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?