Sparky & Co.

Of comic strips still running new (or at least "new") installments, a huge number are now legacy affairs. That is to say, carried on by someone other than their creator. Dennis the Menace, Family Circus, Beetle Bailey, Hagar the Horrible, Blondie, Shoe, and Gasoline Alley all continue while their original cartoonists are no longer with us. And that's a very partial list. It's not inherently wrong, and some successors do better than others, but ultimately it's a business thing.

However long we make this list, Peanuts would not be on it. Charles M. Schulz continued to work on it until he died in 2000. While you could argue that in later years he spent too much time on Snoopy and off-Snoopy characters like Spike, he never phoned it in. All along, he wrote and drew with care, introducing new characters here and there even in the late nineties. By the point where he would have had to be replaced, he had become irreplaceable. 

Speaking of...

 

It feels like a bit of a cheat to do another video post right away, but I couldn't resist. This is a brief excerpt from an interview between Jorge Luis Borges and William F. Buckley. Borges talks about why English is his favorite language to read. Was he biased by being part English himself? Well that was on his father's side, and in his papa's case that was mixed in with a lot of Spanish and Portuguese. So I don't think it's necessarily the deciding factor. Of course he wrote in Spanish, which is the most logical way to go about things when you kick off your career in Argentina. But he had a feel for English, and in this clip he's got a beautiful accent.

of note

Perhaps because I'm from the first half of Gen X, two TV theme songs are a part of my conscious or unconscious mind. One is Jack Elliott and Allyn Ferguson's music for Barney Miller. 

The other is Bob James's theme for Taxi.

Both are at least jazz adjacent. James was in fact a well known jazz musician and composer from the early 60s onward. Taxi's theme was really an excerpt from a song called "Angela" from one of his own albums.

It's also noticeably the softer of the pieces, compared to the brash, bass-driven Barney Miller. Could be that it was a sign that the national mood or at least aesthetics was changing. Or it could have just been an in-studio choice.

Am I blue?

What is the color indigo? On the spectrum as we see it, the area made up of colors that look more or less blue is quite broad. Shades known as "indigo" are darker and in some cases verge on purple. But there's no hard boundary.

There's an interesting backstory. Isaac Newton codified the spectrum as it's known to modern people. He wanted seven colors because he had a surprising yen for numerology, and indigo dye was a well-known reference point for his contemporaries. And there are various reasons to maintain the concept of indigo. Not least because otherwise Roy G. Biv loses a needed vowel.

S'now lie

The Scotia Arc is basically the connecting tissue between South America and Antarctica. A long underwater system, it has a number of islands appearing on the surface. South of Tierra del Fuego, most of them have never had native populations. This is the frosty part of the Southern Hemisphere, and what happens there is mostly out of our sight.

The Snowy Sheathbill lives there. It's the kind of cold weather bird you don't see much in these parts. The white fluffy feathers could almost pass for packed snow. Did kids build it? But you have to admit it also looks quite determined.

D'oh?

It has to be weird being one of the main voice actors on The Simpsons. Since the characters started in a mini-feature on The Tracey Ullman Show they've been at this for 38 years. The actresses who play the kids weren't really kids, of course, but they were young adults. 

These people have all gotten ridiculously wealthy from doing the show, so it's not like they're going to grouse in public. But it probably hasn't escaped their attention that it's gone from a vital show to a pleasant show in extra innings to background noise. I'm sure they thought they'd all be on to other things by now.

How it grows

 

Expressionist art has a reputation for being angsty. While this impression is helped along by the term's later association with cinema, certainly expressionism can go to some dark emotional places. Still, that's just one aspect of it.

August Macke's "Gartenbild" of "Garden Picture" shows a different side. On a sunny day, a mother works in the garden while her small daughter plays nearby. The town, represented by the houses in the background, is bright and colorful. Nature, represented by the green plants, is powerful, yes. But it's benign and cooperative as well. 

Macke's work often showed affection for his Westphalian home and excitement for the world at large. The outbreak of war darkened his mood noticeably. Sad to say, he was almost immediately killed in that war. One can only wonder what he might have painted otherwise.