Lessons that last, and that matter

I covered a school board meeting this past week at the more rural of our two major districts. They're facing some serious budget cuts, having lost about $750,000 from state and federal support and the local economy not being at a level where they can simply pass the costs on to local taxpayers.

It's all well and good to play the "small government" card, but I don't think these folks who talk about local decision making understand that we don't all live in suburban communities where we can sigh and decide against funding the lighted tennis courts in order to preserve academic programs, and then simply turn around and hold a fundraiser to light the tennis courts anyway.

People living on $14,000 a year can't take another hit on their property taxes, and I wish the legislators at both state and federal level would look back to what education was like in poor, rural places like Appalachia and the Deep South before the federal government decided it had to step in and even up the scales.

The district really does care about its kids. One of its successes has been an ID card program, because, while it's pretty obvious when you have a stranger in a district with only 1,000 students, you still need to have a checkout system at the library anyway, and by having the kids also swipe their ID cards at the cafeteria instead of paying cash, there's no way for onlookers to know who is paying for lunch and who is receiving a free-or-reduced-rate meal. About half the kids qualify for the latter, but more of them will eat it if they don't have to be stigmatized in front of their peers.

Speaking of checking out books, there is one certified librarian in the district, which has four tiny elementary schools scattered around its 500 square miles. She's at the high school; the elementary school libraries are staffed with aides. And they're going to have to cut her back to half-time.

But it was when they began to talk about the cuts in the music program that the pain really showed. The district just lost an unforgettable music teacher to cancer this past summer, a woman who had re-established their instrumental music program after several years of no program at all. They will not touch that program, the board president promised, because they know how hard it was for her to get it up and running again.

However, general music instruction for kindergarten through fourth grade will now be conducted by building principals or other staff members, because they can't afford a real elementary music teacher anymore. Nobody is happy about it, but there doesn't seem to be a solution. You do what you have to in hard times, and these are hard times.

It made me think of the Langley Schools Music Project, which was an album released about seven years ago. Someone came across an odd album at a secondhand store, a recording of a school concert from a rural school in British Columbia in the mid-70s. A music teacher had applied theory to a program in which he had little kids sing pop songs, and the album was simply a keepsake for the community, not an artistic statement. However, after it was discovered in the secondhand LP bin, it was reissued as a CD and became a quiet cult phenomenon, particularly in Canada, where one of the documentary shows -- probably "The Fifth Estate" -- reunited the children and let them talk about how much this music class had meant to them, and continued to mean to them in their adult lives.

It's a powerful album and a powerful statement about the impact of inspired, well-grounded teaching.

I put it on at odd times during the day, tuning it in and out, sometimes wincing as the singers hit a strange note, then shaking my head in puzzled wonder when the music suddenly, and against all odds, transcends the kitsch limitations that seem designed to keep it earthbound and soars off into the realm of true art. It flies -- crooked as a butterfly's flight, but it still flies. I wish every school taught music like this. I wish every piece of music recorded in a school gymnasium were this haunting... and then I suspect that, if I listened to them right, maybe they would be." -- Neil Gaiman, quoted on the Wikipedia article.

I wanted to find a full clip but could only find this snippet of the song that became the most commented on album cut, in which a nine-year-old sings what remains my favorite cover of the much-covered Eagles' song, Desperado. The cover inspired a scene in the movie "In America" in which a somewhat older girl sings the song, but it's impossible to improve on the spontaneity of this heart-breaking rendition.

There are other similar cuts on this web site, and you can find the album if you'd like to add something amazing to your collection.

I don't know where you find such amazing educators in a nation that would rather spend its money on other things.

"Now I ain't so sure I wanna get educated"

Angry truth

So Barack Obama made a great speech. I've linked it here from his campaign site, though I actually read it off the CNN site, because I'm concerned that CNN might take it down at some point. But that link also has the video of its delivery, which you can play while you do some dishes or something else, if you don't want to sit and read the whole thing.

But the few people visiting this site won't make much difference, and what troubles me is that the various commentators and bloviators who are talking about this speech, and replaying the clips of Rev. Wright, do not appear to have read, or heard, the entire thing. Nor do they seem interested in doing so. And we will go off towards November with no new context added to the noise in the echo chamber, just more noise, more division, more falsehoods, distortions and unintended misunderstandings.

My grandfather used to chuckle when we'd ask for advice, once we were adults and he could be this frank. He'd say that people ask advice and then go do whatever the hell they wanted to do in the first place, that they weren't really asking for advice so much as they were looking for backup.

And I think the people who want to believe in Obama will find backup for their support of him in snippets of his speech, and those who want to disbelieve in him will find reinforcement for that course as well, in snippets of his speech. And, just as few people ask your opinion because they might change direction based on what you tell them, damn few people now are going to sit down, absorb this speech and then decide what they really think about it all and maybe change their minds.

Well, it didn't change my mind, but it helped me clarify some things that have been buzzing around my brain, looking to take form. Here's what it made me think of:

It made me think of the African-American cartoonist Ollie Harrington, and how angry his cartoons were, and how deeply embraced they were in the private world of the readers of the black press, a half century ago. While cartoonists in the mainstream press were creating metaphorical cartoons of cute little black kids being shut out of schools, he drew the one that illustrates this post, and it is funny, but only if you accept a very angry, bitter view of what was going on.

It is a legacy that Dick Gregory and Richard Pryor built on in their humor, and that Jim Brown and Muhammed Ali embraced in their sports careers. It is the legacy of anger that makes "A Raisin in the Sun" matter. It is a legacy in which the stories of the Bible that resonate are those of the Israelites fleeing Egypt while their God rains down plagues on their oppressors, and in which a blinded and chained Samson, his strength and nobility and dignity stripped from him, becomes the subject of a blues song that says "If I had my way in this godamighty world, I would tear this building down!"

It is not the legacy in which America offers opportunity only for those who are willing to adopt the worldview of the majority, the legacy in which a woman can succeed if she puts on a blue suit jacket and skirt, dons a string tie and acts and reacts like a man, and in which a minority can succeed as long as he keeps his cultural identity confined to a few delicious recipes at the company pot luck and a flashy tie on Cinco de Mayo. In that legacy, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn's daughter brings home Sidney Poitier, a wealthy, successful, clean-cut doctor with impeccable diction.

And in that legacy -- let us be clear as Obama was clear -- there is no room for white people who have some legitimate resentments themselves, and who aren't eager to have different peoples of different cultures come into their world. It is a Wonder Bread world in which everyone smiles and gets along wonderfully, and anyone, from any cultural community, who voices anger, fear or resentment is to be shunned, condemned and mocked for their backward ignorance.

When I was first in college, I used to hang around with the black students, because they celebrated their blue collar heritage, while the majority of white students adopted a preppy tone even if they hadn't grown up that way. The black enclave was where I could find jokes and laughter and where nobody was concerned about "maintaining their cool" -- a clown was as well appreciated as a prince, each for their own contribution to the moment.

But it was the late 60s, and as the times shifted and resentment and separatism grew in the black community, I wasn't really able to hang out with the black students as a group. Too many of them had an anger in them that made it not-okay for me to be there. I regretted it, I resented it, I accepted it. Those who were my friends continued to be my friends, but we ran into each other in other contexts and not that one. Fair enough.

Maybe that experience makes me more comfortable with this whole issue of Jeremiah Wright's preaching, and of Barack Obama's explanation. I know there's anger out there. I wish there weren't.

But it won't go away simply by our declaring that it ought not to exist. And it certainly won't go away by our shunning and condemning angry people.

One of the stops on my morning on-line constitutional these days is "The Daily Voice," a relatively new site that gathers news and commentary for an African-American readership. I added it in anticipation of the current campaign and it's been quite thought-provoking. This morning, they added an excerpt from a book called " The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good About The Good News?" by Rev. Peter Gomes, a professor of Christian Morals at Harvard University.

Gomes writes:

If the focus is nearly always on the man for others who in the short term loses but who one of these days will return in triumph to win, then it is no wonder that so much of the Christian faith is either obsessed by the past or seduced by the prospects of a glorious future. In the meantime, things continue in their bad old way, and we live as realists in a world in which reality is nearly always the worst-case scenario.

The last thing the faithful wish for is to be disturbed. Thus it is easy to favor the Bible over the gospel, because the gospel can somehow be seen as those nice, even compelling, stories about Jesus that have next to nothing to do with us "until he comes."

But that's only an excerpt of an excerpt. Which brings us full circle.

"Many fear that we will descend into a situation in which it is open season on people with no pants on and that, as a result, streaking will be forced underground, where it can't be policed. Alternatively, streakers may feel that they have no option but to start padding up for their own protection. And call me old-fashioned, but that's going to defeat the point somewhat."

-- Giles Smith, the Times on Line

Read the entire article here

This is apparently not the first time Andrew Symonds has found himself in the middle of a row, and the hapless streaker could have chosen a better moment for his run. As the commentator notes, Symonds also works out with a professional rugby team and, as he doesn't note, has a reputation for being, well, kind of a jock.

If you've had a view of cricket as a genteel game played by some la-di-da chaps in white outfits, this moment seems terribly out of place, but there seems to be a sort of no-holds-barred attitude towards sport among athletes whose nations abut the Indian Ocean. As at least one of my sons saw at an international field hockey tournament, it's possible to play that sport in much the same spirit as rugby, too (I think the team noted there was from Kenya), while I knew a tennis player from the Punjab in college who -- even separated from his opponent by a net -- managed to turn his chosen sport into a theater for physical intimidation.

Anyway, nobody on either team seems terribly surprised by what befalls this unlucky prat, while I thought the utter cluelessness of the announcers and the write-up by the columnist made it all worth sharing.

Clinton settles on runningmate

"He's the kind of guy I'm comfortable with,"
candidate declares.

The death of civil disagreement

I don't have much to say about William F. Buckley, Jr., except that his death happens to come at a moment when I am truly dreading the next few months. The ability of people to disagree in an intelligent and productive manner seems to have disappeared, and I don't think it's entirely because of the empowerment that anonymous true believers with low reasoning powers and high talents for invective find on the Internet.

There has also sprung up a culture of abuse that is in stark contrast to the very civil manner in which Buckley would ponder, examine and occasionally eviscerate his guests. I was in the outer office of an elementary school principal one day and she had three fifth-grade girls in there, door open, resolving some sort of conflict. Their tone of voice, verbal inflection and accompanying hand gestures made it clear that they had learned to express conflict from watching Jerry Springer, and I don't think this is limited to 10-year-olds. We've got plenty of adults now who have learned to argue from the shout-fests in which stunning a person with threats and invective is considered victory.

That development then combines with the aforementioned anonymity to create something really toxic. You have only to check the comments on any on-line story about Clinton and Obama to see exactly what I mean -- it's not obscene, racist or sexist. It's just vulgar and common and degrading and utterly unproductive. Given the tone of the intra-party process, God knows what it will become when the campaign shifts to Republican vs. Democrat.

Anyway, this appreciation of Buckley from the NYTimes is not to be missed. And he already is.

A Day at the Races

I went up to Oquossoc today to cover the dog sled races. Oquossoc is a little town just the other side of Rangeley, and they were bringing back dog sled races for the first time in more than a decade. It was very much a grassroots project, as most things are hereabouts, and somehow they only ended up with six registrations, of which four dropped out for various reasons. Disappointing, but they had a good crowd and it was a no-pressure way to test the system. There will be more teams entered next year.

These dogs were from Lincoln, Maine, and obviously took a lot of interest in checking things out. We'll get back to that issue a little later.

If you've ever wondered how they get the dogs out of those little cages on the trucks, this is one method. Anthony, the more experienced of the two drivers, lifted each of his dogs out. Lee, who has only been racing a year, let his gang leap out. Note that these aren't terribly big dogs. I don't know that anyone races the huge Malemutes, but there were some near-sneers about purebred Siberians among the aficianados. "They photograph really well," one fellow said. Real sled dogs, as in the Jack London book, are whatever you find, crossed with whatever else you find to produce what you need.

When we had races in the Star Lake area in the early 1960s, there was a fellow running pointers, and that's become fairly common -- they're long-legged, muscular dogs who love to run. The race marshall told me that there was a guy running ridgebacks a few years back, and he was quite impressed with their pulling power, but of course they can't take the cold and are only good for sprints. But he said there was also a guy with a team of Irish setters who had a wonderful time and apparently did stand up pretty well to the elements. You wouldn't use them for the Iditarod, but there may be some short-haired dogs at Fort Kent next week in the 250-mile race there.
As you can see, these are hardly the half-wild dogs of the Jack London stories. The two kids are strangers to them, just a brother and sister who had come up for the races and came over to play with them before they got into harness. This is Anthony's team, the more experienced gang.
And they're experienced with kids, too. This is Anthony's daughter, Delia, helping to hand out the harnesses. Anthony would ask her to get the red harness for such-and-such a dog and she'd pull it out of the pile. She had the right color but wrong harness a few times, but considering I think she was about three, she's a pretty capable partner. Anthony told me he was an avid racer some years ago, but since he's had the kids, he has cut back on the time commitment. Now he runs a dog sled tourist business in town, giving people rides or letting them see how the dogs work, and, as he says, paying for his habit. Obviously, Delia has picked up Daddy's matter-of-fact affection for dogs.
Not a bad crowd, as Lee, the fellow from Lincoln, takes off with his team on the 40-mile course. The teams started two minutes apart, but it didn't take long for Anthony to add some distance.

The course went through the woods and then came out on Cupsuptic Lake. This is Anthony's team in the lead. The dogs were aware of us, as they came up on the small crowd that had jumped into cars and gone up to the lake to intercept the teams, but they kept charging along with a little encouragement from him to stay cool.

Lee's rookie team, however, was much more distracted by finding people out on the trail. You can see the ears going up and the lead dogs slowing down to have a look, despite Lee trying to keep them on task.
Too late. The dogs have totally lost focus now, and it took him some effort to get them back into the race. On the way from the starting point to the lake, I had come across Lee's team at a road crossing and he was having trouble getting them to take the turn up into the woods.

All that curiosity that was so cute in the first picture I posted was killing him in the race -- he needs to find, or develop, a pair of lead dogs who know what's going on and will keep their heads in the game.

Anthony's team finished the 40 miles in 3 hr. 20 min. 1 sec., Lee's team didn't come in until 4 hr. 44 min 13 sec. This would not have been as noticeable if there'd been 20 teams, but it certainly showed this day. However, everyone had a good time and Lee and his dogs will learn, and will be back.
I went back to town and stepped over to Koob's Garage, where I had seen this cartoon original on the wall a few months ago, but Mike Koob wasn't around and I still don't have the explanation. If you click on it, I think you can read the caption, which says "We did everything modern science could do, but there are some things we just haven't learned."

More to the point, you can read the signature "Booth" in the corner, and the fact that this appeared in the New Yorker in 1971. There is a story here and I let you know when I find out what it is. Rangeley is a popular place -- William Wegman, the weimeraner photographer, has been coming here since he was a young lad and has a place up here -- but what George Booth was doing in town I don't know.
On the way home, I stopped at Small's Falls, which I had photographed last fall. Getting there was a little more challenging this time, mostly climbing over a nine-foot snowbank at the road's edge. The falls are only a quarter of a mile or so from the road, and a few people had been there, so I was able to walk in their footprints, but that didn't make it an easy walk -- just a possible one. And so I got a cover shot for the next issue of the Rangeley Highlander, where the dog sled race story will appear, too.

Free comics from 1950

One of our papers, The Livermore Falls Advertiser, has a weekly feature called "This Week" in which the news from a random year is highlighted. We don't do a 25-50-75-100 years ago style feature because the archives are too trashed.

This year, the young reporter chose 1950 and wrote her piece, and then, as I do each week, I went through looking for an illustration. Unfortunately, none of these fell in the target week, but I found them interesting enough to photograph anyway. "Squire Edgegate" was in the paper fairly frequently, one of three or four regular strips that were made available for free. I'm not sure the business model, but I was tickled by the complaint about gas prices. (click on any of these for larger, more readable versions)

Then I flipped a few more pages and saw a familiar face:

As near as I can tell, the Savings Bonds people had tapped into the nostalgia of vets and probably some loyalty to War Bonds by getting cartoonists to reprise their wartime characters to persuade the vets to invest their benefit payments in bonds.

"Male Call" had ended four years previously, so the idea of a now-civilian running into Lace would be pretty appealing, particularly at a moment when he's got a wad of cash in hand. And, to tell the truth, the idea of Lace promoting bonds wasn't so far-fetched -- she always had a bit of Good Girl lurking around the perimeter. Wish the reproduction had been better, but it's hard to make Lace look bad.

The series ran for a few issues and also included this single panel:

According to lambiek.net, Nick Penn had a couple of strips, including "Helen Highwater," which was a pretty girl strip, and the Navy strip "Stalemate." I suspect that the idea that, with the war over, Stalemate had married Helen and had her knitting booties was pretty funny stuff for those who knew both strips.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the snow continues to slide off the roof. This chunk has a good deal of ice under it, so kind of came down in one piece. I expect at some point it's going to crash onto the path and I'm going to have some serious excavation to do. I just want it to hold on until the weekend so I don't have to confront it on the way to work at 6 a.m.

Anyway, things could be worse. Nobody was living in here -- the actual house is on the other side of the garage and they were mostly using this as storage. They had plans to fix it up, but I suspect those plans have changed. I don't know if the roof was flat before or not, but it sure as hell is now.

Your choice -- Right click and print out!
In response to public demand

After the ice storm

Having mentioned how the dogs don't mind stomping out their yard after each storm, an extreme example of how kibble is more important than comfort.

Destry stays in the already-broken area, but Ziwa is perfectly willing to deal with a crust that is almost -- but not quite -- thick enough to support an 80-pound dog, as long as there is more kibble out there to be eaten.

This kind of entertainment makes it worth coming home for lunch, and the dogs enjoy a little midday snack, too.

A courageous stand against racism

WHITE HOUSE (AP) -- President Bush says recent displays of nooses are disturbing, and show that some Americans are losing sight of suffering that African Americans have endured throughout history.

Marking African American history month at the White House, Bush says the era of lynching is "a shameful chapter in American history." He says displaying a noose "is not a harmless prank," and that the word "lynching" shouldn't be mentioned in jest.

Bush says the noose is a symbol of "gross injustice," and that Americans should agree that displaying a noose is "deeply offensive."

Wow. What a breakthrough!

Remember last spring?

This picture was taken last April, when I gave up trying to use this door, after it kept getting swamped by falling snow from the mudroom roof.

Well, it's only February 9

This year, I didn't even try to use this door. As you can see, I have a path shoveled out to the backdoor. As you may also be able to see, we're not anywhere near through with winter, and the snow is already so far piled up that now when the snow falls off the roof, it falls onto that huge pile and then slides down into the path.

The other day, I had to shovel the path in the morning before I went to work. It was about 5:30 and still dark out, so I put on the mudroom light so it would throw a little light out there. But it didn't, because the snow is now so high that it blocks the windows.

We've got at least another month of snow, maybe two.

I'll keep you posted.

Meanwhile ...

The dogs are coping pretty well. They're not getting a lot of exercise because the paths are too often impassible, but they're hounds and hibernation is just fine with them. And they enjoy clearing out their own yard in the back. What I do is toss a cup of kibble out there and they paw through the snow to find it. In the process, they trample the yard down enough that they have a nice spot for themselves later. Each day, I toss the kibble into the adjoining virgin snow and the area gets larger, until they've got a pretty decent size place trampled out.

Then, of course, it snows again, but they don't mind having to start over.

Quick learner

Six weeks ago, the young man driving this sled had never seen snow. He's the son of the editor I hired for our weekly paper in Livermore Falls and had lived in Florida and Texas before arriving in Maine in the middle of a nasty blizzard. He was so excited by his first sight of snow that he jumped in the middle of a bunch of it and discovered ice ... and a cracked ankle that put him in the wrong kind of boot for his first few weeks here.

But he's adapted, as you see. He and his mother went to the dog sled races today, two days before his 13th birthday, and someone there offered him a rig and a dog so he could enter the junior one-dog sprint. He finished third, which ain't bad for someone who's just getting used to the idea of a real winter.


Here he is with some other dogs, one of whom is delighted to see him and one of whom has other concerns. I'm told his grandfather gave him some Jack London books, so he'll be studying up on all this sled dog business. But he seems to have grasped the essentials.



As for me, I was up in Rangeley covering a pond hockey tournament. They started the tourney last year and had 10 teams; this year, they got 20 signed up from around New England and Canada. Pond hockey is becoming a big thing, probably because it's a lot of fun and because there was a hockey surge a few years ago with high schools starting up teams, but those guys are all getting into their thirties now and starting to enjoy the idea of a game where you don't get smashed into the boards quite so often.

Next weekend? Next weekend I'll be heading back into the hills to cover a dogsled race in Oquossoc. Not sure what Andrew will be up to. Something involving snow, I imagine.

(Andrew's mother took the top two pictures, I took the last)

Learning from the best

Jeff Danziger explains his work and cartooning in general. I was running late and never should have clicked on this -- it's brilliant stuff. Like his cartoons, he gets to the point, makes sense and entertains. The guy is one of two or three of the best in the business, and when I was doing a weekly educational feature on cartooning I used to have to discipline myself from turning it into the Jeff Danziger Show and simply running one of his cartoons each time.

Found an on-line source for his cartoon strip, the Teeds, too, but I really, really have to get to the office ... Incidentally, he is listed as being with the Rutland Herald but it's something of a flag of convenience and he spends most of his time in NYC. Which is the only reason I could possibly feel sorry for him, because he appears to have a pretty good niche carved out for himself!

Here's a baby polar bear, being raised by hand at a German zoo.

Recently, I've been kind of missing Howard, my old buddy, who is, no doubt, deep in hibernation in his swamp. I think I'd have a real problem raising someone like this, although I suppose it's easier when there isn't a release planned. The advantage with Howard was that he would never trust you or become affectionate, so you didn't bond in the same way you would with something that responds on this level.

That's really critical. With Howard, I was able to decide it was time to let him go because I only touched him once a week or so when I was cleaning his habitat, and, in those times, I was coming to the realization that he was getting too big to be safe to handle.

With the constant interactions involved in raising a polar bear, the moments of affection and danger would alternate and you'd probably wait to make the decision that you really needed to stop trying to handle her until after you had been mauled or killed.

Or at least, I would. Gotta admire the folks who do this sort of thing right.

Mind you, as I watched her being bottle-fed and was chuckling over the milk that ended up on her snout, it suddenly occurred to me that there's somebody I have to really admire -- that's the person whose job it is to take the bucket and stool into the mother's cage each morning and evening ...

And now, a moment of contemptible twaddle
with Andy Rooney

America's favorite senile uncle embarrasses the family.

So long, cousin Oscar

Always liked sharing a last name with him. He was an okay piano player, too, and, for all his solo talent, he didn't mind being part of a group ... if the group had a little swing.

Merry Christmas to those not having one

(This column originally ran in the Press-Republican, Plattsburgh, NY, December 24, 1994)

I had a problem with my Christmas cards this year.

When you do cards, you have to wrap up the year's news in a few deft sentences before you ask about the other person's family and then add your wishes for a good holiday season and so forth.

The problem was, things have gone very well for me this year. I like my job. The kids are wonderfully content with what they are doing. We're healthy and happy, and, you know, about the fifth time I wrote that in a card, all the good news began to make me want to puke.

Tolstoy is right: All happy families are alike, which is why he didn't bother writing a novel about a happy family. Nobody wants to read about a bunch of perky, cheerful high-achieving jackasses.

I recognize, however, that having too much good news may not be your particular problem this Christmas.

I certainly wasn't facing a crisis of over-cheer a decade ago. My Christmas cards went out early in 1984, so our faraway friends would know in time that they should either choose which of us to send the card to, or else send two cards: One to me and one to my wife of 13 years but no more, at her new address.

It could have been worse. I had my kids part-time and the Colorado economy hadn't crashed yet, so I was still able to pay most of my bills and to buy basic groceries, though I couldn't afford health insurance or car repairs.

Still, it was bad enough. I took what little money I could afford to spend on presents for my kids and bought a toboggan, one good present the three of us could enjoy together. Then, the only times it snowed, they happened to be over at their mother's. It all seemed to go like that for me in 1984.

I could write an uplifting holiday message here, suggesting that my current swell Christmas is some cosmic payback for having been put through that really lousy one. But I don't believe that, not even at Christmastime.

No, I wasn't visited by three yuletide spirits, or by an angel-in-training named Clarence, that blue Christmas.

The transformation, rather, came over the course of the next year, through the agency of mortal folks who had been down that road themselves and were willing to extend a hand to assist a fellow-traveler.

For instance, I dropped off a manuscript at a client's office one day, and mentioned to his accountant that I was working on my income taxes. Turned out she was also a single parent, and she proceeded to give me a quick lesson in filing as head-of-household despite having joint custody and thus qualifying for the Earned Income Tax Credit. It saved me a generous fistful of much-needed dollars.

My dentist had been through a particularly unpleasant divorce: He repaired a cracked filling for me at no charge.

And my main client, God bless her soul, was big sister and counselor and a boss of saintly patience and forbearance throughout the year. She'd been through it, too, and we had many extra cups of coffee and a few unnecessary "business lunches" while she assured me that everything was going to work out for me in the long run. And she went across the hall to a sister publication and got the editor there to throw a little work my way.

If this is not a cheerful Christmas for you, I can't fill your teeth or give you a job, though I do suggest you look into that earned-income tax credit.

But what I can do is to promise you that blue is not a permanent color.

Others have been through this, and, while there is no fast-forward button you can push, it will eventually end.

Yesterday, Dec. 23, was the longest night, the darkest day, of the year. Beginning today, the sun will start shining a little earlier every morning, and it will stick around a little later every evening.

Make the effort to stand where that sun can shine on you. Keep your head up so you can see it. Avoid the shadows, and especially, refuse the company of those who wish to share misery and bitterness instead of hope.

The days will eventually become longer than the nights, it will be warm once again, the flowers will bloom.

And then maybe one day, a few years down the road, you'll be faced with the problem of phrasing your good news in a way that won't make people want to puke.

When that happens, remember how you got there, and help someone else find the way to a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Gasp!! I am offended!!

When this November 24 Non Sequitur was published, it created a brief furor on the newsgroup rec.arts.comic.strips, started by an offended poster with a history of being offended by criticism of racism and a generally mixed-up and conflicted view of the topic -- during The Boondocks' days on the funny pages, he used to periodically show up to rant over that strip, too.

But others picked up on his disfavor for this particular cartoon, just as they had gotten their knickers in a knot a few years ago for this Non Sequitur gem, at the height of the Weakest Link craze.
(This may be a good time to add the disclaimer that I consider the artist, Wiley Miller, a personal friend. A good time because, besides being conversant with "The Weakest Link," he was the one who turned me on to the first season of "The Osbournes." I have to respect a man with such a prodigious appetite for pop culture drek.)

Getting back to the chicken joke, it apparently ruffled a few feathers (heh heh) in Beloit, Wisconsin, because the Beloit Daily News there has now "suspended" the strip.

I'm less interested in how thick the good citizens of Beloit must be not to see that the chicken cartoon was just a silly joke that, if it made any point beyond "egg whites," was ridiculing the Klan, or what it says about them if they realized it was contemptuous of the Klan and objected to it anyway, than I am in the brain-dead reasoning of the editor who made the decision to pull the strip.

You don't often see the crisis of newspaper comics laid out in such stark terms, or the inability of editors to understand (A) the purpose of comics, (B) the importance of intelligent content to keep papers alive and (C) their own responsibility to know what the various elements of their product are and to monitor them.

Often in journalism, the best way to hang a villain is to quote him accurately:

Frankly, we don't pay much attention to the content of cartoon strips on our Comics page. We just expect them to be funny and give readers a chuckle. We do not devote a seasoned editor's time to closely check each cartoon for provocative or controversial story lines. The cartoons are pulled from the national syndicate's Web site in our graphics department, and loaded onto pages for publication. Apparently, we need to look closer, and we'll try. But we also admit it's possible some other strip - in which the artist routinely is innocently humorous - could slip through a crack if one day that artist is suddenly overcome by an irresistible urge to say something provocative.

Dear readers, the truth is we have plenty of controversial material to be concerned about, day-in and day-out, in our news and opinion columns. I have neither the interest nor the time to defend some goofy artist's stab at political points on the Comics page. Be funny, or be gone.

In subsequent comments, about a third of those who wrote in agreed with getting rid of the cartoon, two because it frequently attacks hypocrisy in religion (okay, they didn't phrase it quite THAT way), one for unspecified reasons of outrage and one who also wants Dilbert dropped because "Human beings are so belittled every day in this comic."

The remaining two-thirds said they like cartoons that make a point and that commentary with wit has a legitimate place in the pages of a newspaper.

Faced with this 2-to-1 deadlock, the editor sums up his courage to admit that he just doesn't know what to do about the whole doggone thing.

And they wonder why their readership is dropping.

Reviews are mixed

Ziwa seems to think this stuff is fun and amusing. Des, on the other hand, has seen 9 winters and isn't that enthusiastic about the 10th. We got about a foot of it, but the trail where we walk is a popular snowmobile trail, so it wasn't hard to get along. Except for the one of us who lagged behind wishing he were somewhere else.

However, on a more important level, I got a phone call this afternoon from a woman whose husband had just called her on his cell phone to say that he had found a missing hunter and she should call 911 and get an ambulance standing by. Which she did, but then, bless her heart, she also called me.

He was about 15 miles back in the bush. The hunter had been missing for two days and had been out in this storm the whole time and had that part of Maine pretty much upside down -- but not the part of Maine where the guy brought him out, which was on the other side of some serious backcountry.

I bolted for their place but the ambulance passed me when I had covered about 24 of the 30 miles up there. I wasn't going to get the picture of the hunter being loaded into the ambulance, but I kept going and had a very nice conversation with the guy who had found him.

Of course, his attitude is that he was pleased to be in the right place at the right time and hopes that, if it ever happened to him, that somebody would turn up, too.

I love this place. And, despite what Destry tells you, the snow's pretty nice, too.

Telephones are a good thing!

This ad ran in 1936, as the Depression receded and the phone company started to ponder how much business they had lost along the way. It's worth clicking on the ad to see the larger image and read the print.

It's really a wonderfully well-done ad. The woman is very Barbara Stanwyck/Fay Wray, and the art and layout are terrific.

Oh, and take a good look at the phone ... notice anything missing? Apparently, we were still at the "Hello, Central?" stage of technology.