news – Page 4

Nesting, social distancing, whatever you call it; let’s do it!

my-carona I have been trying to stay home and not “congregate anywhere,” practicing social distancing. I’m not doing things or going places where I don’t have to be. I did run to the supermarket yesterday to get a few things and it was maddening, of course people were buying up all the toilet paper, paper towels and water. I went early in the morning to avoid the crowds, but at 8 am the store was packed.

I think I am helping the cause by staying home, in this way I am trying to keep the whole country from closing down like Italy and France. I heard that if the virus gets worse, they can close us all down, make us stay home for weeks or a month. Not sure if that is true, but it sort of makes sense. So many local events have been shut down including Ultra, the big music festival, St. Patrick’s Day events, Spring Break!, schools are closed, churches, too, etc., so there must some validity to people congregating in large numbers.

I have friends who are out and about – biking, going to restaurants, theater, church, gym. Not sure what to make of that. I tell them they are selfish and could be carriers even if they don’t get infected. Maybe I’m getting paranoid and they aren’t. But I’m more worried about loss of business than of catching the virus myself and I feel that the more we all stay healthy, the more the economy and life in general will remain normal to some degree.

This isn’t to say I am not worried about people catching the virus, that is my main concern of course. But I do want life to return to normal and it won’t until the infections decrease. The best way to do that is to stay home and not be a potential carrier.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says that if we don’t start taking this seriously, we will all be quarantined for 14 days or more. The whole country!

I’m still cartooning, getting ready for the Tomversation comics debut on May 4. So I’m keeping busy. I’ve also been binge watching Breaking Bad and Shameless.

Why did the peacocks cross the road?

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I’ve been giving more interviews these days one one single subject, now that I ended the Coconut Grove Grapevine, than all these past years. I ended a publication I did daily in our town – the Grapevine was our daily news for 15 years. It was time.

Anyway, these interviews aren’t about me or the Grapevine – they are about the roaming peacocks we have in our neighborhood. Recently the City Commission declared that the offending peacocks will be removed humanely and that has put everyone in an uproar.

The peafowl roam the streets, you literally have to stop as you are driving to allow them to cross the street. It’s cute and picturesque, but I guess not if they are a nuisance to your property.

I was interviewed by NPR, WLS in Chicago, just now by some publication in Washington, DC and I think some paper in Chicago, also I see I am quoted in the New York Post and now The New York Daily News contacted me too.

I personally like them, but of course they haven’t been pecking at my car or jumping on my roof. I probably would feel differently if that were the case.

All these interviewers have me as “Tom Falco, editor of the Coconut Grove Grapevine,” and I’d like to now be, “Cartoonist, Tom Falco,” but I guess that doesn’t have as much authority and they think a title like “editor” makes me smarter and gives me more authority. A couple of them emailed me here, to this Tomversation account. When I see a newspaper contacted me, I hope it’s them asking about publishing my comics, but no, it’s those damn peacocks.

Today is Tom Falco Day!

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So this happened – February 14 is now Tom Falco Day in the City of Miami. I received a proclamation that says so. It may be just today, but I am claiming it in perpetuity so every February 14 is Tom Falco Day! That’s me at left with one of our City Commissioners Ken Russell.

For 15 years I published the news and was an activist in our little village and I decided to end the publication this month. So many of my friends and townspeople came out, such memories. It was bittersweet. It was so nice to see so many faces.

I am still living here, I’ll be around town, I just won’t be publishing the news every day, which is a big responsibility off my shoulders. I feel like it’s the last day of school. Forever!

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An earthquake? In Miami?

earthquake I was sitting here typing away on my desktop computer, when it started swaying. I thought I was imagining it at first. I didn’t look up to see if the blinds or other things were moving, I just noticed the monitor moving back and forth. It was shaking, sort of like when you shake your leg as a nervous habit – I thought I was doing that and making the desk shake.

I was at home in my home office in Miami.

At first I thought it was my neighbor upstairs on his treadmill or something. Then I thought it might be the construction crew down the block. When they first started building a new condo a couple of years ago, each time they drilled in the pylons, it shook the buildings in the neighborhood, we are on landfill. Lamps swayed, things shook, so I thought it was that again.

But I realized they were almost done with the job so it probably was not them. Then I thought, “An earthquake? Could it be an earthquake? Nah.”

I ran to the back balcony and looked out into the water, thinking someone was working out in the bay, again, maybe installing pylons. Nothing there, and then it popped up all over my Facebook feed that it was the residual effect from the earthquake between Jamaica and Cuba.

Maintaining an institution

The Miami Herald, my daily newspapers, is dropping the Saturday edition this spring, they will only print six days a week.

A few years back, The Times-Picayune in New Orleans dropped a few printed editions during the week, but I think they publish six days a week now. And today I saw a story on tv about the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Little Rock’s daily newspaper going digital. It’s been published for 200 years or so and the current publisher Walter Hussma wants to keep it in business. Their new plan – give every paid subscriber an iPad so that they can read the paper online! His goal is just to pay the bills and to keep the institution going, not to make a killing in profits.

“It’s a lot more interactive. We have slide shows. We have video. You know, when the Arkansas River flooded a few weeks ago, we had ten videos on the front page,” said Hussma

When they first talked about going digital, someone asked, “But what if people don’t have an iPad?” So the newspaper invested $12 million in iPads and now every subscriber receives a free one!

These videos explain it all.

NY Post has the best headlines

The New York Post has two of the best headlines this week.

Today’s paper is about Jeff Bezos being blackmailed by David Pecker.

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If you haven’t seen the news, Bezos, owner of Amazon and the Washington Post is being blackmailed by David Pecker, publisher of the National Enquirer. Pecker is threatening to expose Bezo’s pecker, literally, he has naked pictures of him. Story here.

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Yesterday’s cover is a play on the slogan, “Virginia is for Lovers.” The top guys in the state are all in some sort of trouble for either donning black face in their youth or sexual harassment. Story here.

These headlines are right up there with the NY Post’s 1983 headline: “Headless Body Found in Topless Bar.”

The best!

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March for Our Lives

march Did you watch the March For Our Lives event on Saturday? I’m sure you couldn’t miss it, there were demonstrations in 800 cites around the world. The largest of course was the Washington DC event.

If you watched, then you saw our new leaders. I don’t mean future leaders, I mean our leaders today, this is them! And you know what? I’m ready to be lead.

enough They say that the 1940s is the “Greatest Generation,” but I do believe that they have met their match. Today’s up-and-coming generation are people to be proud of. They are all inclusive, they are smart and they are determined. They are fighting for their lives. Literally.

It took these young adults to do what a handful of our leaders cannot or will not do. To listen to these 16 and 17-year-old speak and even 11-year-olds, was amazing and encouraging.

These kids are inclusive of everyone, they are making American Great Again. They are making America the way they want America to be.

Changes are coming and for the first time in a long time I am hopeful, very hopeful about our future.

NY Daily News; keeping it real

You gotta love the New York Daily News front pages. Today’s is a real winner.

I’m proud of Alabama for the way they voted – moving into the future. And I’m proud of the Daily News for always keeping the front pages real.

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Here are some I copied from Google search, you can see so many of the great Daily News covers here.

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Developer guilty of destroying graffiti

tom-heading — Me at the Wynwood Walls, Miami.

I live near Wynwood, the Miami arts district, so a story I read in the NY Times caught my attention.

A Queens, NY developer was found guilty by a jury of destorying graffiti.

There was a graffiti filled complex called 5Pointz that consisted of almost 50 spray-painted murals. For 20 years, the Long Island City building was a collaboration between the developer Jerry Wolkoff and graffiti artists, very much like Wynwood in Miami. Then in 2014, Wolkoff had it torn down and turned into high-end apartments, which is what Long Island City has become these days.

Wynwood is a while neibhborhood covered in Graffiti, there is one section called the Wynwood Walls where they are literally painted walls inegrating with each other. This Queens desecration is almost as if someone came in and knocked down or white washed the Wynwood Walls.

The artists sued Wolkoff for violating what they call the Visual Artists Rights Act.

What’s interseting is that the murals in both locations – Long Island City and Wynwood, change often, they are painted over with new murals, so just the fact that there was a lawsuit and that the artists won is something, because in all honesty, the last set of murals would have been painted over by other artists eventually.

The jury awarded damages to the artists. I don’t know how much.

Here are some more murals from Wynwood in Miami.

Charles Schulz’s house burned down

As the fires burn Santa Rose, CA, I couldn’t help but think of Charles Schulz, I think he made Santa Rosa famous for me. Sadly, his house burned down yesterday in those massive wildfires taking over that region of California.

His wife, Jean, got out safely, but the house is gone.

According to Monte Schulz, Charles’s son “All of the memorabilia and everything is gone.”

But the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center, which is also located in Santa Rosa, says that the work that is there is safe and not damaged. Most of the original art is there. That’s the good news, if there is any good news out of this.