This perfect Start-Of-Winter cartoon coincided with a massive ice storm in our town affecting over 7000 people, mostly losing power. I sent it to everyone I could think of and got enthusiastic responses.
Glen has a dry wit that goes with his fine lines. He comes the nearest of any cartoonist I know to drawing a stick figure yet the pathos and emotion of his main loser is all the more intense for that. This cartoon deserves notable mention, especially for its timeliness!

Coverly has just gotten better and better this entire January. I have wanted to put some comic strips on this blog as examples but haven’t figured out how. So I decided to try and photograph them on my computer screen. Does the picture work?
Great things about this terrific comic mind – the sideways eyes of his characters like thick little boiled eggs looking for a way to escape the face, tongue in cheek dialogue, often an element of fear to sharpen the humour.
Today’s is in colour so it shows up better. My husband worked in prison so I’ll print this off for him. Coverly’s one of the best of the dailies.

We represent 88 years, each of us the year we were born. I’m trying to help them find some in the twenties and thirties: 1927, 1929, and 1931, 32, 34 and 1936. There are a few later years. Each of us get our own note on the piano. Our pictures will be on exhibit and perhaps there will be a composition! Whatta great idea!

This great old church was once just across the green from my nearly 200 year old house. (It’s still there but a number of buildings now lie between us). The first prime minister of Canada was married here. There’s lots and lots of ancient limestone in our small city, all of which is enjoyable in any weather.

I mean, look! A downtown cathedral just off the grocery parking lot. Its stained glass windows were on Canadian postage stamps at Christmas.

Vista’s everywhere. Whatta downtown to be part of. In 65 days, Spring light will splash all these limestone facades and there will be no better place to be.

Football is on my tv as usual on Sunday afternoon. Books almost swallow up the tv which has the rabbit & pigeon statuary. As a background noise it is both reassuring & helpful as i write. Given that I have a newly-discovered Metis heritage, perhaps these animal symbols I have unconsciously collected have deeper meaning in my life. As do the books. But then, being a retired bookseller, what would you expect?

City hall skating rink was deserted as snow blew obscuring efforts to shovel. Snow covered yesterday’s ice, sometimes precariously. Everyone who had been praying for Christmas snow ought to feel a tad guilty…

Woman wearing nude pantihose and three inch heels stepped daintly into this snowdrift outside while I gasped. Did her mother never tell her about boots? She’d evidently walked from her car. I imagined her feet turning blue…

Sky and ground same colour, the way it was in Alaska. But then, it IS January. And I do live in Canada where, (the U.S. believes), we live like this all year long.

No one on the streets. No dogwalkers, students and professors slipping by, shift workers coming home having stopped by the grocery store on the way. Nobody.
Then I see two young women, balancing themselves as though they were walking a tightrope. And a heating fuel truck making an emergency delivery. It is 8AM and the world glitters outside. Ice hangs down from my vine. I throw some sand from the 5 pound bag I keep just inside the door but it sinks without a trace.
So I take my finger off the phone where I was about to call for a cab to take me to swim and on to work. And, reluctantly, and with bitter memories of my native land, Alaska, I Stay Home.

The lawn chair & green bin all encased in ice like a precious display behind glass in a museum. Ice storm days play out differently each one. It may be cleared up by 11, the time I am supposed to be a work. Or it may not. I just wish to stop juxtaposing my prone fallen body over every glittering bit I see around me.

If you have a message you wish you could send out to your entire city not just your small community, the local newspaper is just the ticket if you word things right. Most always it is pleased to help if your shtick is not simply self-serving. Your words will reach all over the place with no cost to you.
I wrote just such a place last Good Friday, about a panhandler and the way much of our downtown is having the troubles that downtowns do these days. I not only got half a page but my picture as well. Whether or not that was a bonus, I don’t know.
I’ve been hearing a lot of complaining about the paper; its thinness, connection to a right wing chain of newspapers and even a group set up to encourage people not to subscribe. Nobody seems to see that papers are battling to stay alive these days and such moves might just kill it dead. Then what?
I’m not keen on the online read, demanding special computer glasses and glazing my eyes over long before the print would’ve done. There really still is a place for the hard copy version.

Not having ANY local paper is a good way to shoot yourself in the foot. Maybe get a shopping newspaper which will REALLY give you cause for complaint.
It’s hard when you remember a thick paper, replete with local issues, maybe even literary supplements and active letter pages only to see it dwindle down to a single 4 page section, if that. But entropy is the nature of the universe. Things change. Or, as Thoreau says, “Things don’t change – we change.” I believe in newspapers with all my heart and in making them BETTER by contribution and encouragement. Anything else is just daft!

Panhandlers (panners) aren’t invisible. Stop debating as to whether ot not to give them money. Don’t. Instead, look them in the eye whenever you neet, smile (acknowledging they have a right on this planet just as you do) and say, “Good Morning,” in a friendly fashion. Don’t hurry on. Realise that you have a right to do as you do. Don’t judge or condemn them. If you’re asked, point out where they can get a free meal regularly.
If you don’t KNOW where, educate yourself. Your local library will know. In our town, one restaurant in particular will always provide a bowl of soup and a roll with no questions asked, no money exchanging hands. There’s also a list of rotating churches that feed the homeless plus our homeless ‘restaurant’ which is not a soup kitchen and costs a dollar. There is no need for anyone ablebodied to go entirely hungry here in a harsh northern climate.
If you’re comfortable with it, and not as a daily thing, pick out one or two to focus on and contribute to them from time to time. I chose a woman over 70 who delivers the daily paper at 5AM and has cats to feed and the gentleman from my neighbourhood at the top who has his challenges. If I hear the person I have chosen is putting the $$ towards drugs, I stop. If I know for sure. But I never stop saying good morning.

This panner seemed to be part of a gang of 3 who were taking turns sitting in the chair draped with the red blanket while the other two watched from a bench facing. I smiled and spoke to each of them. I reserved the right to not give them any money while still acknowledging their existence on the planet. This feels good to me.

We can hear every word & note of the Blues Festival when it comes around in August. Then there’s the stage set up and blocking the street…

But all of this negative talk is just so much blowing in the wind. Basically I’m deliriously happy living downtown. I look forward to the crowds, tourists (taking my picture usually), traffic, noise and activity, having grown up on the barren lonely tundra. Wouldn’t trade where I live for anything at all.
But I’ve enjoyed listing the things people complain about, once they move downtown. Did I mention late night drinkers upchucking on the sidewalk?