mind and handed me the mic.

"Coincidentally," I said, "I wrote that book you're talking about..." which got a laugh in the room. The speaker had no idea I was there, of course, and he and I had a nice exchange both then and afterward.

The conference ended Saturday night with an event at Red Emma's bookstore and coffeehouse, a Baltimore institution of heroic free expression and literature. This is the bookstore portion of the building....

...and this is the restaurant/bar/coffee house portion, which was huge. Graphic medicine folks took over more than half of it. At left in this photo is a group interview of people who have new books out, available for sale and signing at the counter.

I didn't have much time for sightseeing but did get to the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum the afternoon of my first day in town. Perhaps fittingly, it is a strange little museum. It's a tiny house with tiny rooms, and you have to reserve a timed ticket because the whole thing can hold maybe a dozen visitors at once. I enjoyed it but would only recommend it for a dedicated Poe fan.

Baltimore's harbor was lovely. In particular, it hosts several historic ships, including a submarine, the last surviving ship from the Pearl Harbor attack, and the sail-powered sloop USS Constellation. I didn't have time to explore them, but it would be a top priority on my next visit.

Thanks and farewell, Graphic Medicine 2026. We'll meet again.

250 Words on Notable Quotables

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

Sometimes a particularly memorable quotation makes its way into everyday conversation. Mine come from TV and movies rather than literary classics because I’m bourgeois. Some favorites I actually use:

“Everybody remember where we parked,” said by Captain Kirk (William Shatner) in Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home. It’s both a sensible thing for a parent to say in a parking lot and for a Starfleet captain to tell his crew when disembarking from an invisible time-traveling spaceship in 1986 San Francisco. 

“Important safety tip, thanks Egon,” said by Venkman (Bill Murray) in Ghostbusters after Egon (Harold Ramis) warns that they might disintegrate themselves. Useful for both dire and trivial hazards.

“I’ll alert the media,” said by the stuffy butler Hobson (John Gielgud) to his man-child employer Arthur (Dudley Moore) in the eponymous movie, after Arthur announces his plan to take a bath. Distilled sarcasm for any occasion. 

“Think you used enough dynamite there, Butch?” –Robert Redford, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

 “A man’s got to know his limitations.” –Clint Eastwood, Magnum Force.

“Have fun storming the castle!”—Billy Crystal, The Princess Bride.

“You sit on a throne of lies!” –Will Ferrell, Elf.

 “Hang onto your wigs and keys.” –David Letterman.

“You knew the job was dangerous when you took it.” –Super Chicken.

A good quotation can delight listeners when they get the reference and mystify them when they don’t. The challenge of working one into a conversation is that it’s hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. 

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Tribble Couture

 

One of my favorite humor writers, Merrill Markoe, posts a Substack newsletter, one of the recurring features of which is "Who Wore It Best?" that compares the latest fashion designs to more prosaic inspirations. It's always fun but I had to share this one in particular just to preserve it for myself. HA!

This is a cosplayer I photographed at the Denver Pop Culture Con in 2019. I pretty much laughed myself sick when I saw it, and despite all the screen-accurate Iron Man and 12-foot-tall Galactus constructs I've seen since, I think it remains my favorite costume ever. If recent fashion trends are an indicator, this cosplayer was years ahead of her time.

250 Words on Criticism & Editing

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

One of my breakthroughs in becoming a professional writer, back when I was a cub reporter, was learning to not take criticism personally. The closer your art is to your heart, the harder it is to stand by while a colleague or editor rips into it, but sometimes that’s the job. 

My advice: don’t react right away. Sit with it a while. If it’s from someone you respect or in a position to pay you, consider the possibility that they’re right.

Here are some things NOT to say:

“I meant to do that.”

“You’re not reading it right.”

“It’s not finished yet.”

“It’s not my good stuff.”

I understand the defensive impulse to pre-emptively disparage yourself before your reader can. Beat them to the punch. But if your work’s not clear, not finished, or not your good stuff, why are you wasting their time with it? Show them nothing but your best and have the confidence to stand behind it! 

If someone does you the favor of giving feedback on your work, shut up and listen. Don’t explain, make excuses, or argue with them. If two or more people get hung up on the same point, they’re right, you’re wrong, and you have to fix it. 

When my book editor at Abrams, Charlie Kochman, has a question about my work, we talk it over but he always leaves the solution up to me. He makes me better without leaving fingerprints. I think that’s a gift that all good editors share. 

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The Kohoutek Effect

A front-page article in my hometown paper today, written by a reporter from the Sacramento Bee paraphrasing another article from Forbes, describes the cosmic wonders readers can look out for in July. 

For example, did you know that the Milky Way will be visible in July? And that the sky will be dark, and the Moon "largely invisible to the naked eye"? Also, a comet will pass by Earth on Tuesday, and in late July you'll be able to spot Saturn's rings through a telescope.

I won't embarrass the reporter by naming them, but I can only imagine them sitting in high school science class whining, "But when will I ever use any of this stuff in real life?!" Today is that day.

The article contains kernels of truth but they're garbled into incomprehensibility. 

The Milky Way is visible year-round. The kernel of truth is that the summer is a nice time to see its bright core, but there's nothing special about July. Just get far away from city lights and look up.

The July sky will be as dark as usual and the Moon will be as visible as ever. The kernel of truth is that the next full Moon will happen toward the end of the month, on July 29. That is not newsworthy.

The comet, named "10P/Tempel 2," is passing closer than usual to Earth but will still be tens of millions of miles away and invisible to the naked eye. 

Saturn's rings are visible through a telescope anytime Saturn is up, which it will be all summer and into the fall. The visibility of the rings varies as we see the planet from different angles in its orbit, and on rare occasions they seem to disappear when we view them edge-on, but they will look very impressive for several years to come. 

I think articles like this do real harm, and not just the pain they cause me when my eyes roll too far back into my head. People who read this will go out expecting to see these marvels and be disappointed. Their trust in mass media will erode (appropriately, in this case) and their interest in stargazing will plummet.

Which is too bad, because there are infinite marvels to be seen when you know where, when, and how to look, and have a trustworthy guide.

(This post's title, "The Kohoutek Effect," comes from my astronomer friend Sherwood Harrington, who remembers the widespread disappointment in the 1970s when the "Comet of the Century!" turned out to be something of a dud. I remember!)

250 Words on Adulting

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

“Adulting” is a newish word for an ancient concept: growing up, shouldering responsibility, making your way in the world. Most of us ease into it, some have it thrust upon us, others never get the hang of it. 

I notched an adulting milestone one night my car broke down as I was driving back to college. In those pre-cell-phone days, I found a house that would answer a stranger’s knock after dark and called my Dad.

“Well, you have AAA,” he said. “Take care of it.”

I don’t know what I expected him to do, but his unwillingness to charge to my rescue was a shock! Then I took care of it. I don’t actually remember how I solved the problem; probably had the car towed to a mechanic. What I never forgot is that it was my problem to solve, and I did.

Similar rites of passage might be taking out your first loan, making your first major purchase, deciding on a big move, accepting or leaving a job. As my daughters grew into women, I saw how difficult adulting could be. They always knew that their mother and I had their backs, but some of my proudest moments as a parent came when they solved a big problem that we only learned about afterward. 

That said, I have my own definition. When the toilet paper roll is down to its last square of tissue and you replace it instead of leaving it for the next person, you’re adulting. 

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250 Words on Cursive

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

I hear that schools don’t teach cursive anymore. Nobody needs to handwrite when everybody types. Dump your quill and parchment in the dustbin, Pops! 

I strongly disagree but can’t back up my opinion with a rational argument, only an aesthetic one: I like cursive. I remember learning cursive and feeling it rewire my brain, so that writing became less like typography and more like sketching. Letters swooped and looped and interconnected; writing in cursive changed the way I conceived and transmitted ideas. The medium shaped the message.

I also appreciate how handwriting changes over time. Anyone who’s read the Constitution knows that the so-called “long S” used to look like a tall “f” (“Congrefs”), but you don’t need to go back centuries to see orthographic evolution. When I learned cursive, capital “G” was a loopy-cornered block, “Q” was a big number “2,” and “S” looked like a treble clef. When my daughters learned it a few decades later, they were all streamlined to more sensible modern forms.

Cursive has life and personality. One glance at my mother’s instantly recognizable handwriting transports me decades into the past. A person’s signature represents commitment and gravitas. It becomes their avatar, which speaks for them when they can’t speak for themselves.*

I confess I’m judgmental about people who can’t write cursive. If you’re an adult who still block-prints like a seven-year-old I will think less of you, and I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. We failed you, even if I can’t quite explain how.  

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* To discourage forgery, I actually have two signatures—one I use to sign books and another I use for real life—and it’s like they’re two different people. Book-Brian is more fun and outgoing than Real-Life-Brian. I can see it in their handwriting.

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Deep Quake Thoughts

SCIENCE! We got a couple of blaring earthquake alerts on our phones at 8:10 this morning, braced for impact, and felt nothing. It was a 5.6 temblor about an hour north of us, and although news reports said it did some damage up there, we felt nothing. 

However, 20 minutes later, Karen noticed that the quake had been detected at our locale after all--not by our puny human senses, but by the grandfather clock by our front door, which stopped at exactly 8:10 a.m. Its pendulum happens to swing north and south, and I imagine a seismic wave rolled down from the north and hit it out of phase at just the right moment to halt it. 

We've seen evidence of earthquake waves in our house before, including a pretty big quake that left books on a shelf arranged in a sine wave pattern. I witnessed them myself during the 1989 Loma Prieta quake, when I saw cars bobbing up and down on a blacktop parking lot like boats on an ocean. 

Everything is waves, man. Light's a wave, gravity's a wave, atoms are waves, Earth is a wave, I'm a wave, you're a wave. I didn't expect to find myself thinking such deep thoughts when I got up this morning. 

250 Words on Public Speaking

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

Surveys say people dread public speaking more than death. I do a fair amount of it, occasionally to large groups or via mass media, and don't fear it. In fact, despite being an introvert, I enjoy it! Some perspective that might help:

Unless you’re a comedian fending off hecklers, the audience is on your side. They’re spending their time, and maybe money, because they want to hear what you have to say. You are the expert.

If something does go wrong, acknowledge it and own it. If you can, be graceful and funny about it. "Oops, that was not supposed to happen!" Surviving a disaster will really put the audience on your side.

"Fake it until you make it" is real. If you feel you don't have the courage to face an audience, then pretend you're someone who does. Adopt a persona. Be an actor playing the role of a confident speaker. With experience, you and the role will become one.

While I don't feel fear, I do still feel nerves—a little jitter in the gut—especially if the event is important or the audience is large. I interpret that as excitement and energy that I can take with me on stage and direct back toward the audience.

All that said, after nearly every event I lie in bed thinking, "Oooh, I wish I'd said that differently." That's part of the job. I promise: the audience never noticed or has already forgotten it. Just make different mistakes next time.

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250 Words on A.I. Art

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

A meme I like* compares who write with A.I. to someone who wants to run a marathon but realizes that training takes too much time and effort, so they catch an Uber to the finish line then demand to be called a runner.

A.I. (which isn’t really artificial intelligence at all, but never mind) is here and it has a role. If you need to scrutinize a billion stars to find those that have planets, or analyze medical imaging to detect early-stage cancer, A.I. is a priceless tool. In education and the arts, I’m afraid it’s a crutch that erodes both mind and spirit.

Many A.I. proponents and users confuse creativity and learning for the destination when they're almost entirely about the journey. When you view Monet's "Water Lilies," you're not looking at one painting but at the decades of technique Monet mastered and all the decisions he made to create it. Likewise, the point of writing a paper about zebras is only partly to learn about zebras; it’s mostly about learning how to do research, organize your thoughts, and communicate your conclusions to others. 

Art is a process. People consume art to experience the thoughts and feelings of other people. I like the meme because the purpose of running a marathon is never to travel 26.2 miles—there are many easier, faster ways to do that. It's to dedicate the time and effort to become the sort of person who can run 26.2 miles. That's what we celebrate.

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I also like this one:

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What Disaster Leaves Behind

Here's a podcast I did with my friend Jennifer Gray Thompson about the firestorms of 2017, which destroyed my home among many others and which I wrote about in my graphic novel "A Fire Story." 

Jennifer heads a great organization called After The Fire USA, which was formed as a direct result of our fires. The nonprofit goes to communities after they suffer large-scale disasters like ours to share what we did right, what we did wrong, and what we've learned in the meantime to help them toward recovery. It also lobbies for legislation to help disaster survivors, and is in general a good resource for anyone who's been through something like we experienced.

Many thanks to Jennifer for having me on her podcast, and to her and After the Fire USA for the important work they continue to do! 

Maybe the Kids Aren't Alright

Old people love to complain about young people, and I always defend them. The kids I encounter are almost always smart, caring, involved, and everything you’d want future citizens and stewards of the planet to be. I have no qualms about turning the world over to them.

Well, most of them. I collected two data points on a train ride Karen and I took today that tempered my optimism.

Data Point One: The train was crowded and two 13-year-old boys stood in the aisle beside us. Their conversation went like this:

“This train is moving so slow.”

“I could run faster than this.”

(Editor’s note: the train was going about 50 mph.)

“Could not!”

“Humans can run as fast as a cheetah.”

“No they can’t!”

“Humans can run 45 miles per hour. Cheetahs run 75.”

“Forty-five isn’t as fast as 75!”

“It’s almost as fast.”

"Not even close!"

“I think I could catch a cheetah.”

Several minutes later, they moved to get off at the next stop. I caught their eyes and said, “Hey guys. Twenty-eight miles per hour.”

“Huh?”

“Fastest human on Earth, Usain Bolt. Twenty-eight miles per hour.”

One slugged the other in the arm and said, “See! I told you!”

Data Point Two: On the return train trip, a young man maybe 17 sat across the aisle from Karen and me, his phone on speaker and turned up for everyone to hear. He and a buddy were making plans to get super wasted smoking pot and then go ocean kayaking, which even he seemed to realize sounded like a bad idea. 

Then the kid on the phone said, “You ever bang any chicks?”

“Not for a while. But I've banged chicks.”

“It’s hella rad.”

“Yeah,” our trainmate agreed. “It’s hella rad.”

At that point, the conductor came by and told him to shut it down, which seemed to make some fellow travelers happy. Not me. I wanted to find out where this conversation was going. Instead, I nudged Karen with my elbow and in my most sultry, seductive voice whispered into her ear:

“Hella rad.” 

250 Words on Star Pitching

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

In the 1980s and ‘90s, the Star Trek spin-offs were unique in that they would consider story ideas from anyone. Other TV shows required writers to have an agent or be on-staff, but the Trek series—The Next Generation (TNG), Deep Space Nine, and Voyager—let outside writers submit scripts.

I discovered that policy in the sixth year of TNG’s seven-year run, and quickly sent off two screenplays. I heard back: they couldn’t use them, but they liked my ideas enough to invite me to pitch others. Over the next several years, I pitched approximately 40 stories to writer/producers of all three shows. I never sold one but learned much about storytelling.

First: stories are all about characters. You might expect a science-fiction series to want weird aliens, space-time anomalies, starship battles, etc., but producers had little interest in those. However, if I pitched “Our hero faces Dilemma A, battles Complication B, and in the end resolves Conflict C,” I had their full attention. Audiences care about characters; the fantastical trappings are just how we get to know them.  

Second: ideas are common. Yours aren’t as original or outlandish as you think. I’d barely begun my first-ever pitch when the producer said, “I need to stop you. We’re shooting that episode this week.” When it aired, it was very much like the story I never got the chance to tell him.* Raw ideas are less important than how they’re executed. 

Third: nothing is a failure if you learn from it.
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*I saw it months later. If he hadn’t stopped me, I’d have thought they’d plagiarized it from me. 

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Chemophobia

It's 7 a.m. on a Sunday and I've already seen something that drew a deep sigh and eye roll from me.

This cartoon by Edith Pritchett in the Washington Post asks "How Many Chemicals Are In Your Food?" on a scale from "A Little" to "A Lot." I wouldn't normally pick on a fellow cartoonist, but one venturing into science shouldn't be so smug about being wrong.

ALL food is chemicals. I'm hard pressed to think of anything edible that isn't a chemical. An organically grown apple picked fresh off a tree contains the chemicals water, fructose, and sucrose. 

"Yeah, but you know what she means!" I do. But this cartoon reminds me of the stupid advice that you should never eat anything you can't pronounce, followed by a long list of scary-sounding chemicals. That organic apple has quercetin, catechin, epicatechin, and chlorogenic acid--natural antioxidants that are all good for you. 

To answer the cartoon's question: Your food is pretty much 100% chemicals. And so are you.  

The Mandalorian and Grogu and Storytelling

Karen and I saw "The Mandalorian and Grogu" a couple of days ago. I don't usually review movies, but this one inspired me to share some thoughts on storytelling.

We agreed that the movie was fine. Glad we saw it. A friend told me ahead of time that it felt like two TV episodes stitched together, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's literally what it is: Mando and Grogu go on one adventure for the first hour of the film, then go on a second adventure for the second hour. It has aliens and spaceships and explosions, so if you like that stuff you'll have a good time.

The question that occurred to me walking out of the theater was, "What was it about?"

The best stories have text and subtext. There's a plot, and then there's a deeper story that's often the reason we care about the plot. 

For example, "The Wizard of Oz" is about a kid on the verge of adulthood who yearns to leave her dull ordinary life and, with the help of colorful and sometimes magical companions, overcomes obstacles to earn her place in the larger world. That's also what the first "Star Wars" movie and many Disney Princess movies (Cinderella, Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Mulan, Moana) are about. Different texts; similar subtexts.

I have no idea what "The Mandalorian and Grogu" is about. Nothing, as far as I could tell. Mando and Grogu make a fun team and are devoted to each other, but we already knew that. Grogu is adorable but we already knew that, too. Neither character grows or changes, we don't learn anything new about them. They are assigned a mission--which they have no personal stakes in--then they complete the mission, and then the movie's over. 

Not every movie has to have deep meaning. I can appreciate a "summer popcorn flick" and, as far as it goes, "Mandalorian and Grogu" is a fine enough one. But if you ever walk out of a movie wondering why it felt flat or empty in a way you can't quite put your finger on, ask yourself that question: "What was it about?" If nothing comes to mind, you have your answer.

Squirrel Ahoy

Squirrel! 

For years, I've said that I'd know our neighborhood had recovered from our 2017 firestorm when I finally saw a squirrel in my yard. Squirrels require infrastructure: decent-size trees, stuff to eat, places to hide from predators. Barren land doesn't offer them much, but a suburban maze of fences and mature foliage is a squirrel paradise.

Today, 3,158 days after the fire, we saw a squirrel run along our backyard fence. So I guess we're all good now. Right?

(Photo is not of the squirrel we saw--it scampered away too fast--but it looked just like it.) 

250 Words on Practical Education

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

I took the usual mix of science, math, art, English, and history classes in school, some of them excellent. But as I look back, it may have been two electives that made the largest lasting difference in my life.

I studied electronics in seventh grade. The class covered everything from wiring a doorbell to acid-etching our own copper circuit boards. I learned how electricity works, and to respect but not fear it. 

As a result, I've always been adept at light electrical work: changing a switch or outlet, rewiring a lamp, soldering a splice, popping a new fuse into an appliance. I don’t mess with 220 volts, but I have a practical grasp of electricity that has served me well. 

I also took typing in summer school following my sophomore year of high school. I didn’t want to dedicate an entire quarter to it, but thought I’d see what I could learn in six weeks. I'll always remember typing a slow cadence in time to Elton John’s “Benny and the Jets.”

That class got me through a lot of papers in college and may have landed me my first job afterward. I suspect one reason I was hired to write for a newspaper was that I was a fast and accurate typist. Learning touch-typing changed my life.

As academically inclined as I was, I’ve always supported education in the trades and basic life skills. A diploma should certify that you have the tools to launch in whatever direction you choose. 

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250 Words on Outliving Mom

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

As of today, I have lived longer than my mother did. From now on, I will be older than she ever was.

The math checks out, but emotionally it’s impossible. Mom was a responsible grown-up adult! A bedrock wellspring of wisdom and wit! Meanwhile, I’m still pretending I know what I’m doing and making it up as I go.

Psychologists have studied the milestone. In lineages with genetic traits—I know a family in which nearly every male had a heart attack around age 60—surpassing a parent’s age can feel like cheating death or living on borrowed time. It can change your approach to risk-taking and life itself. 

My family doesn’t fit that sort of pattern, so my reaction's different. I feel more like an ancient mariner who has sailed off the edge of the map. Until today, Mom’s life always provided a subconscious polestar. Even when our courses diverged, I always knew where hers was, and measured my distance and direction against it. Now I navigate uncharted waters. “Here there be dragons!”

I wish Mom had had more time. She missed much in the past couple of decades, and now that I’m the age she was when she died, I know she wasn’t any more ready to go than I am. That makes the milestone a melancholy one.

But she prepared me well. It’s my turn to set course and sail, still making it up as I go. Second star to the right and straight on ‘til morning. 

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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250 Words on Being Too Good to Ignore

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

My two favorite books about writing and creativity are On Writing by Stephen King and Born Standing Up by Steve Martin. In particular, Martin had some advice that hit hard and stuck with me: “Be so good they can’t ignore you.”

Yes.

When I was young I thought I really wanted to draw superhero comics (a career that holds no appeal to me today). I kept looking at artists I considered the worst working for DC and Marvel and thinking, “I’m better than them, they should hire me instead!” 

That attitude is common among aspiring creators, but in retrospect its ignorance and arrogance is embarrassing. First, I can see now that I really wasn’t better than those artists. Second, those artists had 30-year track records producing professional-grade work on deadline, while I had none. Third, I was an idiot to set my sights so low.

Don’t aim to be better than the worst. Aim to be better than the best. 

But that’s so daunting! You could never be as good as Jack Kirby or Neal Adams or Charles Schulz (or Stephen King or Steve Martin)! Impossible!

But you can work hard and do your best and fall short because you’re right, you’ll never be better than the best. But maybe you’ve made yourself better than 90 percent of your competition instead of 1 percent of it. Maybe now you’re so good they can’t ignore you, and even if they can’t hire you today, I guarantee they will remember you later. 

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Speaking at Stanford Med School

Bryant Lin and I before the class started.

I had a terrific time at Stanford University yesterday, talking about Mom's Cancer with a class of mostly medical students at the invitation of Dr. Bryant Lin. 

The class is a speakers series on the broad topic of narrative medicine. Bryant is in the unique position of being both a narrative medicine practitioner--his book Sunshine: An Exploration of Living When You Are Dying, will be published by Penguin Random House later this year--and, as that title hints, a husband and father with Stage Four lung cancer. Bryant is incorporating his diagnosis and treatment into his medical school curriculum. He is his own case study. That's a crazy kind of brave that only a great teacher would attempt.

It was a small class, about 14 students. I love lecturing to medical students because they're all smart, confident, and eager to perform well (having gotten straight A's most of their lives), so they play along with silly workshop exercises that, by the end of the class, have them drawing their own four-panel graphic medicine comic. A few of them really lit up, and I'm often surprised by how thoughtful and touching some of their work is considering that an hour earlier they'd never tried to make a comic. 

I've been a guest lecturer for this class a few years in a row. As I was leaving, Bryant said he was sorry he'd forgotten to bring his copy of The Last Mechanical Monster for me to sign. I replied, "I'll be back next year--and so will you." "Thanks," he said quietly. "That's the plan."

My opening slide, showing the sketch that inspired me to tell our family's story in the form of a comic and later because a page in Mom's Cancer. Photo by the class T.A., Cyril Sebastian.