A previously unpublished memoir
(1990)

``I am mortal,'' Scrooge remonstrated, ``and liable to fall.''
``Bear but a touch of my hand there,'' said the Spirit, laying it upon his heart,
``and you shall be upheld in more than this!''

I was only there by the merest of chances. I had been back to campus many times, but rarely while school was in session, and never for a football game. The Air Force game was hardly the most crucial game of the season, but I had lived in Colorado Springs for more than a decade, so I chose the Air Force game.

And I still would not have known to be there, but, because we have several college interns in our newsroom, I picked up a copy of The Observer to bring them an example of another college's newspaper.

Then, as I sat in my motel room Friday night, I leafed through it and came across an article: First Friday would be playing at the Senior Bar Saturday night, the reunion of a band that hadn't played in public in 20 years.

I called my friend Mike, who lives in La Porte. There was no question about whether we would go. First Friday was playing. We had to be there.

And so, Saturday night, we stood, Mike and me and Chuck and Lou and John and the people who had come back with the band, and there was our music again, there was our band again. There we were again, like old times.

It is not enough to say that First Friday was our band. It was our band, playing our music. This was not the cotton-candy golden oldies that have taken over the airwaves, certainly not the Top 40 ersatz-R&B they dragged back for "The Big Chill."

This was Cream and Spirit and the Yardbirds, music with depth and challenge, with screaming guitar solos and hammering organ riffs and driving percussion, demanding songs no lounge lizard or garage band would dare touch. This was Sixties music the way Artie Shaw is like Kay Kyser, the way Ella Fitzgerald is like the Andrews Sisters. This was the music that mattered.

It was music and it was more. It was the singular sound of a particular band that existed at a particular time and vanished with only the vaguest traces: One test album, pressed in limited quantities, my copy now so scratched and worn it barely plays at all. Nothing else: A recording contract fell through, the band broke up, the members graduated and were scattered across the country, 20 years ago.

So were we all, scattered across the country, leading our adult lives, until this October night when we were in the new Senior Bar, and there was First Friday, and it could have been the upstairs of the old Student Center, or the Coffeehouse at St. Mary's or even the front lobby of O'Shaugnessy, where I first heard them play.

There they were, and we were 19 and 20 again, rocking and flailing our air-guitars, frantically grabbing for notes while Norm stood impassively picking them out for real, fast and clean and like 20 years had never happened. It wasn't just nostalgia, either: First Friday really was that good, even now.

They really were: Out on the floor, the students who had filtered in out of curiosity, to see the old folks' funky old band, had become believers and were exuberantly dancing, alive and with the energy of 19 and 20.

I stood and watched them and it was 1969 again and my waist was thin and my hair was thick, I was full of dreams and visions of life. I was in love with almost everyone, I was free of wisdom and caution and strings and weights. The music was playing and I was young and there was no time, no space, no world but the music, and life stretched out before my young eyes in all its infinite promise.

And out on the floor, I saw one tall, dark, lovely girl dancing, smiling a smile that could only be smiled by a face unlined with years and unwrinkled by disappointment, and, as she danced, I thought of other girls, other times.

I thought of a beautiful blonde friend, twisting and swimming and hitchhiking the old dances on the sidewalk in front of Sorin Hall to the music of First Friday, laughing and twirling and flying across the concrete, dancing for sheer joy , her long, straight yellow hair and the brown fringe on her leather coat spinning out in the sunlight of a football Saturday, and nothing more than her joy was needed for that moment to stay forever in my mind.

And I thought of an evening before Christmas break, the snow falling on the steps outside LeMans, and a friend with her dark hair tied back with a hank of thick, red yarn, the collar of her wool navy jacket turned up, a single flake of snow on her eyelashes, our breath steaming in the cold air under the porch light as we exchanged a kiss not for love but for friendship and for the holidays.

And I thought of an almost-lover one summer, who could hold me but could not love me, and whom I could not keep, because she had to help the farm workers and had no time for love. I called her my Maud Gonne and told her I would be her silly Willie Yeats and would write for her and keep a candle, but she disappeared into the scene, the ever-present scene, and she never turned up again, leaving only a memory of her intense caring, and of her eyes, a light amber I have never seen since and would die to see again.

And as I watched and dreamt and traveled in my heart, the girl turned and gestured in my direction to join her on the dance floor.

Forgive me, spirits. Forgive me.

I looked behind me.

Before I even turned back, I knew I had just betrayed all those young girls, all those young dreams. I had forgotten youth and joy and music. I had lost my faith.

I had looked behind me.

In that fatal moment, I was again 40 and graying and balding and paunchy and standing flat-footed among a group of middle-aged men and women, watching children dance. And I saw a girl, a young, beautiful girl, her dark eyes still locked on mine, pointing at me, "Yes, you!" and pointing again at the dance floor in front of her, and I could not join her.

I feared she would tell me she was some friend's daughter. I feared that I would sweat and strain and look foolish. I feared that she would say to her friends, "You should have been there! All these really old people were dancing and everything!"

And so I stood, like poor, sad, frightened Ebenezer Scrooge watching Fezziwig's party, seeing the shadows of what I had once had, and what I had let slip away.

And the beautiful young girl, who only wanted to dance, finally gave up and turned away, and went on dancing alone, to the music, to our music, to the music that was mine.

I took my coat from the back of a chair and walked out into the night. I was 800 miles from home, and had to be back by Monday morning.

Don't play the cords of fame

It's supposed to be flattering and fun when "your" breed wins at Westminster, but I can't summon much enthusiasm over the Best of Group award that went to Ch. Cordmaker Field of Dreams this week. I had pulis (Yeah, yeah, the Hungarian plural is "pulik." That's how these problems get started.) before the dog show snots got hold of them.

It was 1971, and we'd been married about five months when Kathy's dog, Mordechai, ran out into traffic and was hit. We still had the dog I'd brought to the marriage, but decided we liked having two. Besides, my dog, Taylor, a small, black beagle mix, had done a nice job of training Morty and we knew he'd train a new pup, too.

We found Szabo in southwestern Michigan. I'd heard of pulis but had never seen one. The mother was on hand and was a delightful dog, a first-generation American. Most pulis in those days weren't long off the boat, imported for the most part by homesick Hungarians.

The puli is a small sheepherding dog that was apparently brought into Eastern Europe by the Magyars and is believed to be related to the Tibetan Terrier. I am told that the word "puli"comes from a Sanskrit word applied to any herding dog. They are extremely bright, nimble dogs whose signature move is to cross the herd on the backs of the sheep like a lumberjack going log-to-log across the river during a drive. They also are known for leaping on the back of a runaway, riding him until he's tired and then getting off and bringing him back to the flock.

As soon as we had a puli, we started hearing stories about them.

A construction worker acquaintance went looking for work in Ann Arbor, but his puli disappeared almost as soon as they arrived. He spent his time up there looking for Happy and returned to South Bend broken-hearted. A few days later, Happy showed up on the doorstep, having traveled the 175 miles to a place they'd only lived a few months.

A couple told of going to pick out their puppy in a pen behind a shed. The old Hungarian farmer warned that the mother was protective, so he went in first, put a ladder up against the shed and said something in Hungarian upon which the dog ran up the ladder, which he then removed so they could play with the pups while Mom watched from above. When they had made their choice, they left the pen, he replaced the ladder and she ran back down it.

The first thing we found with Szabo was that Taylor wasn't going to do a lot of training with him. Taylor started giving him the lecture -- "This is where we pee. This is my bowl." -- and it was clear that Szabo was blowing him off. For one thing, when Taylor would play tug-of-war with us, the puppy would come up and join in from the other end, jerking on his tail, which was really disconcerting since you can't bite a puppy -- especially one you can't catch -- and it's tough to lose your dignity when you are supposed to be Lead Dog.

But they worked out a good relationship where Taylor got to be Lead Dog and Szabo let him be, because he didn't really much care, until the day about two years later when an irritable Taylor growled at toddler Jed and then snapped at Kathy, whereupon Szabo delivered a beatdown that was frightening not because he was furious but just the opposite: For the coldness of it. It was clearly a punishment, a lesson and an establishment of how dogs were to behave and who was now in charge. And, no, Taylor never repeated his folly.

That episode aside, Szabo was the jolliest dog I've ever known, and had a sense of humor that Taylor couldn't fathom. Not only would he allow himself to be dressed up, but he seemed to get the joke. We added a second, then a third, puli to the family, but Szabo was the legendary presence, and, years later, Jed observed, "The thing about Szabo was, when we played monkeys? Szabo was a monkey!"

He was also willing to follow the boys up the ladder and down the slide at the park, and pretend to be a baby going to sleep so that Jed could be the Daddy playing his guitar at cribside. He played football with them and they had to keep a soccer ball on the ground when playing with him because he would "head" an airborne ball and we were afraid he'd damage his nose.

Szabo was the finest, brightest, best dog I've ever known, and I've known some good dogs.

So what about Westminster?

Well, when we got Szabo, there were two types of coats acceptable in the breed: The wavy and the curly. Either one was going to mat if you didn't keep them brushed, and we never did, assuming that the Hungarian shepherds of old did not spend their evenings brushing their dogs but, rather, lined them up once a year with the sheep and sheared them.


The book we bought, "How To Raise And Train Your Puli," even happened to have a pair of wavy-haired pulis on the cover, champions who would never make champion today.

Here's what the breed standard says:
The dense, weather resistant coat is profuse on all parts of the body. The outer coat is wavy or curly, but never silky. The undercoat is soft, woolly and dense. The coat clumps together easily, and if allowed to develop naturally, will form cords in the adult. The cords are woolly, varying in shape and thickness, either flat or round, depending on the texture of the coat and the balance of undercoat to outer coat. The Puli may be shown either corded or brushed. It is essential that the proper double coat with correct texture always be apparent. With age the coat can become quite long, even reaching to the ground; however, only enough length to properly evaluate quality and texture is considered necessary so as not to penalize the younger or working specimens.

And here's what wins in the show ring -- nice long cords to the floor. And, as the owner of Ch. Cordmaker Field of Dreams told reporters this week, the cords do not form naturally but must be trained.

Meanwhile, the pulis I've known have often been overprotective. We had to be very vigilant at the park because they would not tolerate strange dogs approaching us, and, while Szabo played cheerfully with the boys and their friends, we had another male they had to put inside during rough games because he wouldn't have understood. The fact is, the dogs aren't many generations away from their days among the sheep, and they still have a strong impulse to guard their flock.

With a good, stable dog, you can socialize and train to a point where that instinct is not a distraction. But that's assuming you've bred for temperament and not for some odd, irrelevant feature like the ability to produce a corded coat.

The lovely corded handbags I've run into since Szabo's days have been snappish and unpleasant, and I'm sorry to see a modern puli win anything, since it only encourages irresponsible breeding.

Maybe if I didn't still miss Szabo so much, some 25 years later, I wouldn't feel so strongly about it.

Diplomacy

I'm next up in the express lane at the grocery store, when this fellow comes up and places on the belt behind my things some celery, a few apples, something in a can and a plastic tray with a nice piece of salmon under plastic wrap. The guy at the head of the line had asked for cigarettes, so there's a pause while the cashier calls for a manager to get the packet out of the lockup.

For a moment, I think the fellow behind me is starting to strike up a conversation, but quickly realize he's on his cell phone. "Hi. They have some good salmon. Should I pick some up?" Pause. "I thought we could have it tonight."

Just as I'm wondering (A) why he has to ask permission to buy a $6 piece of fish? (he's not dressed like it's going to kill the family budget) and (B) why he's asking now?, the cigarettes come and the cashier begins scanning my stuff.

I swipe my card, we complete the transaction, and, as she's handing me my receipt, I see her give that slightly annoyed, "Where'd he go?" cashier glance.

Sure enough, the guy behind me has disappeared. The celery, the fruit, the stuff in a can, still there. No salmon.

I suppose we all have our ways of keeping the peace at home, but I am left wondering how long you have to be married before the "gee, I'd better ask the little lady" reflex kicks in while you're at the fish counter rather than just as you're about to seal your doom.

Points of Interest

I was poking around and found a site with the photographs of Larry Keenan, who did a lot of work in the San Francisco area during the Sixties, when the Beats were active and during the Haight-Ashbury period. And after, as well, which is worth saying because, even after looking through the galleries that captured a moment in history with particular resonance for me and moving into his later work, I continued to find myself enjoying some really remarkable photos.

Really, if there were only one picture there, this photo of Michael McClure, Bob Dylan and Alan Ginsburg would still be awfully cool.

But Keenan's portfolio is full of many other faces with names -- Gregory Corso and Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Judy Collins and Peter Coyote and Wavy Gravy and Stewart Brand and on and on, and he also captured a lot of anonymous people who were there at the right moment.

I've always felt that I arrived at the party late, after the right moment had come and gone and things were beginning to wind down, the energy beginning to dissipate. It was a lot of fun, but I knew that, if I'd just been there a little bit earlier, I'd have really seen some amazing things and talked to some amazing people. Of course, arriving late was better than not getting there at all and I did see some pretty amazing things and talk to some pretty amazing people.

And, in any case, you really couldn't have seen everything anyway, no matter when you got there.

Except that Larry Keenan seems to have seen -- and photographed -- an awful lot of it.

Wander through and enjoy.

Eyes on the prize in the skies

(Darrin Bell's poster brought to mind this recruiting poster from World War I, "True Sons of Freedom," which was (obviously) intended to encourage African-Americans to enlist. I originally found this to illustrate an oral history from the WPA that I found very educational for me, never mind the schoolchildren for whose edification I created the piece. And speaking of schoolchildren, the teens in the other pic here are from 1942 and are contemplating the memorial in Chicago to black veterans of WWI. I believe that, if there was a crowd watching yesterday's ceremonies from above, Mr. Andrew Johnson was certainly among them. Here is his story, collected in 1938.)

The news came that every male between the ages of 21-31 was to go to one of the numerous Local Draft Boards set up in every part of the country.

I registered with the Local Draft Board, Swarthmore, Pa. on June 5, 1917 and was given a card with the number 1493. If this number were drawn out of a large glass bowl in the Quarter-master General's Office in Washington, then I was told to report. This was the beginning of nearly a year-long period of reporting to one place or another, both in America and France.

All summer I anxiously scanned the daily papers for the list of numbers as published by the War Department. In September I accepted a teaching job in Virginia, but had been there hardly a month when 1493 appeared, so back I came to report to the Local Draft Board and claimed exemption because I was the sole support of my aged widowed mother and two sisters and a brother. Then, too, all teachers were supposed to be exempt from military service.

But my claims for exemption were denied. I found out later, that the chairman of the Local Draft Board had placed my name on the list of men to go to war because he had exhausted the exemptions allowed and was compelled to fill out the quota.

A special train came through one day in October and I said good-bye to my family and climbed aboard, with eight other colored men from my town. Every town the train passed through contributed its quota of young men, so that when we reached Admiral, Maryland, the train was crowded with wildly cheering, excited heroes-to-be.

Alighting from the train, we were told to line up and follow several military-appearing men. The contingent, composed of men dressed in old clothes and carrying suitcases, straggled up the road several miles until we came to Camp Meade, named after a Civil War general.

Here we were lined up again, told to file into a large mess hall where we found that the Army ate other vegetables besides beans. After mess we lined up again for medical inspection, then were marched off to a supply station and issued Army uniforms and equipment. Dress shoes and heavy hob-nailed field shoes, an O. D. tunic, shirt, trousers, underwear, socks, a necktie, handkerchiefs, towels and soap. Also two tightly rolled bundles of wool called spiral puttees.

This last almost made me quit the Army.

We marched back to some dormitories and were assigned a cot, blankets, and told to report to the parade grounds after changing into uniform. The building I was in had about 250 men, and each one of them was struggling with tunics with too-tight collars, or complaining about too-large shoes, hardly any one had been lucky enough to get a perfect fit. But every one was troubled by the spiral puttees.

How to get what looked like a roll of bandage wrapped around one's leg! That was the question.

While we were engaged in typing, lacing, and buttoning these strange garments which go to make up a U. S. Army uniform, an orderly told us to fall in at the parade grounds. We did. And such a sight. Imagine a thousand men, unused to Army life, gathered together on a parade ground and told to stand at attention when coat-collars were threatening to choke half of them into insensibility and the other half were entangled in spiral puttees improperly wrapped.

A group of 60 Negro officers stood to one side, each one of whom stood erect in freshly-pressed serge uniforms, Sam Browne belt shining to match leather boots.

One officer advanced toward us several paces and read from a paper. "General Order. You men will comprise the 368th Infantry Regiment of the Ninety-Second Division, U. S. National Army, composed of drafted men from Eastern Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. You will now enter upon a training period which will fit you for duty overseas."

So in October, 1917, the 368th was formed and I stayed with that outfit throughout the war. The men in my barracks became Company "G" of the 368th, and we had three second lieutenants, three first lieutenants and our company Commander was Captain Queen.

Captain Queen sent for me the next day. The orderly who gave me the order told me to report to company headquarters. As I came up the walk, I passed an armed guard standing in front of a large flag, and he brought his gun to the ready and asked, "Hey, buddy, where's your manners? Don't you know better'n walk past the colors without saluting?"

He patted his gun suggestively so I turned toward the colors, as he called it, and gave the only salute I knew, a Boy Scout salute learned as a child. The guard looked at me rather disgustedly, and commented, "You're in the army now and we'll make a soldier out of you yet."

I reported at the door and was sent to Captain Queen. "You wanted to see me?" I inquired.

The captain cut in on me. "Soldier. When you are told to report to an officer, always salute until recognized, saying 'Corporal Johnson reporting, sir.' then stand at attention."

"Yes sir."

"I see by your draft board that you can use a typewriter. I'm making you a company clerk, with rank of corporal. You'll report to Lieut. Hinkson, in charge of headquarters platoon. Dismissed."

I managed a credible salute, turned on my heel and marched out. In the Army one day and already a corporal. I went over to the supply sergeant, drew my chevrons, and walked over to the barracks where I commenced sewing them on. Then, feeling very proud of my new rank, I reported to headquarters platoon.

This time I had everything right. I saluted as I passed the colors, had a soldier point out Lieut. Hinkson, walked over to him, saluted and said, "Corporal Johnson reporting for duty as ordered by Captain Queen, sir."

The Lieutenant gravely returned my salute, glanced at my sleeve and said "Corporal, your chevrons are quite new."

I answered proudly, "Yes sir, Lieutenant."

"Well, they're sewn on upside down," he snapped, "Go to the company tailor and have them adjusted properly."

Our officer, Captain Queen, had just completed a course of instruction at a fort at Des Moines, Iowa, along with a thousand other colored men, all of whom were given commissions as captain, or lieutenant, signed by the President, Woodrow Wilson, and which said that they were 'officers and gentlemen.'

Capt. Queen had been a top sergeant in the 24th Regular Army Regiment when they were stationed in Arizona and chased the Indians. His brother had graduated from the Officers' Training School at the same time, but was commissioned a lieutenant in the machine gun detachment of our regiment.

Captain Queen was younger than his brother, the Lieutenant, but now outranked him. So the older brother, the machine gunner, was compelled to salute his baby brother, the captain.

I soon learned the distinction between an officer and myself. I studied the Army Manual, The School of the Soldier, learned how to clean and care for a rifle, how to execute "order arms" without smashing my toes. I learned the difference between a canteen and a latrine. Being in the headquarters platoon, I was able to find out news of impending troop movements. In fact, I typed the order cancelling all leaves and ordering the men to report to the parade grounds with packs and in full marching order.

We were reviewed and inspected and then marched direct to a waiting train. Once on the train we were issued cards on which we wrote, "Am leaving for somewhere in France. Goodbye."

We detrained at Hoboken. When we arrived darkness had fallen and it was raining a little. In the drizzle we were marched up the gang-plank of a transport and told to stay below decks until we were well out to sea.

The next morning Captain Queen sent for me. I had on a life preserver, as did everyone else. The captain wanted the company roster as he was going to put us through Abandon Ship Drill. When I came on deck I was able to see other troopships, camouflaged with vertical stripes and pursuing a zigzag course, convoyed by eight or ten destroyers.

The North Atlantic was cold and dismal. In fact, the whole business was rather grim and uninspiring, but we reached Brest without incident, didn't even have one submarine scare on the way over.

It was in Brest that I saw some colored soldiers wearing red fezzes and tan uniforms, standing on one of the street corners. One of the men from my company, who came originally from a small town, crossed over the street toward them and inquired. "Where can I get some cigarettes?"

The red-fezzed soldiers glanced at him, spoke among themselves, then turned to him and shrugged complete incomprehension.

I saw that my friend was becoming angry so I crossed over. "What's
the trouble, bud?" I asked.

"These big boys act like they don't want to have anything to do with me. They're talking a lot of gibberish, won't answer my questions."

I had a little trouble convincing him that "those big boys" were FRENCH Africans, couldn't understand English and weren't trying to be high hat.

We went into intensive training and after six weeks we marched up to the town of Nancy in the Department of Douliard. We marched at night, rested in fields by day and noticed the almost solid lines of trucks headed toward the Front, and passed troops returning from a tour of duty in the front line trenches.

In each squad, in addition to the riflemen there were grenadiers who carried hand grenades. While we were marching we had the first casualty in our company. A grenadier, a belt of hand grenades strapped around his middle, stumbled and fell, the grenades exploded, everybody who could, jumped into ditches or flattened themselves on the ground. Total score, three dead and eight wounded. Of the dead we buried two, but the third, the grenadier was blown to bits, nothing left but a hole in the road.

We were in the Argonne Forest when the big push started on September 26, 1918 and we stayed in there five days, part of the time we were shelled by our own artillery in support, the 349th Field Artillery Regiment. We had no battle flags, no shears to cut barbed wire entaglements, our liaison men (runners with messengers) were all killed or wounded trying to get through with messages.

Lieut. Hinkson, dressed in a private's uniform and carrying a rifle as well as a sidearm (automatic) had stood up and shouted, "As skirmishers, guide center. Deploy" when a machine gun, hidden in the woods, cut him down.

Enemy airplanes flew over us several times, dropping pamphlets addressed to us. "Colored Americans. We have no quarrel with you. We are your friends. Throw down your arms and come over to our side. We will treat you better than you are treated in the South."

But I don't remember a single case of desertion.

After the Argonne, we went up into the Vosgen Mountains, where it was rather quiet. We needed it for we had been cut up pretty badly. Replacements were sent us, and I was promoted to Sergeant. The replacements were creoles from Louisiana. They spoke French and one became our company interpreter. So soon every soldier picked up a few words of French.

Armistice Day found us before Metz. We were waiting to storm a great walled city which would have cost us many men, as we would have to cross a level plain about two miles long.

In December 1918 we were marched to Le Mona, the central delousing plant of the A. E. F. Here we had our clothes taken from us, and I lost my sweater which had been knitted for me by my girl friend, we were plunged into baths, and when we came out the other end we were given clean clothes, and that was the end of the big gray cooties which had been our constant companions.

Back to the mud of Brest and here we embarked for home near the end of February, 1919, and after staying in Camp Upton a few days we were sent to Camp Meade, Maryland where on March 5, 1919 we were given a bonus of $60, an honorable discharge, and the 368th Infantry regiment became a part of history.

Buy this poster

Darrin Bell has made the ultimate comment on Tuesday's festivities. His Sunday Candorville strip is now available as a poster, and I would suggest that not only is it a fine thing to have in general, but that, if you teach, you need this for your classroom, if not all the time, at least every February. I am staunchly opposed to viewing MLK Day as a holiday for African-Americans -- if it is, then he failed. But I'm perfectly thrilled to envision this crowd at the inauguration of Barack Obama, assuming that they have been waiting, not always patiently, praise the Lord, to be included in the words "we" and "us."

And I hope Darrin refuses to provide a list of who they all are. If you don't know, look'em up. Talk about it with people. Figure it out. Because all this didn't happen without a whole lot of people making an effort.

(Click on the illustration above to see a larger version.
Then buy the poster for your grandchildren.)

Good dog, Rex!

Cartoonist/animator Paul Moldavanos pointed this one out. If it seems that Rex the Dog puts more creative energy into their animation than their music, it's likely because "they" or "he" are (is) a British remixer who does dance compilations. The web site is a little sparse on information, other than tour dates. The video, on the other hand, contains all that is necessary and much that is just plain awesome!

Heckuva job, Bushie

Michael Cavna of Comic Riffs asked cartoonists what they will most miss about George W.

Some of the responses are predictable, some are pretty interesting, several are funny. And if you aren't the sort to read the Comments section -- I'm pretty ambivalent about them, nor do I listen to talk radio -- it's worth scanning down to see that a couple of conservative cartoonists were asked for their input but didn't offer any.

For my part, what I will miss as an observer of political humor is that the guy didn't require a whole lot of distortion. The riffs I've seen so far on Obama have, for the most part, required that you either work with half the facts or purposely misconstrue something -- much as cartoonists and humorists did with Dan Quayle and Al Gore. For that matter, while Nixon provided plenty of fodder for cartoonists, he wasn't clownish, and you had to come up with ways to distort him in order to make him funny.

But through eight years of the Bush White House, the jokes wrote themselves. You'd see some gag and, if you weren't 100% sure of the incident that provoked it, you'd check it out and find out that the actual fact was more outrageous and ridiculous than anything the cartoonists had been able to come up with.

Example: The most over-used gag has been Cheney shooting the guy in the face. That could have been openly and honestly announced and dealt with as you would deal with any accident. However, by the time they tried to find ways to hide it and spin it and turn it inside out, it became a farce that surpassed anything the late night comics and the editorial cartoonists could come up with -- I mean, who would dare create a skit in which the guy who gets shot in the face ends up apologizing?

Ah, well. The Bush Years will soon be over, and as they leave, I guess my farewell to his crew is a sincere wish that they will all follow the wise advice that Vice-President Cheney offered to Senator Patrick Leahy that day on the Senate floor.

(Postscript: Sigh. As so often is the case, Jon Stewart has made the case even better.)

A surprisingly interesting site

After their having put together some ridiculous commercials (sometimes funny, sometimes in questionable taste, often both) and some ridiculous web-toys (ditto), I approached whoppervirgins.com with a great deal of skepticism, but figured I had to see what it was.

Having watched the video, my theory is that the usual gang of wise-asses came up with the idea, but that, by the time it was assigned to someone who could actually accomplish it, there was a change in how they approached it. I really expected some condescending, smirking nonsense, but it looks like the people who completed the project had a good time.

And I wouldn't worry that they did much to alter the pristine cultures of the people they visited. We in the West have done considerably worse, and generally with far more noble intentions.

My latest venture

Please come visit and enjoy a new chapter each week (updating at 11:59 PM Saturday night). This site, www.weeklystorybook.com, will publish the stories I've been doing in newspapers for the past eight years, with illustrations by Christopher Baldwin, Dylan Meconis, Marina (Rinacat) Tay and Clio Chiang, as well as some classic illustrations as in the example currently featured.

(I am beginning with a delightful series of fairy tales that I literally heard at my mother's knee, from a book that had entranced her as a child. This is a sentimental choice, but it's also a chance to try to build a little traffic before I put the more complex, original stories up there.)

The challenge is to bring readers back every week for another chapter, furnishing a teaching guide for teachers and parents but letting the kids just enjoy the story. I don't really have a business plan at this stage, but these stories have provided me with a little extra income over the years, as well as some for the artists, and, as newspaper education programs fade, I hate to let the stories fade as well, so I figured I'd share them on-line and maybe figure out a way to make enough cash to pay for the effort. Or not. Whatever.

The stories are fun and the kids will enjoy them. Please share this site with any kids, or former kids, you happen to know. A new chapter every Sunday, just like Prince Valiant!

(Post-Postscript: The link to the site, which was buggy when first posted, seems to be working now.)

Last chance for cuteness in 2008

This site is listed as an example of what you can do with a blogging system I'm looking into, but it distracted me from whatever work I had planned to do with said system. After playing on it for awhile, I passed it on to my boys to share with my grandchildren, and their response was enthusiastic enough that I thought I'd share it with the rest of youse. Their mission is simple: "ZooBorns brings you the newest and cutest exotic animal babies from zoos and aquariums around the world."

Pics. Videos. Abundant cuteness to make up for this crappy year and point you in the right direction for the next. Enjoy.

A good comic is always relevant

Note that this "Frazz" is from 2002, but it's certainly timely this weekend and has been much on my mind the past couple of weeks. (As always, click on the image for a larger, more readable version.)

Frazz is one of the smartest strips around, but it's so consistently good that I find myself rarely commenting on it. I do have the signed original of the strip below, also from 2002, which I found masterful in the tangle of cultural references -- you really have to be plugged in to a lot of different things to follow this cascade of cultural references, which is the fun of Frazz.

Jef Mallett works on the assumption that an educated person is one who doesn't simply know one set of things, and who has no problem reading well-written books (Frazz's school is named as an homage to Bill Bryson, and Mallett is also a Richard Russo fan), knowing something about classical literature and popular music and also following the NFL, and he riffs across a broader spectrum than any other cartoonist I can think of.

Shaped by my Christmases past

My interest in cartoons didn't just happen. My father was a good artist with a particular talent for cartooning that he never really developed but which gave him and those close to him a great deal of pleasure over the years. It also provided some pleasure for those not close, since they'd get the annual Christmas card each year to show them what the Peterson clan was up to now.

This was the card in 1953, when my brother Tony was the news -- that's him in the manger at six months, with me the surprised magi and my older siblings, Rick and Frances, playing Mary and Joseph. And that's dear old dad in the background, playing the puzzled patriarch as he generally did when he appeared in the cards.

For years, I thought his being a child of the Depression and of parents who were nose-to-the-grindstone types had stifled an artistic career, and perhaps it did, but he and I spoke about it as we each grew older and he truly didn't seem to regret MIT and his years as an engineer. I think the artwork was a pleasant hobby that he could put some effort into but that he didn't really want to try to turn into the main focus of his life, which was his family. It did mean that we had some interesting cartoon collections around the house, however, as well as a willing reader to us of the Sunday funnies.

In any case, he was a very, very serious man, as the photo below demonstrates. Much too solemn for cartooning.

I went over and spent the evening with Johanna and Tobias and their parents tonight, and tomorrow I will drive up to Plattsburgh to see the rest of my grandchildren and their parents.

Christmas is a good time to be a grandfather, particularly if you had some good training in that whole how-to-be-a-dad thing. And I did.

Merry Christmas.

By Request

After I posted my first blog entry from New Hampshire, it was suggested that I post the same 360-degree view after winter had set in. I must say, I hadn't expected to be able to fulfill that request quite so soon.

So here's how the place looked on Hannukah, with a white Christmas very much in the wings despite rumors of rain. Note that, in February, it will likely look much like this except that the snow will be deeper. Considerably deeper. You certainly won't see the edge of the porch as you can here.

I should point out that, the last time I did this, there was a half-unloaded UHaul in the background, silently chiding me for shooting video when I had other things I should be doing. For continuity's sake, in this version, I have positioned two big piles of snow in the yard, which are actually piles of firewood that should have been stacked on the porch three weeks ago.

Well, at least they won't mold.

There is some lack-of-continuity in this: The dogs were wandering around the yard in the first video. In this one, they are not. Instead, they were here:

Tobias Isaac Meerts
born December 14, 2008
8 pounds, 9 ounces
to the delight of his sister, Johanna
(and their grandfather, not shown here)

In our last exciting episode ...

I realize I haven't said much about my life since I landed here in New Hampshire. Since we've made the news with our weather, I guess this is as good a time as any to catch things up.

To begin with, my view has gone from the above to the below. You'll see that the lake isn't entirely frozen over, but it has been. But about the time a skim of ice forms, a front comes through and there is a night of wind that breaks it up again.


The lake is about four miles long by a little over half a mile wide, so when a north-south wind strikes up, it gets rolling pretty well. And my house is right at the receiving end, so I've taken down the wind chimes which I'm sure are charming during the summer but, as the first good winter storm rolled in, were kind of a constant annoyance all night long, as if they were in a dryer. Incidentally, those X's are a marker where there is about a 15 foot drop off to the lake. I suspect I'll have a pretty good buildup of ice jam and snow down there by the time winter is truly over.


So, about that storm: It pretty much passed us by in the immediate sense. I didn't know how bad it was until I got to the office and people started calling in to say they'd be working from home. I never lost power and, while the roads weren't good, they weren't surprisingly bad. However, I was in a fairly narrow window of safety -- there were significant outages to the north and to the south of us.

I took this picture at the local airport, where even the birches weren't getting off the ground. (Our photographer began snickering at that line and accused me of spending more time thinking up cutlines than shooting photos. And she's right.) But the planes -- little Cessnas -- were back in the air by mid-morning.

When I went back up that afternoon to confirm that they were getting planes off the ground, I spotted this chain link fence. The sun had begun to melt the ice and I caught it at the time when the ice had melted back off the fence itself but hadn't broken up.

Cool, huh?

They opened up the gym at the high school in Gabe's school district as a shelter (he teaches at the middle school), and had I think five families the first night. The next day, they picked up that many families again from a fire which burned them out of their building -- which isn't the same as losing power but is very likely traceable to the storm, though the Red Cross is going to have to find them some place else to stay while they come up with a more permanent plan, because I think everyone else will be going home soon.

For the most part, I think power is back on to most of the homes in our area. The aforementioned photographer and I spent most of Friday driving around looking for dramatic shots and didn't find much -- I think most of the outages were from branches over individual powerlines. We didn't find any downed powerpoles or anything that visually astonishing. Gabe had lost power at some point in the night but it came back, and I never lost it at all. We lost it overnight at the office but, when I got in, it was back up, though our office manager, copy editor and general jack-of-all-trades was trying to restore a critical computer program (which she did).

The job is good, the people are good. I'd seen the paper and recognized a lot of need for improvement, and I was really afraid I'd come into a situation where nobody else felt that way, but the staff was eager for some direction. This is largely a first-job shop and I'm doing a fair amount of mentoring, but when people want to learn, that's fun. I've also got the support not only of the boss/owner/publisher but of the rest of the management team, which makes a tremendous difference. And people are seeing a difference since I got here, though it's a gradual process. We're not where we need to be, but we're doing a lot better and it's recognized.

The town is a city compared to Farmington -- about four times the population -- but I'm able to go home at night and have a lot of quiet, so it's more than acceptable, and it's fun to have Gabe, Sarah and Johanna in town -- and they will be adding a grandson in the next week or two. That's more fun close up than at a distance.


And there is a rail trail for me and the dogs to take our constitutional. Life is good.

Mother England to the rescue!

In which Prime Minister Gordon Brown shows how much more fun it is to govern in a land where the opposition is allowed to laugh at a slip of the tongue. Well, fun for the onlookers, anyway ...

Best ad of the quarter

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

MSNBC Replaces Fox News

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Um ... I've got nothing to add here ...

From the sublime to the ridiculous

Having just praised some pretty terrific artists, here's a cartoon I love that, well, doesn't exactly rely on draftsmanship. And it's not always Safe For Work or Fun For The Whole Family. And it's often too geeky for me to understand.

And that's okay. I don't have to understand them all. This one captures absolutely one of my biggest, lifelong, ongoing, incurable perceptual problems, without a lot of elaborate artwork:


"xkcd:A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language." Geez, how can you go wrong?

An editor speaks of illustrators

Rod McKie has touched off a discussion of publishers who republish classic texts with illustrations that don't seem connected to the stories they have been commissioned to illustrate.

"It’s not that I’m against book illustrators per say, or for that matter the people publishers now tell us are “graphic novelists”, but I am against the needless illustration of texts, especially when those illustrations run counter to the author’s intentions or even instructions, and serve only to place limits and boundaries on the reader’s imagination. Far from helping to illuminate the text, which was once free-floating and open to an infinite amount of interpretations, the possible meaning of the text is now fenced in by, not the author’s vision, which we have been encouraged to ignore, but the illustrator’s vision. And often, by the illustrator’s lack of knowledge about not just the text, but the witting and unwitting testimony of the text, what the text does not say because of the rules and institutions at the time of production, and of the illustrator’s lack of knowledge of the signs and symbols at work.

There's much more there and I would encourage you to read it, but what it sparked in me was a respect for a certain core of children's illustrators who appear to have worked with the authors whose stories they illustrated. Garth Williams, for instance, wanted to work for the New Yorker, and, for that reason, I have to believe that he talked to E.B. White about Stuart Little and Charlotte's Web. I have less specific reason to believe that he also consulted with Laura Ingalls Wilder as he illustrated the Little House books, except that they were so well done that I suspect he did work with her, rather than simply working from a synopsis, with an editor.

My response to Rod, on one of the boards where he had initiated discussion, was that I don't know why modern publishers feel they need to find new illustrators (who will then ignore the intentions of the author) when there are wonderful illustrations that were published with the original material, and which I suspect were the result of collaboration between author and illustrator. As someone who has published both original and classic children's literature in the newspapers, I've been delighted to use the original illustrations -- and not simply for the ease and cost of dealing with artists whose work is the public domain. (I happen to work rather well with the living artists I've used, too.) But these classic artists did, indeed, try to connect with the stories they were illustrating.

One example is the work of folklorist Andrew Lang, who produced a series of classic fairy tale collections from around the world, each illustrated by HJ Ford. The picture at the top is a favorite of mine, part of Hans Christian Andersen's "Blockhead Hans" in which Andersen vented some spleen at the press. Which makes me laugh the harder at the story, and Ford's delightful pics.

But Ford was wonderfully adaptable, and produced this picture for a Japanese Cinderella story, in which a young woman disguises herself and works in the fields until, of course, her virtue is rewarded by the local young nobleman.

Lang was not all that specific about the provence of "The Green Monkey," but Ford comes up with a completely different style, yet one which is clearly his and which gives young readers a wonderful image with which to imagine the rest of the story as they read.

And this is a favorite, one of several he did for a Romanian story about a girl carried off as an infant as eagles, but then raised in their nest. I used this as the logo for my own stories for many years.

But I've also used this as a logo, an illustration for "Beauty and the Beast," one of the stories retold by Katharine Lee Bates in a 1923 book that was one of my mother's favorites as a child. The illustrator is Margaret Evans Price, who later was the artistic director for Fisher-Price Toys. I ran some of these stories in the paper, along with Price's illustrations, and heard from a reader who, like my mother, had marveled over the stories as a child and was delighted to see them being brought to a brand-new generation of young readers.

This is Price's illustration for a story in which a proud young woman is taught a lesson in humility when her exasperated father marries her off to a beggar who, of course, turns out to be a handsome prince and in on the lesson. It's a more charming variation of the story than "The Taming of the Shrew" but what I find particularly interesting in this illustration is the detail on the princess's dress.

But this is a favorite -- another Evans illustration for "Beauty and the Beast," and the texture here is wonderful, especially in the context of the 1920s when the furniture and fabrics and fashions in the Beast's palace were quite current!

Another classic illustrator was Charles Robinson, whose breakthrough book was Robert Louis Stevenson's "A Child's Garden of Verses." I don't know if they collaborated, but I see little reason to reproduce the one without the other. He also did a classic collection of nursery rhymes, and I'm pretty sure he didn't confer with Mother Goose, but he seems to have captured the themes rather well.

PS -- In the comments, I spoke of how Dylan Meconis had done an illustration for the story of Actaeon and Diana that was part of a collection of myths I put together. Here's that illustration. It's not grotesque or "scary" but I think she did a nice job of catching a moment of transformation and apprehension, and it sticks in the mind, which is the point, after all. In the myth, Actaeon doesn't quite understand what the goddess has done to him until it's too late and he is about to be torn to pieces by his prized hunting dogs. It has touched off debates for a couple of thousand years about proportionality, and Dylan's picture suggests a young man who has really, really messed up and is only on the verge of realizing it. There are also some small touches like the shape of his head and placement of his eyes that lift this above the usual. She's quite a talent and I was lucky to come across her when I could still afford her!

I didn't know he was alive, but now I'm sorry he's dead.

Looking back

It's not just the newspaper industry

This morning, NPR had a good feature on this song. Here's the song itself, for all the real Joe the Plumbers who may find themselves asking the same questions before too long.

I leave you guys alone for two years ...

I swear, I can't turn my back on these people for a minute. When I left Lee Enterprises back in January of 2007, their stock was worth $30 a share. Now, according to this story in Editor & Publisher, it's down to $1.58 and they're in danger of being de-listed by NYSE.

Somehow, my departure was not listed as a cause. Dunno how they missed that.

It would be easier to laugh if the idiotic decisions being made in the boardrooms of major newspaper chains didn't trickle down to those of us who are actually trying to do things right -- in the form of things like lower advertiser confidence in the medium and higher paper costs.

But it's easy enough to laugh, when you've escaped from people who keep issuing chirpy reports about how well the company is doing while they are cutting your resources, laying off people, freezing pensions and benefits, degrading the quality of the product and generally trying to sneak into the lifeboats before the passengers and crew notice.

And it's especially easy to laugh when you cashed out all your stock before you left, at the aforementioned $30 a share. I know people who are likely still holding a large wad of the stuff, purchased at a discount that now seems laughable ... as long as you're out of the path of the landslide.

We're all in for tough times in the next couple of years, and I don't know many companies where there isn't a careful watch being kept on expenses right now. That pressure intensifies when others in your sector are failing.

Still, when stupidity and greed are prime ingredients in the mix, the schadenfreude of watching a former, unloved employer sink is sweet indeed.

I

told

you

so.

(We now return to a more civilized take on the world.)

You never quite get over your first glove

Sherwood Harrington unleashes some memories, including the fellow whose name was on my first baseball glove.

Unlike Sherwood's family, mine took annual trips that often included a major league game, in Connie Mack Stadium, Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium or Shea Stadium. But, also unlike Sherwood's family, we didn't take many pictures once there, even before or after games, though I've got a few other souvenirs.

Once we happened to be in town at a time when my Tigers were visiting either the Yankees or the Red Sox. I honestly don't remember which, but we could "only" get outfield seats. I emphasize "only" because it meant I spent half the game with Al Kaline right there in front of me. I probably didn't see much else that day, like whether there was a big green wall or not.

But, while we didn't take a lot of pictures, my little brother Tony was a fan who could pull stats out of his hat on the spot and knew everyone in the game. When we went to a game, he would not only keep the scorecard but would then keep the program. He didn't leave much of a physical estate, but he left a real legacy in memories.

I certainly remember this game, not for the game itself but for how excited Tony was about getting to see a brand-new major league team in the historic setting of the Polo Grounds. I liked baseball well enough, but about three-quarters of the pleasure of going to these games was being with him.

Below, the scorecard. Longtime fans will want to click on the image so they can read some familiar names. Tony would have been nine at the time. I can see my father's handwriting on the first couple of Mets names, but I think the rest is Tony's work. He knew his stuff and, boy, was he serious about The Game.