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Hot or cold milk in coffee?

This Our Boarding House cartoon is from July 10, 1929. Almost 100 years ago, and we are probably still drinking our coffee the same way in the U.S. – with cold milk, if we add milk.

I live in Miami, so when we order coffee at a restaurant, if you order coffee, you get Cuban Coffee, which is espresso with about eight, yes eight, teaspoons of sugar.

If you want a regular cup of coffee, you order “American Coffee” and then you’ll get it. But in many cases, they give you warm/hot milk on the side if you ask for milk or cream with it. You have to ask for cold milk, like The Major here in the cartoon.

I guess it makes no sense to have hot coffee and then put cold milk in it, but that’s how it goes in the rest of the U.S. if you’re not in Miami. For some reason I skeeve hot milk put in hot coffee. As for iced coffee, I like it ice and coffee. That’s it. No milk, no sugar. I’ve ordered it at a McDonald’s and I have to explain to them more than once that I don’t want anything else in it, just the ice and coffee. They could not wrap their minds around the fact that I didn’t want anything in it.

I live on Cold Brew Iced Coffee when I’m in New York in the summer, usually from Starbucks, I order it on the app and pick it up. These days, as you know, it’s sweltering in summer so I drink that a lot. They know me at a few of the Starbucks in NYC and they just hand me the coffee when they see me without calling my name – I’m there that often. But they get it – ice and coffee. Nothing else. Well, one thing – they used to have these little square bites – they were lemon coconut, something like that. They no longer have that as an item on the menu. So it’s just the iced coffee, nothing else, right now.

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Operation Lighthouse Rescue

I was telling one of my cousins last week that I watch a lot of PBS. She assumed I watched a lot of “nature shows” or educational stuff, but I told her I watch a lot of British tv – britcoms, mysteries, etc.

I love Doc Martin, Escape to the Chateau, Poirot, Are You Being Served, Keeping Up Appearances (my mother loved Hyacinth Bucket) and Death in Paradise (my father loved this show), to name a few. And interestingly enough, I saw this great episode of NOVA last night, an episode from 2016 called “Operation Lighthouse Rescue.” It was about the Gay Head Light (lighthouse), in Martha’s Vineyard, that has been a fixture since 1856.

The lighthouse was in danger of falling off of the cliffs, as the erosion got closer and closer. So a plan was set in place to move the much-loved and historic lighthouse back 135 feet to save it for another 150 years or so.

I kept picturing people 150 years from now doing the same thing- moving the lighthouse in another 135 feet, cursing the people in 2023 for not doing it at the time. But they can’t move the lighthouse too far back, – it still serves a purpose and needs to be visible by boats at sea.

It’s a fun program, talking about the history of the lighthouse, showing the village people of Martha’s Vineyard and the actual crew doing the job of lifting the lighthouse four feet off the ground and moving it without it collapsing under its own weight.

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The Brooklyn Museum

I went to the Brooklyn Museum the other day. I visited the art and then just before I left, I stopped by the Ancient Egypt area. And you know what? I felt at home. I literally felt at home.

I was pleased to see objects from Ramesses II and so many others, including Akhenaten.

I’m always fascinated by ancient Egypt. The exhibits have inspired me to do more Egypt-based cartoons.

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Cleopatra’s Needle

I don’t know why I waited so long, but I finally saw one of Cleopatra’s Needles – which is in Central Park, behind the MET Museum.

It’s an Egyptian obelisk. There are three, NYC has one, London has one and Paris. Alexandria, Egypt, is the original location.

The one in NY was erected in 1881. It’s over 3500 years old!

I love ancient Egypt so much, not sure why it’s taken me so long to see it.

While called Cleopatra’s Needles, they were already over 1000 years old in her time.

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Long wait for Starry Night

I went to the MET (Metropolitan Museum of Art) in NYC to see Starry Night. It was on loan from MOMA for a special Van Gogh exhibit called Van Gogh’s Cypresses.

To be honest, if you’ve seen much of various Van Gogh works in different museums, it’s not worth the trip. The wait can be hours to get in.

Once you are in the museum, you need to get on a wait list for Van Gogh. You scan a QR code with your phone and wait and wait and wait and wait to be pinged for your arrival into the exhibit at your allotted time.

If you are willing to wait, you could be seeing everything else in the MET while waiting, but if you just intend to see Van Gogh, prepare for the wait.

Many people are crowded in and it’s more enjoyable to see his work, especially Starry Night, at it’s regular home at MOMA where it never is a madhouse.

I was in and out, but I did of course enjoy the rest of the museum.

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Those crazy plastic flowers

There’s this crazy phenomena happening in NYC these days – plastic flowers on buildings.

I think it started during the pandemic, I remember seeing these big plastic flower arrangements popping up, mostly to disguise or prettify, the outdoor wooden structures built for seating when people were unable to eat at indoor restaurants.

After a couple of years, they got nasty – faded and broken and falling apart. But these days, I don’t see any of the craggy ones, it’s all new ones – colorful, big colorful plastic flowers – everywhere!

I think they are ugly. Just my opinion.

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Starry Night, out on loan

I went to MOMA, the Museum of Modern Art in NYC yesterday, only to not see my favorite piece of art – Starry Night. I had forgotten that it was on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There’s some sort of Van Gogh exhibit going on up there and they loaned it out. Not a problem as I can easily get to the MET a few blocks uptown.

But I did find it uninteresting to see some of the new displays at MOMA. As you can see here, on display are soap boxes – no, not Warhols, something else – and there blocks of wood, a violin filled with corn, doors with bats. And some other weird things.

I did see so many of my other favorites by Picasso and Monet and so many others.

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NYC summer

I’m back in NYC for a bit of the summer. Had my first Mr. Softee of the summer – actually first of the year and to think about it, I haven’t had any ice cream of any kind since October, which was a Mr. Softee at a block party in Westhampton.

Ran into a Chinese food festival at Washington Square Park – delicious food, long lines. Wall to wall people. Summer is here in NYC!

That cute little guy was in my face in the subway. Luckily I didn’t have my Mr. Softee cone with me, he would have been all over it.

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Berry’s World

I saw some Berry’s World cartoons online the other day. It reminded me of Ralph Dunagan, who I wrote about here. Both of them seem to be big influences on my drawing style – on the way I draw comics. I love their styles, which are very similar.

When I was a kid I enjoyed both cartoonists’ work.

Jim Berry’s “Berry’s World” was a daily cartoon which ran from February 18, 1963, through March 1, 2003, with a Sunday color comic.

Jim received the National Cartoonist Society Newspaper Panel Cartoon Award for 1965, 1966, and 1972 for his work on the strip.

I see so much of my own work in both of these cartoonists and until recently I didn’t realize that they were a big influence on my work.

Here are a few images of Dunagin’s work.

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Buggy bugs

My Ollie And Jacomo cartoon which was published yesterday hit so close to home.

In Florida, while mosquitoes may be a problem, Palmetto Bugs are the worst. If you’ve never seen one, picture a large black roach, sometimes two inches long – that flies!

I’ve lived in Florida practically all my life, but I’ve never got over seeing one in my house. I remember years ago I practically destroyed my house like this cartoon, trying to kill one, which was climbing up the wall. I can picture it in my head now, crawling along a painting above the tv. I was getting ready to go out for the night, but I couldn’t leave until I got it, which eventually I did.

A couple of weeks ago I walked into the kitchen at night, turned on the light and there was a big, and I mean big, palmetto bug sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor. I had the bug spray in my other room across the house, so I went running to get it before the bug disappeared and in the process, I slipped on the floor, put my hand out to steady myself and fell into the closet doors, which are now broken and need replacing!

I did get the bug in the end though. I bought this new eco friendly stuff that paralyzes the bugs but is safe for people and the environment.

It’s funny, when I’ve mentioned to people that I broke my closet doors by falling into them, they ask me if I tumbled into them because I was drunk.

I hadn’t seen a palmetto bug inside my house for over 10 years. Now every once in awhile one pops up, I don’t know what changed. I’ve taken to spraying once a month now under the stove and at entrances, sort of like an exterminator would.

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