A moment in time

My youth in a box

My brothers and I have been cleaning out my parents’ house, but it is slow going. We would go one Saturday, work a few hours and leave, but then we wouldn’t return for another week or two because things came up. But we are almost down to the wire.

Last weekend, I finally got most of the things out of my old closet in my old room. After weeks of cleaning the room out I found one box that was a treasure trove of my life. It was the last thing left in the closet after I went through everything else. It was quite large, sitting at the back of the closet and it contained a hodgepodge of things. There were old newspapers – ones I saved with news stories I thought were interesting and school newspapers I had printed, when I handled that with my printing business.

But there were lots of newspapers and magazines that I saved because my cartoons were in them. I used to do cartoons for local publications when I was in high school and college. I had forgotten about that. Some of them are excellent. I also had a lot of comic strips I was working on as a kid, they are not bad either.

I threw out a lot of the excess newspapers that weren’t needed, but I’ll show you some of the cartoons I had published and the comic strips I was working on when I get a chance. I noticed that the newspapers I had saved were of tragedies, like the Miami Herald with stories of 9/11 and Hurricane Andrew – things I would rather forget. Those I dumped. I didn’t need to revisit those times.

I found awards in the box, and diplomas from high school and college and lots of boy scout stuff – awards, badges, things like that. I also found letters – letters and post cards that friends sent me so many years ago. And I found random photos of myself and my family and friends. And everything brought back memories. There were lots of old computer parts and old computer programs from the early days of PC’s.

I worked at a local newspaper at one point and I sold ads as well as working in production putting the paper together for print. I drew a lot of things for them back then – I drew political cartoons but also I did drawings for advertisements that ran in the paper. I can see I really put a lot of time into them.

I found a color aid pack which I used in college. I still don’t understand the point of it for my classes after all these years, but I remember I couldn’t find it at the time and I needed it. My father ended up finding it in downtown Miami somewhere. It was expensive I remember, and I think we used it once or twice in class to cut out colors for something. Literally I used one or two color swatches from the whole packet.

I remember in one art class we used magazines to cut out colors from the printed images and we recreated famous art from that, gluing the odd shaped pieces into art. I did a small image of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. I’m hoping to find it as I clean out my old room, I’ve been looking for it all these years. I’d like to frame the little thing.

My recreation was only 3″ x 3″ and I remember seeing the original for the first time – it’s huge, it blew me away at the size after seeing the small piece I created so long ago. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon seems so large to me and my favorite, Starry Night is so small. Both at MOMA – worth the trip.

Anyway, I’ll show you some of the cartoons and things I found when I sort them out and hopefully some other things.

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Wrong place at the right time

I missed the eclipse! In person, that is, I watched it on tv.

I didn’t get any glasses and I asked around and no one I knew had any or any extras, so I just stayed in and didn’t attempt to look at the partial eclipse we had here in Miami. It was 45% here.

The neighborhood was quiet, I didn’t see or hear any neighbors out, so I guess it wasn’t a big thing here like it was in the total eclipse areas.

One thing I liked was seeing all the people watching the eclipse together, shouting and enjoying the moment together. It reminded me of July 4th, when I’m usually in NYC watching the fireworks over the river on July 4th. I’m with friends and/or family and surrounded by thousands of people in the city enjoying the same thing – cheering and oohing and ahhing while watching the fireworks, almost like the eclipse experience.

But I seem to be getting lazy as I get older. In the past I would have made an effort to get to one of the prime areas in the country. And I definitely would have had glasses to see the local version if I couldn’t make it to one of the prime areas.

Since the pandemic, I’ve been complacent. I’m not out and about doing things like I always did. There was a time in my life where I was at the beach almost daily; sometimes for an hour, other times all day. It was a thing I did. Now I don’t. And so many other things I used to do, I don’t do anymore. And it’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that I am a creature of habit. I easily get into habits and stick with them. The pandemic put me in a sedentary state and I’m still there.

My goal for the rest of 2024, and I guess forever, is to get out there and live, like I did most of my life.

I was always at the right place at the right time. One time in New Orleans I was walking down the street and there was the Olympic torch running by (with a person actually carrying it – there’s a cartoon in there somewhere), another time in traffic, I looked to my left, and there was Madonna driving next to me. Another time, I was an “accidental extra” in a tv show, just because I was standing at a filming location and they thought I was part of the paid background. I was always “there,” at the right place, at the right moment.

I’m going to strive for that again. I guess these days we would call it, “Instagrammable moments.”

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Chickens and roosters, oh my!

I’m getting up quite early these mornings, while it’s still dark out.

No, it’s not about Daylight Saving Time. It’s because there is a rooster in the neighborhood! And it start crowing about 5 am every day!

I’m not sure where it’s coming from, we live on a small cul-de-sac, so it shouldn’t be hard to find. I asked Ray, our UPS guy to call me if he sees it in his travels.

In Miami, there are chickens and roosters all over the place. I have a friend who calls us the land of peacocks and palm trees, because there are a lot of those, too. But the chickens and roosters are the worst.

I’ve seen chickens crossing busy highways, I know, there’s a joke in there somewhere and I’ve heard roosters over the years. Key West is known for them.

Years ago, when I lived in Coral Gables, there were chickens across the street. And I don’t mean at someone’s house, I mean they were just random on the street.

A few months back, there were chickens in the Publix parking lot. We would have to drive around them in order to avoid running them over.

The peacocks are welcome, by me anyway. A few years ago, a bunch of newspapers across the country misquoted me about the peacocks, making it look as if I didn’t like them, and people were not happy with me around here. But it was a misquote and I love them. The chickens and roosters, not so much.

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The haunting

I wasn’t sure if today’s cartoon would be understood by many people. But it makes me laugh.

My father used to always say, “Stop haunting me!” when we were kids if we nagged him about something. It was just a common expression around our house, I guess we “haunted him” a lot, because I remember him saying this often.

I guess there are so many old expressions that will soon be extinct. It sort of reminds me of sounds that will soon be extinct, like the sound of a ringing telephone or a typewriter bell.

I sometimes think of the opposite – of things that we hear today that maybe 100 years ago or so we would never hear – like a plane flying by, or a lawnmower, or any type of motor. If you go outside and listen, you’ll hear all these sounds which seem second nature. Freeways are loud, “Can someone turn down the freeway?” asks cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz, as he painted a mural that says, “The future is emission free!”

But imagine 100 years ago when a person would go outside and maybe just hear the clopping of horse feet on the pavement and maybe that’s it!

We have a construction site across the way, and the sound of that non-stop “beep, beep, beep,” of trucks and equipment backing up, is maddening. One of my neighbors called me one day to see if I could do anything about the sound, it was driving him nuts. “What could I do?” I asked him. “You know people, call someone!” was his reply.

I didn’t know who the call, so the sound goes on and on Monday thru Friday. It’s quiet on weekends.

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iPhone SOS

I was one of those people with the dead iphone yesterday. It wasn’t totally dead, I could use the wifi to do things, I just couldn’t make phone calls. Which actually, was a good thing. I don’t like talking on the phone. I prefer texting, which was working.

I woke up early and looked at the phone and I saw some messages regarding my cartoons had popped up on the screen. When people comment, it alerts me. The top comment said something like, “Phone hack.” It was on a cartoon that had nothing to do with a phone or a hack, so I checked the phone again and saw the SOS at the top of the phone where the signal bars should be.

I went to a website and it wouldn’t load and I tried other things and the same thing. I panicked. Was my phone hacked? How was that done? When I went to bed the night before, all was well. If I hadn’t seen that “phone hack” comment, I would not have thought much of the whole situation.

For about an hour I tried everything, I downloaded the latest update and I looked up things on google and You Tube, using my computer. I tried this, I tried that, I tried everything, panicking for an hour.

I’m usually good at fixing electronic or internet problems, but nothing worked.

I then thought that it could be AT&T and not just my phone, but of course I couldn’t call AT&T since the phone was down.

I turned on the 6 am news and there it was – it was a national outage! Phew. Relieved.

I made it through the early morning calmly then, since I knew there was nothing I could do. And before 8 am, the phone was back up to it’s usual self. I suspect many people slept through the whole thing. While many of us went crazy in the dark, needlessly. First world problems.

Someone posted this image on Twitter with the tagline, “AT&T customers this morning.”

I wondered about things like Apple Pay or using the phone’s boarding pass option at the airport. I’ve seen articles that say to download the boarding pass at home or print it out at the airport, rather than just have the app passport, and now that makes sense.

And what about the NY subway, where it’s “tap and pay” with the OMNY system? Will lines back up at the vending machines with people buying metro cards if this ever happens midday?

Also, of course, have cash or credit cards if you are an “only apple pay” user or other tap and pay users, which I suspect many Gen Z users are.

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Visiting the 16th century

We went to the 32nd annual Florida Renaissance Festival on Saturday. I hadn’t been for years. I went with some of my family this past weekend, but in the past, for many years, I would go with my friends, maybe two or three carloads of us would head to Quiet Waters Park in Deerfield Beach to attend.

It was just as I remembered. You travel back in time to the 16th century, it seems they want a lot of things paid in cash this year, I remember paying with “MasterCard and Lady Visa” in the past.

We ate a lot, we drank a lot, we spent a lot. After having such a cool/cold winter (for Florida), Saturday seemed to be the hottest day of the year.

Vendors for food and items made by artisans who are on site, are set up all over the forested park, around the lake, and there are performances and performers everywhere from horse jousting (my favorite) to archery, a maze, the human flying carrousel, glass blowing, minstrels, magicians and so much more. The king and queen are just a few of the “characters” who wander around the park.

The Festival runs until March 24, weekends only.

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The name game

This actually happened. Not the kneeling part, but the barista calling out, “Neil! Neil!” for his coffee. Of course my mind got to working when I heard that and I came up with this cartoon.

One time in Starbucks in NYC, there were four of us in there waiting for our orders. It was about 8:00 pm and they were getting ready to close down. All four of us customers were men.

They called out, “Tom!” And I went to pick up the order, but it was for another Tom who was there. And the same thing happened a couple of other times – there were four Toms in Starbucks waiting for our orders. No other customers in there, just the four Toms.

That was some sort of Universe message or something. Not sure what but I’m sure that will never happened again anywhere.

Every time I pass that particular Starbucks at 26th and Broadway, I think of that Tom incident.

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“Annoying photos

A friend posted this on Facebook: “Annoying in the moment but everyone is grateful afterwards.”

She was referring to a quote: “Take pictures of everything and everyone. I don’t care who I annoy by constantly taking pictures, in the end they will be all we have left. Every photo is a memory – capture it.”

I had to laugh because for years I would take pictures of everything – with a camera. This was before cellphones. So it was with an actual small camera that I carried around.

I would take pictures of us on the subway or on a bus, or in the middle of the street and one of my cousins, who I was always with, would get embarrassed and annoyed. He would always tell me to stop it, but in the end, he would always ask for a copy of the picture(s).

Every once in awhile he brings that up and we laugh.

Even today, with my cellphone I still embarrass people at times, even though everyone is constantly taking pictures all the time. I’ll say to a stranger who we ask to take our picture if they mind, “We are from Kansas, we aren’t used to all this city stuff,” I’ll say. I think the person knows I’m joking.

I read once that in this age of non-stop picture taking, we are losing something that in the old days was a part of it all – the scrapped pictures – which have a life of their own. But these days I assume most of us take a bunch of pictures and only save the ones we like, deleting the ones we don’t like, losing those scrapped, interesting pictures for good probably.

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What year is it?

This recent cartoon is not really correct – the hieroglyphics are not numbers.

The ankh, the cross symbol is an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol meaning “key of life,” used to represent the word for “life” it’s a symbol of life itself.

And the eye symbol – the Eye of Horus, in ancient Egypt, symbol representing protection, health, and restoration.

Numbers are shown here, as an example you can see the year 2765 is written as shown above and here are the Eye of Horus and the Ankh, the cross symbol.

But the Egyptians didn’t count the years as we do. The ancient Egyptians counted the years starting at the year a Pharaoh started his reign (called Regnal Years). So back then they started over every time they had a new Pharaoh.

Other than all that, I think it’s a cool cartoon.

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