Amazing Grace

A History of Cleveland, Ohio in 50 Objects, #1 of a Series: The Letter 'A'

A couple of months ago, the New York Times ran a feature entitled  "A History of New York in 50 Objects," a selection they hoped "could embody the narrative of New York." They were inspired by the BBC's "History of the World in 100 Objects," and I in turn have been inspired by them. 

Probably any city or civilization could inspire such a list, but Cleveland ... well, it's so goofy and so sober and so cultured and so vulgar in turns that I can't imagine the list ever ending. 

But the beginning?  The beginning is easier.

To be updated whenever I feel like it.  Another part of the "30 Days of Comics" effort.  Now I'm only two behind.  

30 Days of Comics: Scars.

Click to enlarge.

So, somebody had this great idea: "30 Days of Comics," modeled after National Novel Writing Month.  Cartoonists draw 30 comics in 30 days.  Okay.  As I say, it's a great idea -- but 30 Days of Comics takes place in November, which is also NaNoWriMo.   And this year, I was determined to do NaNoWriMo.

Well, I'm a day behind in 30 Days of Comics, and now 2 days behind in NaNoWriMo.  We'll see what happens. 

You can check other cartoonists' progress during the month of November by searching on Twitter.

This comic was inspired by an art prompt from a forgotten source.  (Sorry about that.)

"...the trees don't die, they just pretend, go out in style, and return in style: a new style."*

Black marker and colored pencil, drawn on the back of an appointment reminder from my doctor.  (If you look closely, you can see the map with directions to the clinic showing through.) For some reason, I've never been good at keeping a sketchbook, but often use scrap paper, the envelopes from junk mail, etc.

Found this hastily-drawn sketch buried under piles of papers around my computer; had forgotten about it.  It's from last autumn, and the subject may need some explanation.

In late October --it must have been the afternoon of Halloween, blue skies, puffy white clouds, golden autumn leaves all around-- I was driving home from somewhere, when something caught my eye.  I glanced over, and jumped when I saw what seemed to be a couple of small ghouls.

You know, just raking the leaves in a front yard, like suburban ghouls do.

It was only after I'd passed by that the scenario arranged itself in my imagination:

"Now, before dinner, and before trick-or-treating, I want you two to get those leaves raked."

"Mommmmmmmmm!"

"I mean it -- now get to it."

"Can we wear our costumes while we do it?"

(Pause.) "Well, not the whole thing.  You can wear your masks."

"Yaaaay!"

I'm glad I found this little sketch.  Seems appropriate for the first weekend of fall. 

Don't know how these kids will disguise themselves this Halloween -- I can't even quite remember where I saw them  -- but for one instant, this is what they were.

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*From the poem "Leaves" by Lloyd Schwartz

23 Years, 4 Homes, 5 Cats, 2 Dogs, and 1 Mustache, To Say Nothing of Some Truly Regrettable Hairstyle Choices On My Part

No, it's not just you.  It's crooked. 

Today is our 23rd wedding anniversary.  There are not enough words in the language for me to tell the world how much I love my husband, or how lucky I am to know him, and what a truly good man he is.

So here's a silly drawing instead.  (Little-known fact:  Silly drawings are, in fact, the traditional present for a 23rd wedding anniversary.)

Vote Goat!

My design for my friends Heather & Ken's 3rd annual invitation-only "Goat Day" celebration.  

What's Goat Day? 

As Heather says, "Wait, you don't know about the traditional observance of GOAT DAY? How sad for you. But we can fix that.

"Come play with adorable new baby goats. Try your hand at milking a goat if you want, or not. Sit on the porch and drink sangria. Play the ukelele. Bring food and/or drink to share. Eat a motherlovin' smoked turkey. Take a walk in the pastures or woods. Go nap on the hammock."

Heather and Ken's dogs will also be there. Many of them are smarter than most people, but most people don't hold that against them.  (Incidentally, Heather maintains a blog entitled Raised by Wolves, and if you're at all interested in dogs, search and rescue, livestock, farming, biology, or life in the country, you should be reading it.)

But mostly Goat Day is designed to capitalize on the fact that baby goats are the cutest thing God ever made.  (Well, maybe they're in a tie with puppies.)  This year, the cuteness will be well nigh unbearable, as Heather now has dwarf Nigerian goats, and their brand-new kids are ickle widdle twee little sweethearts.  I met two of the new baby goats a couple weeks back.  I picked one up.  It looked up at me with twinkly eyes and let out a barely audible "maaaa-aaaaa-aaaaaaa," and it was all I could do to keep from running to our car, tossing it into the back seat, and taking it back home with me, fish-tailing out Heather and Ken's driveway as I raised a cloud of gravel and dust. (Eventually, though, I suppose I'd have to come back and get my husband, and the whole incident would just become embarrassing.)

At any rate, Heather's calling this year's Goat Day "Goatterdammerung," but I'd completed this design before I knew that. Frankly, I was childishly entranced by the fact that "Vote" and "Goat" rhyme, and didn't want to wait another four years to take advantage of that fact. 

Some year, I hope Heather decides the theme for Goat Day will be "Goat Day: Electric Boogaloo." 

Meanwhile, t-shirts in a variety of styles and colors are available.  I'm mindful that I'm posting this on the day the Republican National Convention is getting underway.  Goats are adorable, intelligent, curious, independent, and loyal ... in short, seemingly everything most current Republican politicians are not.  Irony.

Ninja Uterus Comics

Just in time for the Republican convention!

This comic was conceived (get it? get it?) when the divine Deborah Harkness shared Jennifer Tucker's New York Times article "The Medieval Roots of Todd Akin’s Theories."

During the ensuing discussion, author Alyssa Harad suggested we go back to the ancient notion of the 'wandering womb,' adding, "I want to send mine out on secret ninja missions to take care of this kind of business."  And then Alyssa made the mistake of musing, "Am now dying for a webcomic starring a ninja womb."  

So, there you have it. 

Some notes: 

*There will be more to come, both in terms of plot and design, I think. I keep looking at Mild-Mannered Ninja Uterus and trying to figure out how I can give  hair done up in a bun. You know, so that when she goes all "Ninja Uterus SMASH!" she can cast her glasses aside and shake her hair out, in the classic superheroine tradition.

I keep debating this within myself, and am very close to concluding that, if I'm going to have an ambulatory uterus with legs and feet running around outside a body, at that point, I can pretty much do whatever the hell I want.  

Honestly, in a world where it seems that the sum of male Republican politicians' knowledge of human reproduction from clandestine conversations on their elementary school playgrounds -- or better/worse still, a late-night game of "Telephone" at a sleepover -- the idea of an ambulatory uterus, with or without bun, doesn't seem that absurd.

*Sometimes cartooning leads me into weird, weird, areas of the imagination; hence the earnest conversation I had last night with my husband on the topic of 'considering that the original ninjas were mainly meant to infiltrate, and look as ordinary as possible, would a disembodied uterus actually wear the modern ninja costume ideal of all-black, with only its eyes showing? Wouldn't that make stealth more difficult? Unless it were night?'

I told you it gets weird.  Of course, one of my favorite aspects of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is that the only part of the ninja uniform they wear is their scarves/masks.  Because wearing a mask makes a giant bipedal turtle carrying a martial arts weapon less identifiable. 

*If your sperm/semen is the shade of green depicted above, please consult your physician. 

Update, August 27th, 8:45PM: Apparently uteri are on the loose.  Seek shelter! 

 

Shadow of Night and Dinosaurs

My college friend Deb Harkness came to Cleveland a couple of weeks ago, on her book tour for her #1 New York Times bestseller Shadow of Night.  She was originally scheduled to appear at a branch of our local library, but so many people signed up to attend, the library moved the event to the auditorium of the high school -- which was filled to capacity.  Eager readers came from all over the area, other states -- and at least one came from Texas! 

Deb's audience clearly loves her, which is only right, as she is incredibly brainy, wise and droll.  (Case in point: We went to dinner with her the night before her appearance.  As we reminisced, I said that I'd gotten so used to her being a Southern Californian -- she teaches at USC -- that I couldn't recall where she was originally from; she explained that she hails from the far outer suburbs of Philadelphia -- "not on the Main Line."

The author regrets to announce ...

 "Like, um ... Lancaster?" I guessed.

"No, not that far out," said Deb. "We were Amish Adjacent."*)

Fans of her novels lined up for an hour before her reading & talk to have Deb sign their books (and for an hour after her talk, for that matter).  As she began her remarks, Deb said that a boy waiting in line with his mom had asked her, "Are there any dinosaurs in your book?"

She had to tell him, ruefully .... "No dinosaurs."

Which is a darn shame, but Shadow of Night seems to be doing pretty well without them. 





P.S.  It's not too much of a spoiler to relate that Shadow of Night involves time travel back to 1600s England, where the novel's main character discovers there is a distinct lack of modern tableware.  Coincidentally, the day after Deb's appearance, a culture-newsy web site I frequent featured this fascinating article on the history of the fork, which, it turns out, features enough drama, intrigue and whimsy to rival any novel.  

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*For the uninitiated, "Beverly Hills Adjacent" is a euphemism used by real estate salespeople, and the upwardly (but-not-that-upwardly mobile), to obscure the fact that a property is not actually in Beverly Hills.  Eric Spiegelman notes, "If someone tells you they live Beverly Hills Adjacent, they’re selling something."

Lesser Presidential Encounters with the Supernatural

A friend of mine complained about people who complain that Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter has no historical merit.   "No shit," he says.  "It's about vampires."

This reminded me that, once upon a time, film critic Roger Ebert appeared on Conan O'Brien's show, and somehow the conversation drifted to *Kazaam,* starring Shaquille O'Neal, which Ebert described/describes as one of the worst movies of all time. One of his complaints is that Shaq-as-genie showers a kid with all kinds of modern name brand candies, in a clear example of product placement. But then Ebert added something to the effect of "Wouldn't a 2,000 year old genie from Arabia be more apt to give a kid dried figs or something?"

And Conan gave him a look, and said slowly, in a voice dripping with irony, "Soooo... you didn't like the historically inaccurate rappin' genie movie?" 

My husband and I pretty much say this in response to any complaint like the one my friend brings up.  ("Soooo ... you didn't like the historically inaccurate Abraham Lincoln-as-vampire killer movie?")


Here's some historical accuracy:

James Madison was our shortest President, at 5 feet, 4 inches.

William Howard Taft was our tubbiest President.  (See what I did there?  See?)  He may or may not have once gotten stuck in the White House bathtub. 

Lyndon Baines Johnson horrified dog lovers by picking up his beagles, Him & Her, by their ears.  Frankly, it's always looked to me as if LBJ was messing with people's minds, because if you look at pictures where he's "lifting" the dogs up by their ears, their back legs are never off the ground.  I think it's possible that Johnson cued the dogs by starting to "pull" at their ears, then the dogs would start to stand up on their back legs while Johnson kept up the illusion of "pulling." 

But LBJ was a complicated guy.  It's hard to say, really.

Holy cow (and exploding cat)

Okay.  Neil Gaiman just re-tweeted me.  NEIL FREAKING GAIMAN.

He'd originally tweeted, "Dear god I'm up against Stephen Fry in the Anglo Fan Favorites tournament."

How could one possibly choose between the two?

If you haven't seen or read Gaiman's recent commencement speech to the University of the Arts, you really should.  If you need any kind of inspiration in any kind of artistic endeavor -- or any endeavor at all, really -- watch it or read it. 

Artist Gavin Aung Than has gloriously rendered the speech into comics form.  And for that matter, Than's site Zen Pencils is a treasure trove of inspirational words, whenever you may need them.

Cats at Work: Faux Postage

Earlier this year, the United States Postal Service issued a set of stamps honoring Dogs at Work, featuring dogs in familiar jobs -- guide dogs for the blind, therapy dogs, military dogs, and search & rescue dogs.

Despite their reputation for indolence and indifference, cats have jobs, too, and I felt they should be honored for their contributions to our daily lives.  Don't try to put these on envelopes, though.

That admonition reminds me of a story which pops up in a couple of the many fun history books we have all over the house:  in 1874, the city government of Liege, Belgium, in an act of sheerest  optimism, attempted to train the town's cats to deliver the mail.  It didn't work. The New York Times archive has a stickily twee contemporary article (PDF document)* describing the experiment, but here's the quick summary:

The town fathers of Liege presented the town cats with a pile of letters.

The cats looked at the pile of letters.

The cats looked up at the town fathers, said "no," and left to complete the other projects they had scheduled for that day.


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*Both pages of the New York Times article are in the PDF; scroll way down to see the first column.

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More About "Cats at Work": ink, Copic marker, and colored pencil on Borden & Riley #234 Paris Paper for Pens.

Four of the cats here are modeled on cats we own or have owned.  The gray and white "Meditation Teacher" cat honors our late, great cat Argyle.  His official job title in real life was, more accurately, "Benevolent Warrior King."

Archie, one of our current cats, has dedicated his life to defending America--or at least my husband and me -- from the Red Dot Menace.

Henry was our sundial -- to borrow from Christopher Smart's poem about his cat Jeoffry, "For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him," although Henry's love affair with the sun, and the world, ran through afternoon, early evenings and in dreams all through the night, and likely continues on to this day, somewhere in the universe.

Gingersnap, poor little man, was a cat of very little brain, but much affection.  His kneading massages were accompanied by a window-rattling purr, and less attractively, a cascade of drool.

A Dessert in Honor of The Transit of Venus