Clean water

I once wrote a song called "Water", which included the line "you are the water in my life," water being the one essential need of all people and, therefore, a fitting metaphor for how important the "you" to whom the song was supposedly being sung was. I thought of it this morning as I was cleaning my office and came across a flyer I was given.

When I spoke at my local Rotary a couple of months ago, they made a donation in my name to Pure Water for the World, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing, well, just what its name says. They supply filtration systems in needy areas. 1.8 billion people lack clean drinking water, and 2.2 million die each year from waterborne illnesses. In Honduras alone, fifty thousand children under 12 die each year from diseases that result from drinking contaminated water. We all know we're not supposed to drink the local water in certain areas because our bodies may not be immune to the pollutants in it; imagine living where the locals shouldn't drink the local water!

Rotary and other groups donate to this organization, which installs filtration systems in homes and villages. Polluted water is poured into the system, flows through layers of gravel and sand, and comes out clean! They currently use concrete holding tanks, which are of course very heavy and difficult to get into some remote regions, but they're researching the use of plastic components instead. This is important work.

I hadn't expected to be paid for speaking, but I was thrilled that Rotary chose to make that donation. It was a nice way of paying it forward: I spoke for free, and the club gave money to a worthy cause. I didn't really look at the brochure till just this morning, but now I'm even prouder.

All of which leads me to suggest that, especially at this time of celebration and good cheer, you make a donation of time and/or money to a worthy cause. Huge amounts of money go to wars, political campaigns and to frivolous purchases. Take a moment to give to something that no one can complain about. (Okay, no one can justifiably complain about. There'll always be someone criticizing.)

Be the water in someone's life.

Imagine

It's the thirtieth anniversary of John Lennon's death. (Some call it an assassination, but that is defined as an attack for political or religious reasons. This was just to impress a woman.) At the time, Jane Fonda said, "They're killing the poets now." It was a time full of hyperbole along those lines. A horrible but random act against someone that many people respected and/or loved--nothing more--but people wanted it to have some meaning. Well, it did--because it reminded people of the positives in his life, and maybe made people a little kinder as a result. Even today, people will recall the date and think about peace and kindness.

I read an article recently that pointed out that Lennon wasn't the gung-ho pacifist we often recall. When Brian Epstein managed the Beatles, he encouraged them to avoid political statements, and Lennon obeyed for the most part. He was actually quite the hooligan (now there's an old word) when he was young, was occasionally violent to his first wife, ignored his first son, Julian, for many years, and became an outspoken pacifist when it was trendy to do so. "Imagine" was written by a multimillionaire who lived a cushy existence ("Imagine no possessions"). The album before, he had called his fans "peasants". And after a couple of years as an outspoken peacenik, he retreated from the public eye for years.

This is not to say that his activism wasn't heartfelt...just that it wasn't the sum total of his life. Yet we celebrate that part...and that's okay. He was flawed, like the rest of us, but if he serves as a symbol, so be it. My feelings that day thirty years ago didn't harp on any hypocrisy in his life. I was telling myself that all you need is love...and trying to believe it.

I was remembering the songs---when they played "In My Life" on the radio that day, I cried. I discovered the Beatles because the first girl I ever had a crush on, in fifth grade, loved the Beatles, and I drew a cartoon of them to impress her, and became a "fan" because she was. But "She Loves You" blew me away, and I was a True Fan ever thereafter. "Strawberry Fields Forever" still moves me. "I Am the Walrus" has so many layers, it's like a little five-minute concerto. And I love that he used a slamming door as percussion on "Give Peace A Chance".

All the radio stations were playing his solo and Beatles music all day on December 8, 1980. It was what I frequently played on my stereo anyway, but it meant a lot more because millions of people were listening with me. And in that process, a sense of togetherness and a wish for a non-violent world coalesced, if only for a few days. It happens on a smaller scale every year at this time.

And isn't it nice that, the day after we mourn the bombing of Pearl Harbor, we recall the life of a man who, at least for a few years, sang about the idea that there might someday be a world without war? Sure, it's simplistic. And unlikely.

But at least once a year, it's nice that we stop to imagine.

Elizabeth Shaw

One of the teachers from my sixth and seventh grade years--and I think the fifth, too--passed away last month. I hadn't heard from or spoken to her since I moved on to junior high---she wasn't the type I would have tried to contact. She was pretty serious, never affectionate, and could even be mean sometimes: she once made fun of a student's big feet, and another time, when we were filling out personal information forms in class and I didn't know the city of my birth, she abruptly sent me outside in the snow to go around the building to the principal's office (I went to a very small, old school) to call home and find out from my mother. She could be short with her students, and never radiated the warmth that one recalls in one's most fondly remembered teachers. But she could teach. And she taught me love and respect for the English language.

 

She would drill the rules of English grammar into our heads until we understood them. She once procured booklets with all the basic rules of English for us all to take home---a book that I saved and referred to for years, and which I wish I still had today.  (I doubt I'd use words like "procured" if not for her positive influence.) She instilled in me a clear understanding of the difference between their, they're, and there; of when to use it's rather than its; that when you create a possessive form of a plural word ending in s, such as members, you don't add a second s---"the members' votes were counted" would be the proper form. There are still words and rules I have trouble with: I generally have to rely on Spell Check to confirm or correct the spelling of occasion or broccoli, and I always have to set aside time when confronted with whether I should write "if it were to have..." or "if it was to have...". But those are my own personal mental blocks---not a failure on her part. 

As a matter of fact, just starting that last sentence with "But", I was aware that, technically, it should have been part of the previous sentence, because Mrs. Shaw taught me that. 

 I understand that language evolves, but it took me years to accept "impact" as a verb because I'd learned it was only proper to use it as a noun. One can reasonably play with grammar only if one understands the basic rules. Certainly, "woe is I" is awkward, albeit correct---but a lot of people never learned, or were never taught well enough to remember, that "Woe is me" is perfectly acceptable as a colloquialism, but it isn't proper grammar. I wrote a song with the line "You told me you'd take me and never forsake me for anyone cuter than I," and I like that I used the proper form when "me" would be the more common choice. Mrs. Shaw's influence.

Unfortunately, it wasn't until I reached high school that I realized just how much I valued what she'd taught me...and I should have written her then to say thank you, but I didn't. I went to college as an English major my first year, and she deserves a large part of the credit for that. I should have written to her in college---I certainly knew by then that she had molded at least the writing and speaking portion of my brain well---but I didn't. And when I began writing a comic strip and a blog, it would have been a good time to track her down and tell her how I was using the tools she'd given me as a child. Why didn't I think of it then?

A classmate from those elementary school years recently commented on a grammatical reference I made on Facebook with the words "Mrs. Shaw would remember"; shortly thereafter, another former schoolmate informed me that she had passed away. So I went to Google and typed in her name--I thought it was Elizabeth, but I'd only thought of her as "Mrs. Shaw" all my life, so I wasn't sure I'd find her--but her name came up, and I read the obituary online. There was a link to send condolences to the family, so I clicked it and left a few comments on what she had meant to me.

She evidently had a happy retirement. She was in a quilting club in Maine---an activity that I wouldn't have imagined the stern woman I knew participating in. (Yes, I know I shouldn't end a sentence with a proposition.) She had a husband and children who loved her. I'm glad. She scared me sometimes, but she had a very positive and lasting impact on my life. And she loved teaching, which says to me that maybe she loved her students, too.

So if you're listening, Mrs. Shaw: thank you.

Sticky Situation

I bought some red fiberglass rods at Home Depot yesterday to place at the edges of our lawn, so the snow plow will know how far over to plow. I then spent five or six minutes scraping the price tags off the rods. Why?

Because some dolt stuck them near the top. These are poles that are made to be buried at the base, and are meant to be a little more attractive than a stick stuck in the ground---therefore, it's reasonable to assume that people won't want a price sticker showing. So if the bottom end is made to be buried, shouldn't the label go there? Then no one would have to scrape it off.

This happened to me years ago with some drip edges I bought for the roof of a house I was building. The edges would show, and I planned to paint them to match the house. Of course, a price tag that was painted over would ultimately peel off, so I had to scrape the tags which, again, had been stuck on the exposed edges--not the part that would be covered by shingles.

I've also seen trim moldings that have the sticker on the finished face, light bulbs that have one on the bulb itself, and many other products where the clerk or associate applying the labels has stuck them in the worst possible place.

Now, you might say that the people doing this are just sort of slogging along, in a job they'd rather not have for a wage that doesn't seem worth any effort. But, as the tired old saying goes, if you're going to do something, do it right.

I worked as a busboy years ago, and teamed up with a guy named Guy (true!). Guy didn't like to work and I didn't like to sit around, so we decided he'd be the manager of the dining room we worked in (there were multiple rooms in this restaurant) and I'd be the "worker". He'd keep track of which tables were about to leave, and I'd get ready with a new set of dishes, glasses and silverware. If there was time, I'd do the clearing, then let him bring the dirty dishes into the kitchen while I cleaned and set the table. We'd stack up multiple paper placemats with the silverware between, cutting precious seconds off the time spent re-setting a table. We even stashed saucers inside an empty paper napkin box one time when saucers were in short supply from the dish washers, and told "competing" busboys from other dining room that we didn't have any. (Okay, not very admirable, but it entertained us.)

When things got really busy, Guy would pitch in more, but he mostly stood around and planned while I did the grunt work. I didn't mind---I liked keeping busy. He didn't. And Guy, despite being lazy, was a more efficient busboy than the other guys because he and I had a system worked out.

The owner, who believed everyone should always be busy, came in one time and found us eating cornbread and standing around. He went into a rage, but every time he said, "why don't you do [fill in chore here]," we'd point out that we'd already done that. He couldn't find anything we hadn't already done, and finally stormed away in a huff. (Why he didn't have the wisdom to have us train the other bussers is beyond me. We were 15-year-old efficiency experts.)

The point is, we had a menial job with low pay, but we found a way to make it fun and do it better. Is it too much to ask someone who is preparing products for someone who will be purchasing a do-it-yourself item (which almost everything in Home Depot is) to think about how they can make less work for that customer?

Years ago, I would receive magazines in the mail with the mailing label stuck right in the middle of the front cover, and the label would take off the surface of the cover if you tried to peel it off. Now they use removable labels, so at least the problem has been solved for mailed magazines. Stores can't do that, because people might switch labels between products to get a steal (literally), but couldn't someone write a memo and tell people to think?

Maybe, when the memo is ready, they could stick one on the forehead of each person with a tag gun.

In the meantime, I offer this link, in case you encounter something similar.

Long time

Well, it's been almost two months since I wrote my last blog. I've been concentrating on getting our house all finished---all the little and big things that need doing after twenty-four years. I want everything completed before I go back to concentrating on QlownTown. As a former contractor, I have some projects that were never finished, and I intend to do them all now. The plan to sell our house this summer, then this fall, has now been bumped to spring, but I'd like to actually live in a finished house for awhile anyway.

It's frustrating to have to repair things that have broken or aged after so many years, but of course they'd have to be addressed even if we were going to stay forever. And I am not allowing myself to do any half-assed repairs so I can sell the house: I don't want to have on my conscience that something might go wrong for the eventual buyers a few months after we're gone. (Nor do I want them coming to me and saying "Hey!...There's [fill in problem here] that you didn't tell us about.")

One nice thing that I did was to enlarge our shower. It used to be about 31" x 32". Yes, tiny, and closed in on three sides. Now it's three feet by three feet, with clear glass on two sides. The extra inches make a huge difference, as does the extra light pouring in and the view out through the glass. And instead of molded white fiberglass, the walls are tiny yellow-green tiles with pristine white grout. I wish we'd done this years ago. Some people say, "Aren't you sorry you did this if you'll be gone in a few months?", but I figure it'll be a big selling point, and we're really enjoying it now.

And I see any improvements made in this period as research for the next house.

 For example, our garage door was always this big, flat, fake-wood-grained slab. I added a post in the middle, creating the look of two doors, and added trim and windows to make it look like two sets of carriage doors. (Finished photos to follow once it's painted.) Now I know that I can put in an inexpensive door and, with some moldings and a little time, create a much more expensive-looking "set" of doors. I probably wouldn't have attempted it on a new house.

I was just looking for the photos I took during the process, and evidently deleted them. I had thought I might write an article for Fine Homebuilding, but now, I guess I'll need to do this again to get pictures.

So, until I get back to making the big QlownTown push: upgrading the site and store, submitting to newspapers, and working on a one-of-a-kind approach to the online presentation of the strip, I'll probably just blog about construction---which is my other big love anyway.

Reversal

As I drew today's cartoon, I knew it needed a guy driving a car, a speech balloon and a comment box--the voice-over, if you will. Lately, I've been sketching out the cartoon as quickly as possible in pencil, then changing it as little as I can when tracing with pen, while still trying to keep some fluidity in the lines.

After the whole thing was sketched, I realized that I had laid it out backwards. I wanted the comment to be the last thing you read, and the speech to be the first. Wanting to keep the looseness of the original sketch, I decided to just reverse it after I scanned it into the computer.  So I inked, scanned, lettered and flipped it. After it was all cleaned up--there are generally little dots or lines where some of the light penciling gets picked up by the scanner, or little overshot lines that I decide to erase, and the process can take half an hour--I was ready to color it.

And as I began to color, I saw the problem: now the clown was driving on the left side of the car! This would be fine if part of the joke was that he was driving in the UK, but this wasn't the case. So I switched it back to the way I'd originally drawn it.

The result is a cartoon in which the punchline comes at the beginning instead of the end. I could have redrawn the whole thing, but that would take the spontaneity out of the drawing. I don't do well on second drawings. Especially if I'm really happy with the first one. The second is a burden, and it never satisfies me. Besides, I'm busy working on my house when I'm not cartooning, and a do-over just seems like time stolen from house projects. So it goes to the website as a frontwards illustration of a backwards joke.

I hope people still find it funny. Maybe I'll fix it someday. There are cartoons I've drawn over the last year and a half that I plan to revisit eventually. Maybe when they go onto a calendar, hopefully when I'm preparing them for a book. (No plans for that yet.) But for now, they stay as they were originally. Not all do-overs have to be done right away.

(By the way, after I had this whole post put together, I realized that the dashboard and the outside of the car were the same. I went back and fixed this on the original, and that's the version you'll see if you check it out at www.qlowntown.com...but I'm leaving these two versions here. This just shows you how long it can take to finish a cartoon that takes about two minutes to sketch---and still not get it right!)

WWII story

Starting in 1941, an increasing number of British Airmen found themselves as the involuntary guests of the Third Reich, and the Crown was casting about for ways and means to facilitate their escape. Obviously, one of the most helpful aids to that end is a useful and accurate map, one showing not only where stuff was, but also showing the locations of 'safe houses' where a POW on-the-lam could go for   food and shelter.  Paper maps had some real drawbacks -- they make a lot of noise when you open and fold them, they wear out rapidly, and if they get wet, they turn into mush.
Someone in MI-5 (similar to America's  OSS) got the idea of printing escape maps on silk. It's durable, can be scrunched-up into tiny wads and unfolded as many times as needed, and makes no noise whatsoever.

At that time, there was only one manufacturer in Great Britain that had perfected the technology of printing on silk, and that was John Waddington, Ltd. When approached by the government, the firm was only too happy to do its bit for the war effort.

By pure coincidence, Waddington was also the U.K. Licensee for the popular American board game, Monopoly. As it happened, 'games and pastimes' was a category of item qualified for insertion into 'CARE packages', dispatched by the International Red Cross to prisoners of war.

Under the strictest of secrecy, in a securely guarded and inaccessible old workshop on the grounds of Waddington's, a group of sworn-to-secrecy employees began mass-producing escape maps, keyed to     each region of Germany or Italy where Allied POW camps were known to exist). When processed, these maps could be folded into such tiny dots that they would actually fit inside a Monopoly playing piece.

As long as they were at it, the clever workmen at Waddington's also managed to add:
        1. A playing token, containing a small magnetic compass
        2. A two-part metal file that could easily be screwed together
        3. Useful amounts of genuine high-denomination German, Italian, and French currency, hidden within the piles of Monopoly money!

British and American air crews were advised, before taking off on their first mission, how to identify a 'rigged' Monopoly set -- by means of a tiny red dot, one cleverly rigged to look like an ordinary printing glitch, located in the corner of the Free Parking square.

Of the estimated 35,000 Allied POWS who successfully escaped, an estimated one-third were aided in their flight by the rigged Monopoly sets. Everyone who did so was sworn to secrecy indefinitely, since  the British Government might want to use this highly successful ruse in still another, future war. The story wasn't declassified until 2007, when the surviving craftsmen from Waddington's, as well as the firm itself, were finally honored in a public ceremony.

It's always nice when you can play that 'Get Out of Jail' Free' card!

The above is, as I recall (it's been sitting in my "Drafts" file for months) someone else's account of this historical factoid. I make no claim to authorship. But it's a very cool story, don't you think?

Dates

I was at the hairdresser's Friday.

I think men now call their hairstylist a hairdresser, don't they? She's not a barber. For a long time, it was kind of unmanly to say one goes to a hairdresser instead of saying a barber. I cling to very few macho stereotypes, but I'm still unsure about hair cutting.

But I digress. I was waiting to get my hair cut, and my hairdresser said, "I forgot to check what today is". I was going to say "Friday," but then remembered that she has the QlownTown Holiday Calendar hanging in her salon and was wondering what special occasion appeared there. Turns out it was Men's Grooming Day, and we all had a laugh about the appropriateness of my getting my hair cut on that day.

I went to an informal fortieth high school reunion lunch that afternoon--so informal that, out of a class of 177, only eight showed up--and I was glad that my hair was neatly trimmed. After all, try as one might, one doesn't want to disappoint the people one hasn't seen for forty years, does one? I was actually a little nervous beforehand, or so I thought. I realized after the fact that I was just excited to see people I'd seen almost every day of my life for many years. Funny how you can change so much over the decades, yet talk so easily with old friends. Even if we don't see each again for another long span of years, it was nice to check in and see that these people are all right. I continue to care about these people with whom I grew, even though the years have separated us.

There's talk of a more organized gathering in October, and I expect we'll see more alumni then. But eight of us will have special memories to share: "Oh, remember back in August, when we ate at the Yard restaurant and caught up and reminisced? Good times."

Evolution

It's been interesting, these last few weeks drawing QlownTown. I've made a conscious effort to give the characters larger hands and feet, and tweak their proportions. I like when a character like Mr. Katz is shaped unlike anyone in real life. It becomes more fun to draw when the clowns look really silly, and it's closer to the "stretch and squish" rule at Disney. The idea is that cartoon characters should stretch longer and squish flatter as they move, exaggerating natural shapes and movement. It's almost like imagining them made of Jell-O...and as we know, there's always room for characters made of Jell-O.

I've also tried lately to steer away from puns again. I like it better if they don't become the norm, although there are many strips---Shoe, Mother Goose and Grimm and Frank and Ernest spring to mind---in which puns are common and clever. I wish my mind worked more like Tony Carrillo's. He does F Minus: almost every strip has a twisted sensibility. I used to do stuff like that when I was in college. I think you're more open to irony as a student. As you age, life beats you down and you become tired of thinking creatively. Actually, it's just the way I think now. One-liners. But if the drawing style can evolve, maybe the humor can as well. 

Of course, having said that, I have a pun coming up concerning Toll House cookies next week...

Putterer

I had a great weekend this past Saturday and Sunday. I spent most of the time in my basement, cleaning the garage, getting stuff ready to move into storage in preparation for selling our house, and puttering in my workshop. I had one bookshelf that was stacked with projects-to-be-done. It had been accumulating stuff for years. Well, a few things got thrown out, and a few little projects got finished. We now have a miniature copy of a spinning wheel that my grandfather made, and which was in pieces under layers of dust, sitting proudly in our front hall. An heirloom doll's bed that my mother and then my daughter played with is now fixed and ready to store under cover till we have a granddaughter someday.

Saturday night, I sat down to dinner with a grin, and realized I'd loved getting the chance to just putter all day. Fixing stuff, organizing, cleaning, replacing lights...this is stuff I love to do. I guess I knew I was a putterer, but I get to do it so seldom I forgot I was. Now I'll try to make time for it. I gave myself permission to go from project to project, so if I was planning to box up an object and then do something else, but noticed that object needed the paint touched up, I'd jump to painting the object, then box it up and go on to what I'd planned. Did everything I'd scheduled get done? No, but I didn't care. I got a lot of things accomplished. It feels good when we accomplish something.

In the next week, I'll be getting a trailer hitch on the VW Bug, buying a trailer, and moving stuff into storage...and we'll attend a family reunion on Saturday. A week from now, we'll have new happy memories and a lot of stuff out of our house. Ah, accomplishments. Puttering. Satisfaction.

Lucky day

Ever have a day where you run errands and it works out better than you expected? That happened this morning.

My first stop was Home Depot, where I returned a can of paint and some molding. I got a store credit for what I'd paid--but it still felt like a profit because I was suddenly $40 richer. On the way back to the car, I found a five dollar bill in the parking lot. No one around, so I pocketed it and drove to Staples, my next stop.

As I shopped for some paper, I found 100% recycled for less than the price I usually pay for 30% recycled. It's a lower-grade finish, but works fine for my purposes, and I can now add "Printed on 100% recycled paper" to my correspondence. I had a coupon, but it turned out I needed to spend $25 to save $5. I found a couple of folders I needed, a drawing template I'd forgotten I needed, and some hanging folders that will help me improve my filing system. I also answered an in-store survey about a new shredder they're thinking of carrying (which, by the way, was very nice: it'll take 100 sheets at a time, and will even shred paper clips and staples) and received a $10 coupon. So I left the store with $28 worth of stuff that I needed anyway, and only paid thirteen and change for it! With the fiver I found, I was almost twenty bucks ahead.

Sometimes small, unexpected victories are the sweetest.

Vacation

Just back from a week's vacation in Maine. Did all the usual stuff--read a couple of books, swam, visited with family, went shopping, watched the sun set--but with a stomach ache most of the week. Some days were awful---an actual ache that I always noticed, and nausea a few times; and one time I became very sad as I tried to nap up in my room and heard the extended family laughing and splashing down on the lake---but most days, it was just a low-grade ache that kept me subdued but not stopped. I like to have a drink or two on vacation, maybe more than usual, but there were only two glasses of wine for this guy the whole week because of the 'ache. And the whoopie pies that are famous in our family, which we buy daily from the bakery down the street...only a couple the whole week. Very little coffee, even though I love a good cup out on the deck overlooking a pristine scene. I would've liked to at least come home having lost a few pounds---I didn't eat much---but I only lost one.

Yet I still had a great time. Yes, I didn't swim much, and was a lot quieter than I usually am, but just being with all the brothers- and sisters-in-laws, and nieces and nephews, and folks-in-law, as well as my wife and kids and their significant others, is always a treat. You see, there were twenty-seven of us in one big house last week. We do this every year. And we enjoy each other's company the whole time---or close to it. If I was too weak to dive off the dock, there were kids who weren't, and I was glad to just be there with them. If I couldn't have a drink, I could visit with my sister-in-law who was a little loopy and a lot of fun. And if I was quietly reading a book, I could do that on the shore, in the shade, with an in-law or two doing the same in a chair beside me.

The one day I felt fine, I got a little more active, but was a little "iffy" by evening. But what if I'd been home working during my illness? Would it have been bearable? QlownTown might've missed a few days, because I wouldn't have been up to sitting up at the drawing table or computer for hours. So, while I wouldn't recommend being sick on vacation, there are worse things.

We started doing this big family-week-at-the-beach-or-lake about twenty years ago, but I was sick the first couple of years. Bronchitics one year; pneumonia the next. I began to think I'd never go on vacation with the family without being sick, but then I went all those years till now feeling fine. My plan is to never be sick again. The law of averages is in my favor.

I did accomplish some stuff: my nephew Jake showed me a book of cartoons from the Perry Bible Fellowship, a very offbeat strip. (Warning: a number of the cartoons are R-rated.) What I loved about the strips is that they almost always have an unexpected twist on what you expect. I choose not to go in an R-rated direction with QlownTown, but I hope I can back to more of the offbeat, Far Side type stuff I enjoy so much. I wrote down a few ideas, and will try to move some of the puns to a later date and incorporate these new ideas over the next few weeks. It re-energized me.

***

An order came in while I was away for a print of one of last week's cartoons. I went to get it ready to send to the printer, and realized that I hadn't thought about what size the new square panel would be when people bought prints. I decided to center it on an 11" x 14" page. I still haven't decided if I'll stick with the square format, or if I'll go back to the strip, or if I'll just do whatever I want each day. Consistency is a good thing, I guess, but why not just use the format that serves your purpose best each time?

I'm still working on a new project that would be very cool, but that's still a few months off. For now, though, QlownTown is exciting me again. I'm feeling upbeat. I'm even going to try a piece of the blueberry pie that I brought home from the bakery. It may rile my stomach, but I'm getting used to that now, anyway. Maybe it'll give the comic a slightly darker edge, although I'd prefer that if that's going to happen, it happens because I decide to---not because I'm in pain.

By the way: yes, I called the doctor's office. She said it's probably just a bug that's going around. It's been nine days, but I'll give it a few more and see if it goes away. (High co-pays are a good incentive not to overburden the doctor.)

Rope swing

I drew a cartoon earlier this week and was very pleased with myself when it was done. I liked the colors, the composition, the way I drew the characters. I liked that I'd changed my original concept of having the chicken say, "Of course I'm chicken" to a caption explaining the picture. I think that's a drier, more amusing way to do it. That way, the "narrator" is stating this as a logical reason, which I think is funnier than just having the character make a silly pun. (I was going to say "bad" pun, but puns aren't really bad--they're clever wordplay. Shakespeare and I don't have a lot in common, but we both have beards and love a good pun.)

I even traced a Shaker-style wooden box to get the even curve of the rope...I use a compass sometimes, but it's quicker and easier to trace an object when I want a smooth ink line. And I decided that Perry seemed like a good, unlikely name for a chicken. Finally, I liked that I put the chicken in a bathing suit and set things up as if he was just another one of the boys.


Sooo--it's all done, it gets uploaded, it's there in the queue--and then it arrives in my email several days later as the Daily Cartoon. And I see that the rope on the swing is so long, one would smash into the ground before reaching the water.


My first thought was to fix that--redraw that part of the cartoon so the rope is tauter. That would mean replacing some black lines and a few areas of color, all of which I'd do in the computer. But I liked every other element so much, I decided not to tamper with (near) perfection. Maybe I'll do a followup, where the taunting kid who's holding the tire tries to swing and hits the ground. He deserves it.

Edgy

Someone recommended that I make QlownTown an edgier comic strip. Comics on the web tend to be ironic, satirical, gritty, or bitter, and mine is pretty traditional. But I've written out ideas for every strip for the next three months, so it seems a shame to toss all those ideas. Besides, I don't think in edgy terms. So I thought, what if I just add profanity to existing ideas? If someone swears freely, they're automatically less conventional and, arguably, hipper. So here are several previous strips with profanity added, chosen from the week of April 12th through the 18th. You can start here, then click backwards, to see the originals.

June 22nd: "My f****** dog ate my homework."

June 21st: "Come on Shtanley. Share you clamsh. Don't be sho g****mn shellfish."

June 18th: "You couldn't stoop to my level if you wanted to, you f****** g****mn s***head."

June 17th: "Yeah, he's my new partner. He's a copper spaniel, for C*****'s sake."

June 16th: "Oh, sh**! You're looking for a wise man. He's on the next mountain over. I'm a frickin' wise guy."

Note that the last one has a milder form of obscenity which is heard frequently on TV and in polite company, but it still adds a certain punch that the original version didn't have.

So part of the New Humor of QlownTown could be that clowns, normally considered silly and sweet, would have gutter mouths.  For a certain segment of the population, this could add a lot. I confess, as I wrote these, I started to laugh at the notion of adding dirty words for no reason. It's incongruous.

But this wouldn't change the essential type of humor in the strip. It still wouldn't be current, topical or satirical. And it would probably cost me a lot of existing subscribers. So I'll keep the naughty language out...although there are times when I want a character to express profound disgust and frustration, but %$@#! just doesn't quite do it. Maybe I should make it interactive, so readers could type in their own words. One reader might type in "Consarn it!" or "Dab-dang-naggle!", while someone else might type in---well, you can imagine.

So that's where it stands, at least for the _____________ time being, ___________!

Store

I just changed the name and description of my CafePress store. If you go to www.cafepress.com and enter QlownTown or some of the keywords that lead to my products, it'll show you the products but never direct you to the actual QlownTown store at www.cafepress.com/qlowntown. Anything you buy in their Marketplace is their pricing, and I pay them more and receive a smaller profit than if you purchased the same thing through the QlownTown store.

I had hoped that the name and description change would show up when someone was shopping in the Marketplace, so they'd get the message that merchandise costs less if you buy in my store, not theirs...but they've cleverly set it up so you never see the store owner's description. So if someone visits the Cafepress website but doesn't know about QlownTown, they'll never get directed to the QT store. They have to enter the address manually.

What they're doing is competing directly with their own clients, who already pay a monthly fee for a store. They're taking my money for the store, then trying to offer a lower price than I do on my own products! So today I went through and lowered the price on almost every item. A few key items (that are likely to sell a lot, of course) cost me more to put in my own store than CafePress sells them for in theirs, so those items may be a little pricier, but my in-store prices now beat them on almost all items. Hah!

I keep the shop open with them because I do get some sales through their Marketplace, but I hate paying a monthly fee and then having them compete with me. So, if you're shopping for QlownTown paraphernalia, shop direct!

Changes

I had a revelation today. Not life-changing, no flash of light or spiritual awakening, but a revelation nonetheless. Saturdays and Sundays draw the fewest visitors to the site. The Sunday strip usually takes a loooong time to draw and color. So I decided to cut the Saturday and Sunday strips. You'll still get to see a free comic Monday through Friday, but now my cast has the weekend off, just as I--and probably you, too--do. This frees up a lot of time to explore other ideas. I'm considering a number of things: altering the drawing style a bit to get closer to the freedom of my original sketches, which are almost always transformed into a less fluid look when I pencil them and then trace the penciled drawing with ink.

 I'd like to get closer to the off-the-wall nature of some of the cartoons I've done, and away from the comfortable, often pun-based strips which are clever but may not appeal to a wide range of internet-surfing cartoon fans. And I have a very different approach that I'm thinking about, but that will need more development before I'm ready to talk about it.

So what do you think? I love getting letters, emails and posts telling me what you like, but I'd like to hear ideas of what would make you tell more friends about the site; what would make you more likely to check it out daily; what you would like to see on a T shirt, mug--or any other object--that you'd be likely to order. Would you like to be able to order T shirts for the cast of your show or the workers on your project with a custom cartoon on it? (Clowns doing Hair? Clowns building a Habitat for Humanity house?) Have you always wanted a ten-foot-tall clown statue on your front lawn? Send your feedback to dsmith-weiss@qlowntown.com.

Today is Work at Home Fathers' Day. I guess I'd better take the rest of the day off, now that I don't need to get Sunday's strip ready.

(Would that I could take the day off--but now I can spend it on exploring!)

Cars

After hearing the president's address last night, I thought, "Gee, this sounds like a speech Jimmy Carter gave back when he was president". I think we're closer as a nation than we were then to making some sound environmental decisions with our purchases, but I'm not sure. When I see a full-sized SUV with an unused trailer hitch (or no trailer hitch), I wonder if the owner really needed that size vehicle for anything other than comfort. I ran a successful construction business years ago using a four-cylinder diesel VW truck. They don't make those any more: not enough buyers. Ronald Reagan took Carter's solar panels off the roof of the White House. Maybe they were ugly. But it's a shame that we just seem to be catching on to the situation thirty-odd years later.

Anyway, it's not my place to be judging all the aspects that might go into someone else's car-buying decision, but I have a few that I'm thinking about when the time comes to replace my current car:

• The upcoming Nissan Leaf intrigues me: electric only, and fine for local trips, which of course are what most people make. But it'll cost about $24,000 after tax breaks, plus about $2K to install a home charging system. Why will it be more expensive than a gas/electric hybrid? There's no gas engine to drive up the price.

• Rumor has it Toyota will come out with a plug-in Prius that will run on electricity only for the first whatever number of local miles. If it's not a lot more then the Leaf, this would seem to make more sense. No word on when it'll come out. Despite the temporary woes of Toyota, it should be a winner. We have one Prius now, and a couple we know has two Prii; that'd be kind of cool.

• The new Ford Fiesta boasts a 40 MPG highway rating. Since MPG ratings are now more accurate estimates of what one can expect in real life, this could be a realistic figure. That's great for a regular gas engine, and it's an American company--a plus in the times of recession--and it's the one major American carmaker who didn't screw up so badly that it had to borrow all sorts of bail-out money from us.

• The VW Jetta diesel. AS I said, I had a diesel VW back in the 80s. They run well, they're simple to service, and they tend to be durable. Now that "clean" diesel is the norm for US engines, it's a relatively non-polluting option. And, if you're really fanatic, you can build or buy a used vegetable oil processing unit for your home, and run the car with little or no purchased diesel.

• A natural gas powered Accord. Honda has offered these for several years, although it's a little-known fact. The mileage and net cost is about the same as gas, but natural gas is mostly from the US, while gasoline comes primarily from foreign sources. The engine also pollutes less. You need to purchase an in-home refueling station, and need to have natural, not LP, gas, but you never have to fill up at a service station. Just come home, "gas" up, and instead of paying then, it just shows up on your monthly bill.

• A regular car converted to natural gas. This can be done on most cars, I believe. It's a way to make a car you like which might not get great gas mileage into a more environmentally-friendly one.

My wife says that, because I chose the Prius, it's her turn to pick our next car. But she's pretty ecologically minded, though not as fanatical as I tend to be. We like the idea of buying a used car--it's generally a better investment, because the huge drop in value when it was first driven off the lot has been absorbed by the previous owner. Of course it's all moot at this point: we have no immediate plans to buy anything. But it's fun to plan ahead.

Please note: I am not a shill for any car company. They may not even want a cartoonist who draws clowns all day talking about them. These are just cars that I am personally thinking about. If there are other environmentally friendly cars out there I haven't mentioned, let me know. And when you buy your next vehicle, just keep in mind: how big do I really need it to be? Is there any way, directly or indirectly, that I can give BP a little less of my business?

Hot chocolate

I did today's cartoon about a Swiss chocolate army knife. Thinking about it as I brushed my teeth last night--an odd time to think about sugary foods, I admit--I thought, "I should've shown the marshmallows being toasted, too," then remembered that marshmallows aren't usually toasted before putting them in the mug. My next thought was, "Well, why not??"

 Of course, now it's summer, and who wants hot chocolate in hot weather? But there is a week's vacation in Maine coming up this summer, at which we'll be around a campfire one night, and I intend to introduce this drink to the family there. Is this as game-changing as blackening food or sushi were? No. But it's a cool concept.

I have, in my bulging file of recipes-to-try-that-I-may-never-get-to-because there-are-so-many, a recipe for Mayan hot chocolate, which includes red pepper. This is another variation I'll have to try, but it'll probably have to wait till winter. And another for cinnamon and ginger hot chocolate. And then there's one...well, the point is, I'm currently intrigued by the idea of toasted marshmallows in the drink. Now if I could only turn it into a recipe that would win the one million dollar grand prize in the Pillsbury Bake-off...

Garage door

Saturday, my wife's garage door opener wouldn't work. After confirming that the remote was working fine, I noticed a cable had snapped on one of the two large springs that support the weight of the door. I went to Home Depot, bought a new 12 ft. cable, came home, raised the door by pulling up on it--so much for pampering my bad shoulder and elbow!--while my wife operated the opener, and began to install it. Then I realized I needed a nine-footer. Back to HD, bought the shorter cable, came home to find one side of the sixteen-foot-wide door had ripped out of the ceiling! It was hanging at about a 15-degree angle, held in place mostly by the now-bent arm of the garage door opener. After cutting open the ceiling to reinstall the ripped-out support and getting a shower of cellulose insulation all over me in the process, I realized that I needed a piece of angle iron to replace the old one which had cracked from the collapse. I almost went back for a third time to the Depot, then decided, 'No. This is what insurance is for."

I called Steve, the guy who'd installed the door twenty-two years ago, and he said he'd come over Sunday and take a look. I screwed some vertical 2x4s to the sides, top and bottom of the raised door to make sure it didn't collapse completely in the meantime. At this point, all my plans for Saturday were shot; the door had eaten up too much time and worn me out. I had a beer instead.

I stayed up till midnight Saturday night browsing garage doors on the internet: I figured it was time to replace the door with a fancier one, since insurance would cover the work of replacing the old one (if it was indeed shot), so we'd only need to pay for the difference in value of the upgraded door. I was also hoping that Steve would say it was fine propped up for now and we'd order the new door, and he and his crew would replace it when the new one came in. However, he took one look and said it couldn't stay like this. Should I replace it? Probably, he said. Can we leave it for now? No, we'd better take it down, or reinstall it temporarily.

Well, now I was seeing more uninsured expense. If the door still worked, we'd have to pay the full cost of taking down the old one after it was reinstalled, plus the full cost of purchasing and having them install the new one. We decided to reinstall the old one and see how it looked. That meant I would be helping Steve right then--no finishing my own projects while he and his crew did all the heavy lifting.

It took almost three hours of lifting the heavy door manually, propping it up on a long log laid across two ladders (luckily, we'd been doing some logging in the back yard the week before), clamping off various rails, re-bending stressed metal, replacing various hinges, bars and pivots and sweeping up lots of insulation. The good news: the old door works fine now, runs more quietly (why didn't I think of oiling the moving parts all these years?) and has new safety cables installed so the springs can never snap and put someone's eye or windshield out. The large springs, which used to hang down low enough when the door was opened that I would periodically bang my head on one, now stay close to the ceiling thanks to an alternative layout Steve came up with.  He charged me about half his normal Sunday rate because my attorney wife helped him out with some legal issue years ago. (See? Do a good thing and it comes back to you----karma may take a long time to come back around,  but it comes.) It came out to less than our deductible, so there was no need to involve the insurance company. And I figured out, after discussing the ins and outs of altering the door, how I will remake the door so it looks like old-fashioned out-swinging carriage doors instead of one wide fake-wood grained slab! I had decided the door needed to look better and was resigned to spending big money on a new one.

What I've left out is that I got up at 6:45 Sunday because I had to be at a "breakfast" at 8:30 AM, which turned out to be just muffins, coffee and juice. I really need seven and a half hours' sleep and a decent breakfast including protein to feel alert, so I wound up taking two naps during the day. That, plus the garage door project, did in all my planned Sunday projects.

The garage door spring could have hit one of us when the cable snapped, or taken out a windshield or other window. The door could have collapsed completely---on the car or one of us. It could have fallen sideways and ruined all sorts of things stored in the garage. As it turned out, a lot of dirty, exhausting work was required. So what is the result of this almost-disastrous weekend?

I, ever the cockeyed optimist, am just excited about getting to work making the old slab door look like expensive carriage doors!

Of course, before I start that project, I have a Saturday and Sunday's worth of other projects to complete...

The Dump

I went to the transfer station yesterday. (I'm trying to wean myself off of the term "the dump", so my grandchildren someday don't say, "Oh, Grandpa, you're so old fashioned. There haven't been dumps for years!") They have a recycling building, a place to dump your non-recyclable trash, and a "yard waste" area. This is where people may dump their leaves, tree clippings and other biodegradable landscaping detritus. The large piles are periodically turned with a backhoe or grader, and when a pile is pretty fully decomposed, it's moved to another area. Townspeople are welcome to come and shovel it into their car, truck or trailer and take it home. This is the nice "black gold" gardeners refer to: fully composted material that add nutrients and goodness to garden or lawn soil. The problem is that some people seem to think that "yard waste" refers to plastic bags, bits of tires, cutoff pieces of lumber, synthetic rope cutoffs from nursery plants, etc. There are also good-sized sticks which actually qualify as yard waste, but they're too big to decompose quickly, so they have to be picked out when using the compost for most projects.

In the past, I'd shovel the stuff into my vehicle, pick out a few of the bigger sticks and non biodegradable stuff as I was loading, and sift everything else when I got home. There'd be a big pile of sticks, rocks and things to throw into the woods after I pulled out and threw away the bottle caps, plastic tags, spare metal parts and pressure treated wood pieces I'd found. But a few years ago, I'd seen a guy with a big wooden frame mounted at about a 45 degree angle on the back of his trailer, with chicken wire across the opening. He'd throw the compost against the chicken wire, the good stuff would go through into the back of the trailer, and most of the bad stuff would roll down the screen onto the ground.

So, on my trip yesterday, I brought along a large tarp and some green plastic fencing. I spread the tarp into the back of my Prius (it's times like this that I miss my old truck) so it looked like a big open bag in the rear of the car, tucking the upper corners of the tarp into the rear door openings. I then stretched the fencing across the back, tucked the corners of that into the doorways, and closed the doors. This held up the top of the "bag" and created a semi-rigid sieve for the compost. The fencing and tarp were plastic, so there was no worry about scratching the paint on the car.

I then began to throw shovelfuls of compost at the fencing, and, sure enough, the good stuff went through, and the bad stuff stayed on the surface. Some fell to the ground, but after a few shovelfuls, the fencing would collapse onto the sifted pile and I'd have to lift it and shake off the debris, but that was no problem. In about five minutes, I'd filled the back of the car with sifted, trash-free compost! It worked so well, I think I'll build a frame for the fencing, so the bad stuff rolls off like that trailer setup I saw years ago.

As I walked around the passenger side, preparing to leave, I saw that I had put a long set of scratches on that side of the car when I backed in! There was a wooden "table" sitting there. I had noticed it when I looked in my rearview mirror on that side, but once it looked like I'd avoid it, I had backed in the rest of the way and did the damage. The crunching of the compost as I backed over it had masked the sound of the scraping.

I drove home, alternately pleased with how well my sifting had gone and despondent at the thought that I might need to have the car repainted. So much for free compost! As soon as I got home and had dumped the compost, I drove into the garage, found a bottle of rubbing compound, which is made for removing scratches from car finishes, and began rubbing. It took about five minutes of easy work, and the scratches disappeared completely! Happiness returned!

Now I can look out back at the pile waiting to be mixed into my gardens and smile. Next time, I'll back up more carefully, and be even happier. I may even get a trailer and hitch, because now I'm really fired up about getting more compost.

Does it say something bad about me that I get excited about decomposed plant matter?

Changes

One advantage of doing a strictly web-based comic strip is that I can change it after it runs online. In a newspaper, the strip runs once and that's the only version ever printed (unless it later shows up in a book or on a calendar). But with an online strip, I can make changes, corrections, improvements or upgrades as I see fit. This happened earlier this week.

The strip was about a T shirt on which the color ran after washing it. The first version, which appeared Tuesday,  had one clown talking and that was it. This is a technique used more often in anthology strips like the Far Side or Close to Home, where the characters are different every day, and therefore the traits of each aren't established enough to necessarily make their response funny. In a recurring-character strip, however, the personality of an established character can add to the humor. For example, Garfield may make a snide comment after Jon says something that is itself funny. Our familiarity with Garfield's sarcasm makes the cat's comment the punchline.

When I re-read the T shirt cartoon Tuesday night, however, I decided it might be funnier if the second clown points out that, even though the first guy now has a shirt that ridicules the wearer instead of whomever he's with, he is still wearing it...proving him to be stupid. So I redrew the necessary parts, uploaded it to the site in place of the former version, and told my email subscribers what I'd done, asking for their reactions. Several people responded, all preferring the new version. I do too. Of course, those of you who don't subscribe may have never gotten to see the original version---except that I ran it here. Another reason to sign up! This could happen to a strip again, but I probably won't tell you about it here next time.

I'm curious to see if there'll be any sales of the QlownTown logo shirt in the next few days, since it appears in this same cartoon...I figure product placement is okay in my own strip. I actually decided to offer this comic strip (the second version) printed on merchandise in the online store. (I no longer put every new strip on merchandise, unless I receive a request.) Now you can buy a copy of the strip on T shirts, mugs, etc., and even order a copy of the "runny" shirt itself so you can make a fool of yourself. Hey, people have actually ordered the "You wanna go where everybody knows you're inane" shirt--a sign that some people have no shame.

I live for these people.

Lost

Well, I guess I'll weigh in on the Lost finale, along with every other blogger on the internet. I had to watch it in low def, which looked really bad on a 50" screen, but we're having issues with our Tivo, cable, and/or set--we haven't pinned down which yet. (SPOILER ALERT: READ NO FURTHER IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE LAST EPISODE!!!) With my luck, they're probably all dying--which ties in nicely with today's blog.

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed the last episode. The fact that you could interpret it as a Christian metaphor (right down to the wound in Jack's side and the ending in a church); or as it all having been a dream in Jack's mind as he died--or maybe just the sideways reality of season six was a dream, or maybe his being on the island was a dream; or as an unknowable version of what Life and Death are really resonated with me. After six seasons in which mystery was piled upon mystery, and countless fans and reviewers pondered online What It All Means, an ending which was open to interpretation was the best conclusion. That we can feel relieved that most questions were answered--through one explanation or another--is a testament to the writers' skill. Maybe the sideways reality was Purgatory--a popular theory for a long time--but by not spelling out that it was, we can still look for other answers...or tell ourselves that that's indeed what it was. I was able to go to bed thoroughly satisfied--and yet I was anxious to see what others said this morning. Closure, yet still open to discussion.

I'm pleased that I can still ponder what happened in those six seasons, yet not be frustrated that there are big, unresolved questions left hanging that will never be answered. I would have thought that this series, with all its twists and turns, would have been a closed book when it ended. But I would now like to watch the whole thing again (at some point, and not all in one sitting!), knowing the ending, and see what answers I come up with as I follow the stories again. It's impressive when a linear drama is able to compel one to watch it again, even after one "knows" how it all turns out.

By the way, I'll give away the eventual ending of the QlownTown comic strip now: they all turn out to really be clowns. Big surprise.

Hidden stuff

I like to stick little details in the strips that people may or may not notice. In video-game speak, they're Easter eggs.

Today's strip features a clown using an iPad. It's right out there in the open, but only one person wrote to tell me she'd noticed it. I thought it was pretty cool to put it in there; I haven't seen any iPads in cartoons yet, although I'm sure I'm not the first cartoonist to draw one.

'Way back in March '09, I did a strip which included a duck whistling. That one wasn't hidden, but it was a little detail that a lot of people noticed. As a matter of fact, I may be the only one who thought that cartoon was funny, but I redeemed myself with a lot of people who liked the whistler.
 

In the octopus cartoon, the applicant's name was Callie Mari. It was probably illegible on small computer screens, but you'll be able to read when the book comes out someday. (Don't hold your breath.)

The little dinosaur whose dad was reading him a bedtime story had a Jurassic Park poster on his wall.


And it was a lot of fun to draw different kinds of brooms outside Voldemart.

When I began, I had planned to do lots of "half tone" colors using words, but that sort of fell by the wayside. I'll try to start doing it again, though. Again, it doesn't translate well to the low resolution of some computer screens. When the strips start appearing larger--a change we're planning for the site at some point--it'll be easier to spot. (If you can't read it, the grass at the bottom says GRASSGRASSGRASSGRASS.)

Entertainment for the simple mind, I guess.

Writing gags

I have to say, I love creating ideas for QlownTown. Someone dropped me an email this week to say how much she and her husband enjoyed the Russian Ukulele strip, and asked me how I come up with them. I've expounded on this in the past, so I won't repeat myself here. But this one had an interesting progression. It began as a scribble of a guy who walks into the strip with a guitar, or what appears to be a guitar, then opens it, revealing it to be a case with a guitar inside. When I sat down to do the finished version, that seemed a little incomplete. So I thought, how about if he has a big guitar case, inside of which is a smaller one, inside of which is a still smaller one. Then, I figured, why not make it an upright bass case, inside of which is a guitar case, then a mandolin, then a ukulele? I liked the even sillier logic of bothering to haul around an upright bass case just to to protect a ukulele.

I had wanted to show the original sketch, but can't seem to find it. This prompted an office cleaning this morning, during which I organized the strips I've drawn so far into semi-logical piles. I began drawing the daily strips about 11" x 3", and the earliest strips were drawn so they could also be a square panel. The idea was to offer a square or strip formats to newspapers, but I found it to be too time-consuming. (One artist I know of does it that way: Wiley Miller, whose Non Sequitur appears as both a strip and a panel, depending on the paper or site.) After a few months I switched to a larger format, 12-1/8" x 4-1/4", and I've occasionally done square panels along the way--after all, it only appears on the website (for now), so QlownTown can be any shape I want. So there are the early dual format drawings, the smaller strip size, the larger strip size, and originals that are the square-panel-only format, as well as the Sunday strips--which also vary in size if the artwork outgrows the intended size: I'm a big believer in trying to retain the freedom of the original pencil drawings, and if I think I got it right on the first sketch but some element goes "outside the lines," I'll just change the size of the drawing, resizing it in the computer as necessary.

Anyway, I did find this early sketch of another strip which evolved into the final product later. I was working as a kitchen designer at the time, but I wanted to remember the color concept more clearly, so you'll notice it's colored with highlighter pens--the only color source I had in the office.


 

When the strip appeared in its final form, it looked like this:












In this case, the original drawing and concept were pretty close to the final outcome. But the process from that first sketch was the less-fun part of the job. Coming up with the idea was the exciting thing. There's an artist, Keith Knight, who draws his strip, The Knight Life, in a cafe. That's not the setting: that's his "studio". They're kind of scribbly, but I like them, and he gets to basically sketch his initial idea and that becomes the finished cartoon! Lucky guy.

In the future, I'll try to post more before and after strips.

Wine

A few weeks ago, we visited our friends Kris and Lynda in Washington, DC. Among the many fun things we did over a long weekend was to have dinner at the home of a couple of our hosts' friends one night. As a thank you, we brought a couple of bottles of wine. Because the hosts already had the evening's wines planned out, the bottles we'd brought weren't opened that evening. (For those you wondering, it is not required that the hosts open a gift bottle--they may open them later if they choose; it is, after all, a gift.) We had brunch with the same people the next day, and I explained to them that the Pinot Noir we brought was a special wine to us.

I'd had it in a restaurant one night a couple of years earlier, and liked it so much that I decided later to purchase a couple of bottles at a wine store. It was more expensive than what I usually spend on a bottle, but I felt it was worth it for special occasions. It so happened that a few weeks later, we were going to Game Night at the home of our son's girlfriend, and decided to bring a bottle of wine. Her parents aren't big fans of wine, especially reds, but the only unopened bottle we had on hand was a bottle of the Pinot, so I reluctantly brought it. As it turned out, that was the night that our son and now-daughter-in-law announced their engagement, so it was nice to have a special, splurged-on bottle to toast the news.

When I told this story, the husband, Jeff,  reminded me that they were waiting for their daughter's boyfriend (whom we'd met the night before) to propose to her, and that maybe this wine would work some more magic. I wished him good luck, and said I wasn't sure if they should open it first to make it happen, or save it for when (or if ever) the announcement came. It would age well, so if they had to wait a long time, the wine would still be good anyway.

A couple of weeks later, I was ushering at a concert and Lynda came in. She told me, "They opened the wine". I immediately caught on and said, "You mean...?" and she said, "Yes, he proposed to her last night." The kids had called to tell Jeff and Ellen, and as soon as he got off the phone, Jeff had uncorked the bottle to toast the news.

Well, that made my day. To meet someone once and now have a unique bond through engagements and wine is pretty special. And now I---and the people with whom I've shared the story---have a new catchphrase: when a couple gets engaged, they "opened the wine". Kind of a nice metaphor for starting a life together, too.

Green

Ever since the first Earth Day forty years ago, I've tried to be ecologically responsible. In 1970, I tried driving 50 on the highway in my old Plymouth Duster and got about 35 MPG, whereas before it'd been closer to 27 or so. Then I bought a little Honda Civic back in 1976. I added foam board insulation to the walls of an already-insulated house that I restored in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, back in the late 70s. (My wife said it wouldn't gain us anything in resale value, but two years later when the house was done and the economy was in the crapper, people were excited about the extra insulation.) I won a cash award for building a superinsulated house in Maine back in the eighties.

None of which is is blow my own horn. I'm just saying, I'm glad the world is catching up. It's been frustrating for years. While Hummers gained popularity and SUVs ruled the roads, I wondered where the conscientious people were. Now smaller cars are becoming popular again and, more importantly, people are seeing conservation as a priority.

What really drove it home for me was seeing a popular comic strip recently in which a character rants about people changing oil every 3,000 miles instead of 6,000. When pop culture uses "green" topics as a teaching/humor tool, that's good. Consumer Reports actually discovered years ago, in controlled tests, that there was no significant advantage to changing the oil in one's car every 3,000 miles---that 6,000-mile changes were just as effective.They also pointed out that if everyone who changes every 3,000 would do it half as often, hundreds of thousands of gallons of tainted oil would be eliminated from the waste stream every year. But still people think 3,000-mile oil changes make sense.

About fifteen years ago, I began washing every foam meat or vegetable tray we got from the store and began storing them in my attic, on the theory that someday they would be recyclable and I would have kept all those trays out of the landfill. After a year or so, I gave up. Now I have some extra insulation up there, but I don't think those trays will ever be reused in any other way. Oh well. Sometimes you're ahead of your time--and sometimes you're just overly compulsive. Can't win 'em all. But I'm feeling like I--we--are winning on some important stuff.