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This is the second month’s collection of my Homemade Cartoons. I started adding an afterword/commentary to them recently so I have included those as well from Homemade Cartoon #40 and on…

New post on pawnedaccordionMore Cartoons in the Time of COVID-19 for May 2020by Peter ImberThis is the second month’s collection of my Homemade Cartoons. I started adding an afterword/commentary to them recently so I have included those as well from Homemade Cartoon #40 and on…Since today is Homemade Cartoon #40 I believe a Noah’s Ark reference is appropriate and bittersweet. Noah only had to shelter in place for 40 days.You may or may not know that in Kentucky there is a 500 foot long virtual Noah’s Ark that opened for visitors four years ago. Frankly, I don’t know what’s more unsafe a contemporary cruise ship or an ancient ark with seven– YES SEVEN –pairs of bats! Check out Genesis. It’s not just bats, the ark actually appears to have been significantly overbooked.https://arkencounter.com/blog/2016/06/23/how-many-bats-were-on-noahs-ark/And by the way the late Hunter S. Thompson, the gonzo journalist, is credited with popularizing “batshit crazy” as a more endearing way of saying that something or someone is nuts.—————–“Emperor penguins are as vulnerable and important a symbolfor the effects of climate change in Antarcticaas polar bears are for the Arctic.” –Franz Lanting https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/02/chinstrap-penguins-climate-change-antarctica/Under the heading Most Obscure Holidays is Penguin Awareness Day. We missed it already this year but I’m certain we won’t next year. Why? Because it’s on January 20th and depending on who we elect as our president in November his or her inauguration will take place that same day at high noon.—————–“May: This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, October, March, June, December, August and February.” — Mark Twain—————–What exactly is ‘doubling your bubble?’ It’s households picking one other household to interact with, and each of those households may then interact only with the other. They can visit with each other and be in each other’s home, share meals together, and I presume do shopping for and recreate with each other.And what could go wrong? Well, let’s say you’re elderly parents and you have several children with families that include all your grandchildren. If you pick one of your kids to double bubble with, are you hurting the feelings of the others? I’m sure there is a hornet’s nest of potentially uncomfortable scenarios that can be imagined but being Canadians don’t they have an advantage? Aren’t they supposed to be nicer than we Americans? That’s what I’ve always heard.So, I did a little looking into the question and came up with something that may help arrive at an answer. A couple years ago Bryor Snefjella, a PhD student at McMaster University in Ontario published a study that analyzed 40 million tweets over a one year period from both Canadians and Americans and concluded that “it might be the case that we construct our national identities via our linguistic choices.”How’s that? Well, here’s what he found. Words most represented in American tweets were more negative and words represented in Canadian tweets were more positive. Mr. Snefjella wasn’t even looking for this. He was initially studying differences in our dialects but found that even the tweeted emojis reflected this same divide between being naughty or nice. Just look at the two word clouds. Each represents the top 250 words tweeted by Americans and Canadians. The larger the word in the cloud the more times it appeared in tweets by those on either side of the border.Here’s America… And here’s Canada…The difference is striking, no? And it would be easy to sum up Snefjella’s work by simply calling it Great Shit.But there’s a caveat. The study relied on tweets tweeted (when you say that out loud it sounds like the name of a Looney Tunes character or a deceased Belgian harmonica virtuoso) from February 2015 to February 2016 which of course was a year that saw the rise and election of Donald Trump as President of the United States.No matter. In any event it’s kind of clear which country’s populous was and probably still is happier.—————–Although paper originated in China in the second century B.C., the first recorded use of paper for cleansing is from the 6th century in medieval China, discovered in the texts of scholar Yen Chih-Thui. In 589 A.D, he wrote:“Paper on which there are quotations or commentaries from the Five Classics or the names of sages, I dare not use for toilet purposes.”And for your book group’s next meeting how about a dive into excrement in the Late Middle Ages. Yes, it’s a book…Sacred Filth and Chaucer’s Fecopoetics by Susan Signe MorrisonAnd here’s praise to convince those skeptics… “Morrison’s study offers an engagingly written book that makes a convincing case for the cultural significance of the medieval fecal and that elucidates Chaucer’s poetry in thoughtful ways.” — The Medieval ReviewOr if you are thinking of springing a surprise, you can just tell them that this will be a read that will keep them on the edge of their seats.—————–Hey Groucho, social distancing as a means of safeguarding you or us from you has been around longer than you might think. As added protection we might be using masks right now but in the Victorian era enormous skirts inadvertently may have actually helped prevent the spread of smallpox and cholera. “Crinolinemania” –the fashion craze of the day– however, had a down side. Women actually burned to death if their giant hoop skirts caught fire. Still, this trendy style served another valuable purpose by keeping unwanted male attention at more than arm’s length pretty effortlessly.Will we see fashion adapt in our time of COVID-19?  Well, yesterday Adobe’s Digital Economy Index, which tracks more than 100 million product varieties online showed that pajama sales spiked 143% in April from March!Hey Groucho, and remember what you said about PJs in Animal Crackers?“One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas, I’ll never know.”—————–THE FRENCH LAUNDRYWe just started doing takeout on weekends and are lucky to have some really good options here in Midcoast Maine. So far it’s been Thai and pizza both of which are takeout standards for us. We do have a nearby KFC where a bucket of fried chicken is $14.99. The closest P.F. Chang’s is in Boston and their Kung Pao Shrimp would be $15.95. I know I could enjoy both but the takeout I’d really like to sample is 3,254 miles away from us at a place called the French Laundry.Thomas Keller opened his restaurant in Yountville, CA in 1994. The building had once been a French steam laundry, hence the name, and one would be hard pressed to find an eating establishment that’s been awarded more honors. It’s rated three Michelin stars since 2006 and been praised for being the Best Restaurant in the World by the late Anthony Bourdain among others.Now, in pre pandemic times a meal at the French Laundry would have cost you over $300 and perhaps as much as $600 a person for its prix fixe menu with or without wine pairings. Want to bring your own bottle? Fine, but the amount charged to you for drinking it will be $150.So, now in the time of COVID-19 with restaurants being kicked to the curb what’s happening at the French Laundry? Well, below is the takeout offering from Thomas Keller for last evening:$23 WITH REHEATING INSTRUCTIONS INCLUDED!!! Looks like a gastronomic giveaway, no? Ok, not enough perhaps to jump in the car and drive coast to coast but could I have that delivered?Jo and I once had a pastrami sandwich sent Next Day Air as a birthday present for her father from Langer’s Deli in Los Angles to Rockland, ME. The cost was a $100. Expensive? Yes. Money well spent? You bet. He loved it. But record setting? Not even close.According to the Guinness Book of World Records (Who else?) in 2006 Niko Apostolakis in Wellington, New Zealand had a pizza flown to him from Madrid, Spain, a distance of 12,347 miles as the crow flies. For its trouble the crow got the anchovies.—————–LET’S GET AWAY FROM IT ALL(with apologies to songwriters Tom Adair and Matt Dennis)You say that you’re such a big shotWhy can’t you just make a call Let’s sign a contract so we can go get packedLet’s get away from it allLet’s make the drive wearing pampersNo need to stop at a mallBut maybe Sag Harbor, you sure need a barberLet’s get away from it allWe’ll travel ’round along the SoundWe’ll check out each estateAnd act discreet but so eliteAs we our needs dictate Make sure you take your ViagraF___ me! Manhattan’s a pall Let’s leave our cage, dearIt’s all the rage, dearLet’s get away from it allCreating a parody of a song is fun and it can be a brutal vehicle for satire. This particular tune came to mind right away after reading the Times article. I certainly don’t have it in for New Yorkers. I was one for a couple years after college but the article is just such easy pickins.  You know, long ago I thought that I’d still be listening to Stairway to Heaven as I got closer to climbing it but ever since we moved to Maine my musical preferences have been the Big Bands, Sinatra, Fitzgerald– the so called Great American Songbook. It certainly must reflect this stage of life. If I were to try to dance to Purple Haze now, I’d risk turning purple.  Close to where I grew up in Pennsylvania was the Sunnybrook Ballroom in Pottstown. My father told me about going there to hear Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller back in the 1930s. When he talked about it I could imagine him as a young man and I sensed the energy and excitement he must have felt. But that doesn’t explain why I’m listening to his music these days and not my own. I don’t need to know why. I’m very happy time traveling.  And so this was a nice opportunity to take my newfound affinity for the old standards a step further. And there’s one lyric in my parody in particular that I want to point out. It’s this one:  “And act discreet but so eliteas we our needs dictate.”  The great song “Body and Soul” has this: “My life a wreck you’re makingYou know I’m yours for just the taking.””MY LIFE A WRECK YOU’RE MAKING?”Whenever I hear Frank Sinatra sing that I break into a smile. And I just discovered that many native American languages place the verb at the end of a sentence and because they do they’re called “verb-final” languages.And I thought it was only Yiddish where this kind of thing you did!Here’s a link to Sinatra singing “Let’s Get Away From It All” with Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez1EnoV1ACI—————–Referencing historical touchstones to fit the moment is a given when something as huge as a pandemic happens. COVID-19 has been compared to Pearl Harbor as an act of war that we must respond to and repel and it’s been called a Sputnik like event that should wake us up to seize the opportunity to fix what’s broken.But there are also cultural touchstones that are part of our heritage and The Wizard of Oz is larger than a mere stone and more like a boulder in that hierarchy. For 40 years it was shown annually on network television except for 1963 after the assassination of President Kennedy. Knowing the flaws of each of Dorothy’s fellow travelers might as well be included on a basic American civics test. So, it didn’t surprise me that when I Googled the movie and coronavirus just now I got a list of articles with headings like these:The Message Of The Wizard Of Oz Is Fit For A Pandemic The COVID-19 Pandemic: A Reverse Wizard Of Oz?Coronavirus, Donald Trump, And The Wizard Of Oz Presidency A Wizard Of Oz Virus: The COVID-19 HoaxA jumble of different perspectives and as is the rule and hardly ever the exception anymore a reflection of our politics and divisions.My own story about The Wizard of Oz is a short non partisan one. It took almost 70 years for the midgets who played the Munchkins to get their own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I got to cover that event and to meet and interview seven of the nine Munchins who were still alive in 2007. They were delightful and sang for us as if they had just stepped off their sound stage.Why did it take so long for them to be given this honor that was routinely bought by movie studios to promote their stars? I never received a satisfactory answer but the Munchkin actors I met were thrilled to be immortalized on a piece of the sidewalk that day.A total of 124 actors played Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz. The last surviving one, Jerry Maren, who was there for the ceremony, died in 2018 at the age of 98.”We finally got recognized,” Maren said. “You know, after everybody else died, they said, ‘Who’s left?'”And by the way the Munchkins never got screen credits and the dog who played Toto made more than twice the weekly salary each of them were payed for their work. There’s always interesting stuff to be discovered when you go behind the curtain…Here’s a link to that piece I produced for Good Morning: America:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkAnKZgvJDw—————– Lysol Timeline                              1889– First Lysol brand antiseptic disinfectant introduced in 1889 to help end a cholera epidemic in Germany.1911– Poisoning by drinking Lysol was the most common means of suicide in Australia and New York.1918– During the Spanish flu pandemic Lysol disinfectant was used effectively against the influenza virus. Newspaper advertisements called for using Lysol to clean anything that came in contact with patients. Late 1920s– Lysol was marketed as a famine hygiene product for vaginal douching. Its makers claimed that a diluted Lysol solution prevented infections. This Lysol solution was also used as a means of birth control. Post-coital douching became a popular method of preventing pregnancy at that time.1962– Lysol Disinfectant Spray by way of aerosol application is made available.2020– A package of Lysol disinfecting wipes that usually cost $14 is priced at $220 on Amazon.Warhol’s Soup CansIn 1962 Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans paintings went on display in a gallery in Los Angeles. Warhol had painted each of the 32 varieties of Campbell’s soup available at the time and the asking price for each individual painting was $100. Only five of the paintings sold including one– Tomato –that was bought by actor and art collector Dennis Hopper.Warhol was to paint the individual cans numerous times and silkscreened them as a group which became their most iconic representation. In 1996 all 32 of the stand alones were purchased by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) for $15 million or $468,750 a can. “Mmm Mmm Good” but Warhol had died almost a decade earlier.John GnagyAnybody remember a television show on Saturday mornings in the early 1950s called “Learn to Draw” with John Gnagy? I do and I watched the 15 minute lessons Gnagy gave every week but never learned to draw at all. If my elementary school art teacher were still alive she’d back me up. Seeing Gnagy so easily turn a blank page into a sailboat or a row of telephone poles to me was like watching a magician.Others who tuned in overcame any awe they may have felt and used his lessons to take their first step toward careers as artists working at Marvel and Disney. Andy Warhol claimed he learned to draw from watching the show. Gnagy never earned much from the television series but his Learn to Draw kits and books sold in the millions.Here’s a link to a Learn to Draw TV program from the 50s…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQyXzwJRUN4&t=39s—————–I am a big Buster Keaton fan and at the end of one of his short films, The Boat, his character is lost on the water and his wife asks, “Where are we?” He responds with the name of the boat they’re in and says, “Damfino.” That’s the answer for how long I’ll be doing these.Each of us is experiencing the pandemic in our own way and my coping mechanism turns out to be staying busy doing stuff like this and looking at our isolation as an opportunity rather than adversity.We all have our own unique story that we’ve lived which has formed us and through these cartoons I guess I’ve been telling mine. If you know someone who might like receiving them give them my email:peter.imber@gmail.comand I’ll subscribe them.PeterFor this 50th cartoon I’ve attached a link to a song that I love by the late Steve Goodman titled “Door Number Three.” It’s about “Let’s Make a Deal.”If you’re from Chicago or a Cubs fan, you’ve likely heard of Goodman. His song “Go, Cubs, Go” is played after every game the team wins at Wrigley Field. His most famous song is “City of New Orleans” which Arlo Guthrie was the first to record but has been covered by many others.Goodman lived with leukemia for the entire length of his recording career and gave himself the nickname Cool Hand Leuk. He died in 1984 at the age of 36.Here’s the link to Goodman singing “Door Number Three”:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyB39D6x7YYAnd here’s my own up close and personal moment of game show infamy…How I Failed As A Game Show ContestantI moved to Los Angeles in 1979 to go to film school at UCLA. I managed a 16 unit apartment building and worked part time at a Radio Shack. I also tried out for a game show. There was an audition and a test of some kind. I must have passed because I got a call afterward offering me the chance to be a contestant.The show was called The Cross-Wits and, like probably all of these programs, a week’s worth of them was taped in a single day. I showed up, waited my turn and then it was lights, camera and ultimately, not enough action. Let me explain.How the game itself was played isn’t important. The celebrity I was paired with isn’t important either. I mean that literally. I’d never heard of her and I’m pretty sure you haven’t either. Anyway, I won the first game and from the point of view of the producers of the show you can be sure they wish I hadn’t.You see after my win the announcer rattled off the list of what I had won. There was a lot of stuff. I don’t even remember all of it but in the loot were umbrellas, a clothes iron, an undercarriage sealant for my car, coupons for a soft drink and the big kahuna, a combination electric range and oven with a built in microwave.Now, the apartment I got for free as manager of my building included appliances and my utilities. As the grand prize was being described, I’m thinking what the hell am I going to do with a range and oven I don’t need? And in that moment the fact that just about every house and apartment in Southern California is hooked up to natural gas also crossed my mind. Nobody has electric!I don’t think I frowned but I certainly wasn’t jumping up and down nor displaying the pro forma “I am one lucky shit” grin. Suddenly, there was the show’s producer standing beside the camera that was aimed at me. He put a finger of each hand in the sides of his mouth and stretched it. I didn’t react. He then rocked his body side to side as he continued imploring me to be jubilant. I still didn’t take the bait.I didn’t win another game that day but signed a form for my prizes afterward which turned out to be a “shoot me if I ever do this again” move. Now, I had to pay taxes on what I thought I was receiving gratis. In short order I discovered that applying the undercarriage sealant on my relatively new car would void its warranty and that my local supermarket was unhappy because my coupons for Welch’s carbonated strawberry soda were mega and I wiped out the store’s entire supply of the stuff every time I used one.The umbrellas and the clothes iron were fine but the grand prize turned out to be a giant headache. First, I had no place to put it. A combination range, stove and microwave would last just a few hours if left standing alone in its box outside in my carport. Then a lucky break– a friend who had a garage agreed to let me store it there while I put an ad in the newspaper offering it for sale. That was my only lucky break.I ran the ad for over a month spending well over $150. There were no takers. I finally gave the thing away to a charity and got a tax deduction that I remember being less than the taxes I payed on my windfall and the fruitless ads .And one other thing. When my appearance on the Cross-Wits aired one afternoon a month later and reached the moment where I failed miserably to act like a euphoric winner you never saw me. Instead you saw pictures of the junk I won that I wished I hadn’t. I had been edited out and relegated to the dustbin of game show history.Here’s another tune from Steve Goodman that I think you’ll agree fits my tale of game show woe pretty perfectly…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s81r8SzEuPY—————–I guess you might call this one an inside joke…That’s a play on words, a pun. Yeah, you didn’t want to be reminded of that. So, why do so many people grimace and moan when they see or hear a pun? Don’t they realize how little work goes into making them?I don’t know when or why I began punning but I proudly pun and because I experience the slings and arrows of outrage on occasion from those who look upon this type of wordplay as my affliction and their misfortune. I happen to think a lot of it is feigned — fake boos. But maybe I’m kidding myself.I think for me punning is almost an involuntary reflex. My mind just goes there. I can’t shut it down. I PUN therefore I AM and I will continue to pun wherever I am. Now, there is a difference between smart puns and dumb puns and maybe it’s like knowing the difference between good wine and cheap wine. For many of us that requires education and experience.The source of humor is actually nothing to laugh about. A legendary professor of mine in film school, a man named Howard Suber, summarized it this way. “Show me a happy comedian and I’ll show you someone on the way down.” Case in point… I just read an article that contended that now that Jerry Seinfeld is nearly a billionaire he isn’t funny anymore.I don’t want to over analyze “funny” but I just looked this up and someone has compiled a list of the nine types of humor they think exist:1. Physical or slapstick2. Self-deprecating3. Surreal or absurd4. Improvisational5. Droll or deadpan6. Observational7. Potty or bathroom8. Dark or gallows9. PunsSo, physical comedy is first and puns are last. Hmmm… You know I actually had an experience that combined the two once. I went to this comedy club in LA where Chevy Chase was doing a standup act or in his case a fall down one. But that night he didn’t show up and another guy came out and was terrible and even worse he was doing a lot of stupid puns.A stranger at the next table heard me being critical and complaining that this wasn’t at all what I had come to see. He was smiling. In fact he was glowing when he said to me about the performer, “He ain’t Chevy. He’s my brother.”Got ya!—————– Donald Trump, you might already know, is the first president in 120 years not to have a dog in the White House. Last year he explained why at a rally in El Paso.“I wouldn’t mind having one, honestly, but I don’t have any time. How would I look walking a dog on the White House lawn?”Human perhaps?Hey, it is his prerogative but maybe his son would like to have one? My family had a dog when I was growing up. She, a diva-like French poodle, was intended to be “the boys’ dog.” She quickly became our mother’s dog and I swear they used to play double solitaire together.Anyway, I’ve come up with a little poem, a doggerel if you will, that won’t make me poet laureate but could provoke a few barks from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and maybe some howls from the rest of you….I’m not a cat fanIn fact I can’t standThat cats could care less that I’m thereBut dogs I adoreMy faith they restoreWe’re both needy and that’s totally fairI’m happy to petThey’re happy to getMy reward is the pleasure they feelSuch a simple exchangeA cinch to arrangeIt is the true Art of the Deal—————– When I think of travel and especially air travel these days and in the future I think of a show tune. You know, from Oliver– “Who will buy…” I’m not at all sure when I will purchase a ticket and get on an airplane again. Flying had become enough of a horror show before COVID-19 and add the potential for psychological distress to the certainty of physical discomfort and there are officially no more friendly skies.And here’s the late great John Candy in a scene from Planes, Trains and Automobiles to sort of make the point that despite everything the skies can still be overly friendly, too…What’s notable about this bit is that it wasn’t in the final cut of the film. John Hughes, the director, left it out and apparently had shot enough footage to have made a three hour movie.., Talk about overbooking!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztbHu8PMMzU —————–When in the past had you ever heard the word zoom used? For me only two things come to mind. One is a zoom lens for a camera and the other Jackie Gleason’s The Honeymooners when ZOOM! was part of Ralph Kramden’s rants threatening Alice with physical violence.If he had followed through, it would have had her reaching the moon ahead of Neil Armstrong. How that was acceptable in comedy and on television in the 1950s seems absolutely unbelievable and crazy today.So, where does this word zoom come from? Well, it appears it’s either from the Dutch or German zoomen or the Finnish zoomata. It’s an onomatopoeia– I had to spell that word correctly to get out of the 8th grade. This is the first time I’ve done it since. Zoom is an attempt to mimic the sound of something humming or whizzing by you.Investigator that I am I looked into whether there might be a deeper meaning for zoom. Couldn’t find anything so I employed a Kabbalistic approach– a form of Jewish mysticism that has attracted dabblers from Madonna to Marla Maples.Kabbalah uses letters and numbers to explain the universe. I wasn’t traveling that far so I stuck with just the letters. Hmmm… so, when you drop the first two letters of zoom you are left with om. Now, I thought I’m on to something. Was there possibly some transcendental connection? Yes! Who can deny that we in the West often zoom when we’d be better off if we’d slow down and om.I have been doing my own daily yoga routine for months now and although I’m not perceiving any spiritual awakening my body and my back in particular are very grateful that I chose this path. With the pandemic I’ve experienced, I guess, both the zoom boom and an om boon.However, I’m afraid I’m close to being Zoomed out at this point. Zoom fatigue has set in. But two last things about the burgeoning company Zoom that’s become as indispensable to many others as… well, toilet paper. First, according to Glassdoor, which evaluates such things, in 2019 Zoom was the second best place to work in the United States. I guess so. If ever there was a company where you could just call it in…And where did the company’s name come from. It took a bit of digging but I found that out. One of the early employees took it from a book he read to his kids… —————–We’re a big country and many of us don’t have someone to remember who lost his life in a war, let alone fought in one. So what do we think of first when we hear the words Memorial Day? Little wonder that it’s a picnic or a shopping opportunity.I’m an admirer of the sculptor Claes Oldenburg. I just checked and he’s still alive and in his nineties. My absolute favorite thing of his is an idea for a sculpture that he never created. Back in the 1960s Oldenburg did a series of drawings that he called “Colossal Monuments.” One of them was a war memorial. I’m inserting a rendering he made of it below…It was to be a giant block of concrete as high as the buildings that surrounded it that would have been placed in the middle of the intersection of Canal St. and Broadway in Manhattan. Oldenburg would have had the names of “war heroes” carved in it.Was Oldenburg making a serious anti-war statement with his idea to disrupt New York City traffic permanently in one place? Was his intent to have people curse being inconvenienced and war simultaneously? As far fetched as it seemed Oldenburg’s conception for this memorial made sense to me when I saw his drawing for the first time. Afterward I figured it was more like a satirical aside.Since then I’ve been to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington and was quite moved. I knew people killed in that war that I myself didn’t have to go to– nobody who was a close friend but high school and college classmates whose names I could find on the wall. Seeing all the names of those who had died was a jolt. The Vietnam War Memorial is a destination you don’t just happen upon. You know where it is and why you’ve come to see it even if you don’t know how you are going to react..In retrospect I think plugging up Canal St. and Broadway would have made a powerful war memorial but it would have needed to be a temporary obstruction and constantly moved to someplace else without any advance notice. That way it might have pissed you off when you suddenly encountered it for two reasons and you could have blamed both the traffic and all wars for your being late.Our public reminders of the cost of wars are mostly way too polite. So, what should we think of today on our nation’s Memorial Day? For a start how about this? Let’s not call it a holiday. It’s not a celebration. It’s an observance. Memorial Day is the one day a year set aside to actually remember and think about those who died in America’s wars and didn’t get to grow old and be here for the picnics and the sales.—————–About ten years ago I remember coming across a bizarre story. A study was published that had found that nearly nine out of ten bills circulating in the United States were tainted with traces of cocaine. Of course it wasn’t enough of the drug that you had any chance of getting high if you tried to snort your money but jeez! Drug dealers were obviously not laundering their cash with Tide.So, here we are with a current fear of contamination from just about anything and it’s potentially worse than getting busted. Can you get COVID-19 from merely touching money? The thought is that the risk is extremely low but like so many things about the pandemic many people, both buyers and sellers, are not taking any chances and using or accepting only credit cards and digital/electronic means for transactions. We were already moving on. The tag line in a credit card commercial “What’s in your wallet?” is asking about your plastic and not your Washingtons, Lincolns, Hamiltons, Jacksons or other members of this all boys club.I certainly haven’t had a need to use much cash since March and the only bills I have left are all twenties. As far as I know there are no ATM’s that dispense anything other than twenties even if I wanted smaller denominations but this lack of currency diversity really hasn’t caused any problems for me. It seems likely that COVID-19 will accelerate the demise of cash and certainly the $1 bill and even its more valued brethren may become about as useful as pennies, nickels and dimes.For now just as hands aren’t touching hands, bills don’t seem to be changing hands much either. I hope the ones tainted with cocaine have been in detox and recovery by now. I guess there’s not enough access to testing for the others. They’re in a lockdown just like us.—————–I’m going to brag! I have lost a lot of weight so far since COVID-19 altered so many things about our lives. Was the pandemic my inspiration to do this? Well, it certainly provided a helpful setting. It’s a hell of lot easier to focus on dieting when you don’t have a lot of the usual temptations and distractions.I am still overweight but I’m not done and getting this far hasn’t been as hard as I expected. I’ve really stepped up exercising and Jo has been making us meals that adhere to the curb the carbs approach prescribed by a dietitian I consulted.Sure, it’s on me that I got fat in the first place but you see I didn’t come from a roughage neighborhood. I grew up in the pretzel and potato chip center of the universe– the Pennsylvania Dutch Country. The airport in Reading, PA had to adapt to the fact that the residents of Berks County are heavy– and I don’t mean frequent –travelers. How did the airport adjust? Well, I haven’t measured but I’ve been told that the runway is now as wide as it is long!But seriously, if you’ve had your medical specimens sent anywhere by way of Quest Diagnostics’ fleet of airplanes, guess where their home airport is? Being located at the Reading Airport probably saves a bunch of flights. The emergency room at Reading Hospital is the 10th busiest in the country with 135,000 ER visits a year. A ranking by Gallup-Healthways called the “Well-Being Index” ranked the city as having the 10th highest percentage of obese people in the nation so there’s the evidence that if you’re overweight in Reading your heart is probably in the right place.When I was growing up Reading called itself the “Pretzel Capital of the World” and a traditional grade school field trip was to a Bachman’s pretzel factory. Downtown on the main street there were soft pretzel vendors pushing their wares and their carts into the 1960s. I’d pay a nickel and hope I was getting one that had been made that same day but even the day olds were pretty good.In the summer at our public swimming pool pretzel rods along with frozen Milky Ways were the best sellers at the snack bar. The application of a generous line of mustard on the pretzel rod was as de rigueur as the pool’s medallion patch your mother sewed on your bathing suit.As far as I’m concerned the best pretzel you can buy today is still made in Reading. The brand is called Unique and they’ve even made their way to some of the smaller markets where we live in Maine.But I was always more of a potato chip guy and the Pennsylvania Dutch Country seemed to have as many potato chip companies as startups in Silicon Valley. And yes, I do have a favorite– Diffenbach’s. Like all the best chips, they only have three ingredients all of which are deemed life threatening: potatoes, 100% lard shortening and salt. When you eat these chips your skin gets greasy enough to slip out of handcuffs. However, the websiteFooducate.com gives Diffenbach’s chips a passing grade, a D+. In Reading food is pass/fail.My best friend Ken sends me bags of Diffenbach’s every year for my birthday. I now have two in our pantry. When I hit my target weight I’ll open one. Until then I intend to remain alive.THE BEST PRETZELS(11 oz. bag 1210 calories)THE BEST CHIPS!(8 oz. bag has 1,217 calories)There’s one supermarket in Reading that actually has two entire aisles for pretzels and potato chips. One is for the national brands. The other is for the local ones. In Reading “shop until you drop” is not uttered lightheartedly.—————–I’ve just realized that I’ve never attempted to yodel. I don’t even try to sing either. I can’t carry a tune or even make one out and I have a story to prove it which shouldn’t surprise anyone who has been receiving my cartoons and commentary at this point.As I write right now I’m listening to WQXR– a classical music radio station in New York City. I listen to it a lot and a lot more since March. It’s soothing, a reminder that the world hasn’t yet descended into total darkness.I love classical music and the credit for that goes to my father and the Food Fair supermarket. In the late 1950s somebody had the idea that the greatest classical music could be widely marketed and I mean marketed literally. A collection called “The Basic Library of the World’s Greatest Music” totaling 24 records was sold at supermarket chains nationwide. The cost was originally less than a dollar an album.My father purchased the set of all 24 incrementally, which I guess means he made at least two dozen shopping trips to the Food Fair that my mother didn’t. I don’t remember ever being encouraged to listen to the records but when I started to I was hooked, especially by the romantic offerings like Rimsky Korsakov’s Scheherazade and Dvorak’s New World Symphony.Each album came with a booklet that included information about the music and short biographies of the composers. This well of information would eventually provide me with a well deserved lesson in humility.In my 8th grade music class part of the state mandated curriculum was an introduction to classical music and our teacher played some of the same pieces that I had already heard at home– remember when record player/radio consoles were a piece of furniture?Anyway, I couldn’t help myself and when our teacher would tell us about a work and its composer that I had read about, I chimed in with something I knew that she hadn’t mentioned. I even compounded my smart aleckeyness by volunteering to do reports on a few composers I particularly liked.At the end of the school year we took the state mandated final exam. It counted for half our grade and was a weird way to evaluate what we had learned. The teacher sat down at the piano and our task was to determine if the scales she played were ascending or descending. I couldn’t hear any difference. I really couldn’t.At our last class she was about to read out each of our final grades. but there was a pause before she began and I knew what was coming after she said this…”Not everyone this year who did the most work, did well on the final which as you know makes up half your final grade.”She started announcing them. There were a lot of A’s– we were the so-called accelerated group –but then she got to me…”Peter, D on the final, B- for the year.”I sat in the back of the room and at that moment a lot of heads turned toward me with big grins on their faces. I had earned them.Later in life I came to realize what was a huge embarrassment at the time had a silver lining. I figure it this way. Why did I love classical music more than the other kids? Easy– I hear it differently!Below is what those record albums in the World’s Greatest Music series looked like. I saw on Amazon you can purchase the whole set for $100 but of course you need a turntable hooked up to an amplifier and speakers to play them. Who has that stuff any more?—————–When I was a kid and needed a haircut my mother gave me two bucks and I rode my bike a couple miles to the barbershop. The barber was an Italian immigrant named George who worked alone. If I had to wait, it was Ok. George always had a stack of great comic books.I have one wonderful memory about getting my hair cut that goes back over 50 years. My last two years of high school were at a boarding school north of Boston where we were required to see the barber every month. He set up in a dormitory basement and appointments were scheduled every 15 minutes. A couple of mine early on just happened to be at 8 p.m. when the radio the barber brought with him was tuned to a station in New York City. “The Theme from Studio X” played and for the rest of those two years I made sure my monthly haircuts were always at 8 so I could hear it.I think I may have been the only kid in the school who looked forward to getting his hair cut. I loved that music. Thanks to the internet and YouTube “The Theme from Studio X” and I were reunited a number of years ago. It’s quite dramatic. Take a listen.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NACuHamGh_gI’ve never paid a lot of attention to my hair and before the pandemic there hadn’t been a lot of it to pay attention to. I was a welcome client at my local barber shop because I always got a buzzcut– the number one clipper attachment blade –which left me just short of having my head shaved. I was in and out of the chair in less than 10 minutes. In baseball there’s a term called “keep the line moving” when there’s a rally happening and the batter up is exhorted to get the next hit. In my barbershop I was a clutch hitter with a .400 average.So, I haven’t had a haircut since February and I’m actually quite pleased to see that my hair, when given the chance, does still grow enough to warrant a trim. In fact yesterday I ordered a barber’s scissors made of Japanese stainless steel no less. I’m not planning on using it on myself by myself. Certainly not! I’d likely perform a double Van Gogh if I tried. Jo is willing to cut my hair although I am now a bit concerned about her experience and skill level after she said, “Maybe there’s a video?”I haven’t even considered entering my barbershop– add hair salons and barbershops and those who work in them to the list of things that may have been badly hurt and possibly changed forever by COVID-19. I’ve found an interview with a Boston barber who expressed his remorse about his new normal.“I’ve run my shop like it’s 1950 for so long. It was walk-ins only. We’ve never taken appointments. Part of the ambiance of the place is the people that are in there, and the banter that goes back and forth, and guys just hanging out. I think we’ll survive and be alright, but the identity of my shop has been completely stripped from me. I worked so long and hard making this a neighborhood staple. Now it’s a men’s salon by appointment only, where a masked man cuts your hair, and that’s all it’s gonna be.”Barbershops and beauty parlors were places in communities where men and women lingered to joke and gossip and connect. Even before the pandemic that banter had no doubt been reduced. Smartphones replaced it.  Random conversations seemed to be less common. Now, are robotic haircuts so we won’t even talk with a barber or hairdresser what lie ahead? Howdy Doody will never cut my hair but will going to the barbershop in the future be like sitting in a silent peanut gallery? Hope not.—————–The puzzle book series “Where’s Waldo” was called “Where’s Wally” in Britain where the books were authored and first published in the 1980s. The Wally/Waldo books have sold over 50 million copies world wide.One of them was banned for a while in parts of the United States when something held offensive was uncovered. Waldo’s creator, Martin Handford, had drawn a beach scene with a topless woman sunbather. Once he found out about the censors he participated in a coverup.But where’s Biden? Did you find him in the sushi? I’ve been calling him the designated driver candidate– the guy who didn’t drink at the party and is entrusted with getting those who did home safely. I’m not sure however, if the country can wait for that ride home. The present holder of the keys to the nation’s fate doesn’t drink but the only thing he drives is a golf cart and he won’t let us see if he’s even capable of handling that. Biden needs to get moving. Sheltering in the basement may be a safe place to be when there’s a tornado warning but the country’s on fire now.   I can’t think of anything more to say about Joe other than the future of the United States will be determined by who wins the next presidential election and if I have to risk my health to vote for him I’ll do it. I try not to think about what happens if he loses.But let’s move on to sushi.I confess I am a sushi snob. Here in Vacationland I live in crustacean land where the lobster roll is king and the spicy tuna roll is an outlier and I really haven’t found sushi that compares with what I’m used to.

It was the best of times; It was the worst of times. — A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

What a revoltin’ development this is! — Chester A. Riley in The Life of Riley

So, how are you doing?  It’s May 1, 2020 and a hell of lot different than a year ago. Here in Maine it’s spring in the manner that Maine has spring. It’s still pretty cold, it’s muddy but what’s supposed to grow is starting to do that despite the lack of a human welcoming committee.

Those of us retired like I and my wife are pretty much sheltering in place. The most risky adventure we or I should say my wife makes is a biweekly shopping trip to a supermarket. Other supplies and occasional take out meals are picked up curbside.

We know we’re lucky! I am completely aware that being born in America as part of the Baby Boom generation I’ve been lucky for 73 years so far. But this is a time of misfortune for my country and without further amplification of my own opinions why beyond the pandemic I’ll get to the point.

“What did you do during the pandemic?” I doubt I’ll live so long to be asked the question by someone who didn’t live through it their self. But if I were asked I’d say, “You know, I created cartoons.”

So here’s my output for the month of April. I intend to keep doing these every day until life returns to normal. When will that be? I think I have a lot of cartoons to create!

Cartoons for April 1 through 30April 15 was Jackie Robinson Day, baseball’s annual tribute to him that marks the day in 1947 when Robinson became the first black to integrate the major leagues. I got to see Robinson play for the Brooklyn Dodgers in Ebbets Field when I was a kid and he had to leave that game after colliding into the wall chasing a foul ball.

The game was against the Chicago Cubs and their Hall of Fame shortstop Ernie Banks hit the winning home run. Some 40 years later I met Banks in Los Angeles.

Ernie Banks was famous for his love of baseball and a quote that encapsulated that. “Let’s play two,” is what he would say, meaning his desire was to play a double header and not just a single game. That day in LA he also displayed a fantastic memory after I told him I’d seen him hit the game winning homer on the night Jackie Robinson was injured in Brooklyn so many years ago. He thought for just a moment and then looking me in the eye said, “Yeah, I remember that game.” I have no doubt that he did.

Normally, baseball season would be well underway and I miss it. But I miss even more the example of courage and integrity that was the life of Jackie Robinson. 

—————–

 

This Christmas day I’m picking my sister-in-law up at the airport. She has insisted that upon her arrival I take her to a Chinese restaurant so she can buy takeout to bring for dinner for everyone else at our home.

Yes, it’s true of all the restaurants likely to be open on Christmas the odds are heavily weighted that they’ll be Chinese and yes, it’s also true that of all the customers buying and eating Chinese food on Christmas the odds are also heavily weighted that they’ll be Jewish. We are. So, you can accompany the rest of what I’m about to write with Zero Mostel wailing Tradition from Fiddler on the Roof. But how did this happen?

My favorite explanation for why Jews eat Chinese on Christmas and at many other times during the year involves a debate between two old men.

“Chinese culture is at least 4,000 years old and we are the civilization that has been in the world the longest,” said Zhang.

“I’m sorry but the Jews have been around for over 5,000 years so we have been here at least a 1,000 more,” replied Abraham.

“Ok”, said Zhang. “But if that’s true, I need you to answer one question.”

“So, ask.”

“What did your people eat to survive for that extra 1,000 years?”

The real answer is actually pretty logical. In the early 20th century Jews and Chinese were the two largest non Christian immigrant peoples in America. Many from both groups lived in close proximity especially in urban centers like New York and Philadelphia. For Jews Chinese restaurants were conveniently located and affordable and— and this was most important —they didn’t use dairy products.

Jews who keep kosher won’t eat dairy and meat at the same time— that’s the most defining feature of the kosher laws which also rule out shrimp, clams and lobster —but if the wontons had pork filling, they sure resembled kreplach (dumplings) from the old country and hey, does God have X-ray vision? Many Jews were becoming flexible in their new country. Many still kept kosher in their homes but weren’t going to ask about what might be in the fried rice when they ate out.

As Jews moved to the suburbs Chinese restaurants moved with them and I grew up eating takeout from the only Chinese restaurant in Reading, PA on nearly every Sunday night. In fact a woman I know who grew up orthodox and kosher told me her family had four sets of dishes. One was for dairy, one for meat, one especially for the week of Passover and a fourth for their weekly Chinese. I’ve known more than a few Jews who will fearlessly eat bacon for breakfast at home but are terrified by the thought of ham in their refrigerators. Bacon is a threshold that can be crossed. Ham is a bridge too far.

The matter of Jews and Christmas, however is more complex than just food. Take the issue of having or not having a Christmas tree. The founder of Zionism himself, Theodore Herzl, lived in Austria and had a Christmas tree in his house and this was before anybody thought of calling it a Hanukkah bush. After the chief rabbi of Vienna once came to visit him during the holidays he is alleged to have written in his diary, “I hope the rabbi doesn’t think less of me because of this. Then again what do I care what he thinks?” Herzl was a secular Jew like the majority of Jews in the United States today.

And herein lies the question, is having a tree or sitting on Santa’s lap an indication of Jews’ security or insecurity in their identity? Is it a sign of assimilation that’s harmless or harmful. I’m not sure many of us grapple with divining the answers. We do what feels right and that can be different for everyone. As a kid I got to sit on Santa’s lap but my son never did. My parents didn’t have a tree but instead scattered blue and silver ball ornaments meant to hang from a tree in bowls around our house. As a parent myself there were no Christmas decorations. As I said we all do what feels right.

In the meantime many of us can give the same answer that Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan did when asked at her confirmation hearing where she had spent Christmas.

“You know, like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant.”

Let me admit right off the bat that I prefer to watch movies that have happy endings. Sure, there are exceptions. My favorite film is one and so is my next favorite.

Ikiru, in English “To Live” and directed by Akira Kurosawa, is the story of a man confronted with his own imminent mortality and how he chooses to spend his remaining time on earth and Citizen Kane is Orson Wells’ tour de force that chronicles the rise and fall of an egomaniac— Neither pass for feel good movies. Neither would be a likely choice to snuggle up with Christmas eve.

Since my wife Jo and I have moved to Maine in 2010 Holiday Affair has been the movie I’ve asked her to watch with me every December 24th. The night before Christmas is my favorite night of the year actually. Nobody’s out and nothing is open. I sense a stillness  and peace like at no other time. 

Holiday Affair is, no surprise, a Christmas movie and Turner Classic Movies has to be the reason it pops up now on some lists of favorites in the genre. Come December it’s shown a number of times but when it was released in 1949 it was less than a success. In fact it lost $300,000 for its studio, RKO, which in today’s dollars is over three million.

The plot is cute and uncomplicated. A war widow with a young son played by Janet Leigh, a decade before her shocking demise in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, has not been able to move forward with her life. Wendell Corey plays a lawyer who wants to marry her but can’t get past being the patient boyfriend who is unable to exorcize the ghost of her dead husband. Robert Mitchum in an role twist for him isn’t the tough guy but a nice guy also trying to make his way after the war and when he and Leigh meet in the deparmaent store toy department where he works the sparks fly and you know what’s going to happen.

I’ve never teared up watching Holiday Affair. The end of Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life does that for me. It hasn’t ever caused me to laugh out loud like Jean Shepard’s A Christmas Movie. But what it does do is make me think that in the post war years of the 40s and early 50s America must have been full of hope and optimism and as well as the desire to get back to normal. There seemed to be a bright future and it was possible to chase dreams.

Corey’s character wanted to take Leigh and her son from the big city to the suburbs and a house with a yard. It would have been a safe life. Mitchum on the other hand wanted to take a risk. He was saving his money with a goal of designing and building boats.

I grew up in one of those newly minted suburbs. The houses weren’t Pete Seeger’s “Little Boxes.” They were well built and are still standing. The neighborhood was full of kids and parents never supervised our pickup games of whatever sport was in season.

My father, unhappy that with his Harvard Business School education his father and uncle still wouldn’t listen to him, bought into and then bought outright someone else’s business and grew it. My mother volunteered and became the county head of the March of Dimes. I wasn’t coerced into eating TV Diners and watching Ozzie and Harriet, I wanted to.

If I sound guilty of romanticizing so be it. I was lucky to be a kid then. I’ve been pretty lucky all along. Most of my generation has. Did I chase my dreams? Yes, I think I did.

The final scene of Holiday Affair is on a train leaving the east coast for the west with Mitchum, Leigh and the boy on board on their way to the future to pursue their dreams. That was a happy ending. That’s maybe why I love the movie because I got to have one and wish the world were really like that for everyone else.

 

 

So here I am at the Maine Mall. My wife is shopping and a guy and his wife were sitting next to me and just got up a minute ago.

I wasn’t intentionally eaves dropping and could only hear the husband’s half of their conversation. It mostly went like this…

“Yep, yep… yep, yep.”

It’s actually a good feeling to just be here and not worrying about buying anybody anything.

Of the seven of us sitting here six of us are using our phones. Social interaction may be transpiring but not among us. I’m trying to imagine what this same “waiting around” environment might have been like 50 years ago. Would we all have been just as alone with our thoughts back then instead of our phones like now?

Straight in front of me is the Apple store. It’s long and narrow with large tables with small things propped up on them. Fifty years ago it would have looked very strange, maybe like a Russian supermarket with almost no food. The place has a sort of Maitre ‘d/traffic officer stationed in its center. I’m reminded of Jacques Tati’s film Playtime. He opened that film by tricking the audience into thinking people were sitting dolefully in silence in a hospital but when the camera pulls back you see it’s actually an airport.

Here’s Tati  in another scene from Playtime which he directed and starred in 51 years ago showing that he was most prescient in seeing how modern society was moving even then toward “alone together.” Tati would have had even more fun with our world today. So would have Buster Keaton.

There was a time when downtown Reading, Pennsylvania had everything. Of course I’m thinking of long long ago when it also helped to be a kid to believe that.

Reading’s Penn Street was like a theme park to me back then in the 1950s. I grew up in a post WWll suburb of the city and could ride the bus downtown by myself and not worry that my mother would call the police to form a search party.

As soon as I hopped off, I’d head for the soft pretzel cart in Penn Square and the vendor with the horn-rimmed glasses and a smile who hardly ever said a word. His pretzels cost a nickel apiece and some days were fresher than others.

Occasionally, I came downtown to fold cardboard boxes at Imber’s— my grandfather’s store. At a nickel a box he vastly overpaid me. Mostly my trips were just to have fun and wander into the “Five and Dimes”— Woolworths and Kresge’s —the shiny precursors to today’s dull discount stores.

From baseball gloves at Kagan’s to Boy Scout uniforms at Croll and Keck, Penn Street was the place that had something for everyone and offered special attractions for me unlikely to be found anywhere today.

Take the fluoroscope at Farr’s shoe store at 5th and Penn, a tool intended to show how the store’s shoes fit. This was a device that allowed you to look down and actually see the bones in your feet as you stood under its beam in your new penny loafers.

Turned out that it was as unsafe as it was entertaining, maybe as bad as having a load of X-Rays at once but who knew? And who sued years later after they found out?

The only escalator in town was at Pomeroy’s, Reading’s multi story department store. It was wooden and wonderful to ride. Unlike today’s smooth metal stairways, it bumped and shook as its moving stairs made their orbits between floors. When its stairs flattened out and disappeared there was a gap large enough between the moving wood and the stationary terminus that you could fit your hand in it if you didn’t know any better. One boy I went to school with did just that and lost pieces of several fingers. If it had happened today, I bet he might not have had to work a day in his life.

And there was the treasure chest at the Crystal, the biggest restaurant in town. What a smart bit of marketing by the owners who filled a trunk full of small rewards for kids who had urged their parents to bring them to eat there. I got my first baseball cards out of the Crystal’s “Treasure Chest,” including an early one of the great Red Sox slugger Ted Williams. Too bad I have no idea what I did with it.

A kid could entertain himself up and down Penn Street. You could watch the trains as they squealed across the tracks that crossed at 7th and Penn eating a Coney Island hot dog while waiting to get a haircut if the barber let you.

But some of my best times downtown as well as what turned out to be my worst were at the movies. Reading once had its fair share of movie palaces with the names of that era—Astor, Embassy, Loews and Warner. All are now gone along with the experience that came from buying a ticket to a grand theater as well as a movie.

And there was also the Park which was off limits to kids. If Penn Street had everything from A to Zeswitz— the music store where I bought my first record albums —then the Park Theater covered X. It was Reading’s home to the final years of burlesque as well as the early ones of Bridgett Bardot and later unadulterated very adult rated porn.

My first memories of going to the movies include “Mr. Roberts” starring Henry Fonda and Jack Lemon and “Guys and Dolls” with Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra. My parents took me. But what they never heard about was the time I missed a day of 6th grade to go to the movies without them.

Two friends of mine talked me into it although I can’t claim it took much more than asking me if I wanted to join them. We were all Jewish and it was a minor Jewish holiday and so obscure and insignificant an observance that only the most devout regulars at Kesher Zion synagogue showed up for morning prayer joined by us, three kids playing hooky.

Our absence from school and appearance at the service was a sham. We were on our way to a double feature. On the theater marquee was a pairing that wasn’t exactly biblical. We had skipped class and bluffed God to watch “Frankenstein” and “Dracula” and I’m talking the classic hall of fame horror genre versions starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Scary movies indeed!

That night as I lay in bed I knew falling asleep would be tough. Frankenstein and Dracula were either going to show up in my dreams or in my bedroom and I was powerless to choose. I was grateful for the street light down on the corner. At least I wasn’t totally in the dark. But suddenly a shadow streaked across my bedroom wall and I couldn’t move. I almost couldn’t breathe. Several more times the shadow seemed to lunge at me until I realized that it was created by each car that passed along the street outside my window. Nevertheless I was spooked for days.

Yes, I paid for more than just the two movies that day and I’ve never dared to watch either of them again. This particular wayward adventure downtown will always remain my Nightmare on Penn Street.

 

If clothes make the man, then I have never made it. Not that I didn’t have the opportunity. My father was a retailer–women’s ready-to-wear. My mother was fashionable and fashion conscious. Both my parents always dressed well. Our home movies show me in a camel hair coat as a toddler. I puked all over it on my first road trip. That could not have been premeditated but it did foreshadow my relationship with clothes for most of my life.

After college where nobody seemed to care about what they wore I lived on a kibbutz for seven years where even white collar job holders often wore blue collar work clothing– blue shirts, blue pants and black work boots. My entire kibbutz wardrobe could have fit in a shopping bag.

Afterward during my career in television news I was based in Los Angeles where Levi’s and sports shirts were almost de rigueur at the office and in the field and I happily followed suit so to speak. Costco became my outfitter and just how much so was apparent one day in a phone call to a Costco executive I wanted to arrange an interview with. I told him I was a Costco member.

“How many things are you wearing right now that you bought from us?” he asked.

“Hey, my pants, my underwear, my socks, my watch… maybe my shirt,” I answered. Yeah, I was a walking advertisement for the brand.

My colleague at ABC News Brian Rooney was my polar opposite when it came to apparel. Of course he was also an on camera correspondent and I was an off camera producer so how he looked really mattered but how I looked eventually must have mattered to him, too. It started with shoes after I was diagnosed with a foot injury called plantar fasciitis. The orthopedist’s office had another description for it– “Topsiders Disease”, named after the shoes I had been wearing for years that had no arch and as a result had likely inflamed mine. “You’ll never regret buying good shoes,” Rooney advised me at the time.

The next day he came into my office and threw a piece of paper in front of me with a more comprehensive set of guidelines. Its title was “Peter Imber Dress Code” and although it didn’t instantly change my life, it did immediately change my footwear buying habits. I purchased my first $200 pair of shoes. They were for golf and at the time the most comfortable shoes I had ever owned.

I left Costco behind in 2010 when my wife Jo and I moved to Maine. Actually, Costco left us behind as well since the closest one to where we live now is about a four hour drive. But when one retailing door closes another one opens and in Maine that’s abundantly clear which one. Maine’s state tree is the pine. Maine’s state clothes tree is L.L. Bean and quickly, I was all in. Free shipping, a generous return/replace policy and a flagship store open 24/7, what’s not to like?

L.L. Bean had it all. Shirts and pants and sweaters… But was I again falling into my previous Costco mode? So, at my wife’s urging I branched out. I bought a pair of dress khakis from Orvis that I even dry-clean. I have a beautiful shirt and tie from Brooks Brothers and three handsome sweaters purchased at Bloomingdale’s. As for shoes, I buy Ecco and Merrell and just discovered Hoka. I value comfort and quality now and pay for it. And I own not one but two parkas from The North Face. Wearing the same parka six months of the year gets boring even for me. Have I finally evolved as someone with a sense of or at least an appreciation for style?

Hmm… I guess I’m not all the way there yet. Yesterday, my wife pointed out and not for the first time that I have an abundance, no make that a preponderance of plaid and stripped shirts hanging in my closet. So, there’s work yet left to be done and before coming up here to my computer I realized my clothing choices may just have narrowed once again.

As I write this I am wearing what might be called the “Full Carhartt”– sweatshirt, jeans, socks… And yes, I’m quite comfortable. The wind is whipping and it’s cold outside.

I guess for now, if I’m not a fashionista, I’m at least a Fashion Nor’easter!

Oh teachers are my lessons done?

I cannot do another one.

They laughed and laughed and said,

Well child, are your lessons done?

                             –Leonard Cohen

The summer before entering Dartmouth College my class was sent books to read in advance of our matriculation. One was by José Ortega y Gasset, the other I don’t remember. I do remember that I didn’t read either one so the lecture about them upon our arrival in Hanover was wasted on me.

Quickly though, I discovered that Dartmouth was not a place where I could blow through assignments and skate by. My professors were demanding and my classmates smart and during my four years I remember only one student who I felt didn’t have the brains to be there.

Maybe I’m being harsh about him but it was after midnight night in rural Virginia when he bridged a car in which I was a passenger on a railroad track. Missing the turn was forgivable and fortunately, there was a bar adjacent to our predicament and its customers streamed out to help lift our vehicle back on the road we had strayed from.

As we got back in the car the good and drunk samaritans started banging on the hood demanding money.

“What should I do?” asked our driver. “I can’t run over them.”

“No, but you can back the fuck up and get the hell out of here!”

I’m not sure I was the first to shout this but you get the picture.

That close call occurred during the spring of my sophomore year. I was on the golf team and we were on our spring trip having worked our way north from South Carolina. A place called Fripp Island had been our starting point. It was a newly completed golf course and had all the hazards you tried to avoid and an extra one that seemed more like a matter of life and death.

In addition to the usual sand traps and ponds there were alligators and our rounds took longer to complete since when we spotted a gator on the fairway none of us knew how to ask it to let us play through.

The final match of our tour was at the University of Maryland. I was playing as last man on our team but I ended up paired against Maryland’s best golfer who was being punished for showing up late. He was mad about that and in golf, unlike football, anger is not usually going to work to your advantage.

I had a great day. The Maryland number one had a bad one and I beat him. That night my teammates and I celebrated and I vaguely remember at one point making a hazy trip to the men’s room.

When I arrived back in Hanover I was faced with a decision I had to make. In order to enroll in the fall I needed to declare a major. I had considered sociology but a baffling encounter with a department professor who assigned us Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities to read squelched that idea.

It was a Tuesday when she announced that we were supposed to have it read by Friday– all 458 pages. I approached her after class.

“Professor, I’m not sure I can read the book that fast.”

“Look, let me tell you something,” she said. “Most people only have one idea they’re trying to get across. If they’re great they might have two and if they have three they get the Nobel Prize.”

She was out the door while finishing her last sentence and I decided that I’d explore a different subject for a major.

And so it was shortly after our return from the golf trip that I walked across the Dartmouth Green to the English Department offices. The afternoon tea at Sanborn House was for prospective English majors and I had put on a jacket and tie for the occasion that I presumed was expected if not required. If I had been holding my tea cup and saucer correctly, I might have avoided what happened next.

As I listened and nodded while circulating around the room in front of the nattily dressed professors of the department I soon became aware that none were making consistent eye contact with me. They were more focused on the center of my chest. As soon as I lowered my head to see why, I understood the attraction. It was my tie– The same tie I had worn into the men’s room the night after my big win on the golf course.

Puke does not exactly enhance a repp tie and in seconds I concluded that English was not going to be the best choice for my concentration of studies either during the next two years.

When we returned to school that fall I still hadn’t made up my mind about a major. History seemed an option and I went to the bookstore to see what courses I would be signing up for but while checking them out I saw a class on Africa that was being taught by a government professor who I had liked… Yep, in that instant I became a government major.

After graduation when I went looking for my first job I was asked by an interviewer what I had studied in college. I told him the story I’ve just related here, vomit stained tie and all… He almost hired me!

I heard a story a while back about a couple who hired a realtor to look for a house in Maine. They were elderly, both in their 80s and wanted to move from Florida to Maine year round. Their realtor was incredulous.

“I have to say that it’s mostly the other way around. I’m often trying to sell a house for an older couple who want to move to Florida,” he confessed.

“No,” said the husband. “Our minds are made up we want to live here.”

“Well, you know the winters in Maine are long and often hard, but if you’re sure, I’m glad to help you find a place…  Excuse me if I ask what’s your reason for doing this?”

The wife answered, “We’ve been traveling all over the country and reading the obituaries in the local newspapers wherever we’ve been. In Maine we’ve discovered people live to be the oldest. That’s why we’re here.”

In my career with ABC News I got to travel to some pretty small and remote places and I’d read the obituaries in the local papers where there were still local papers but I wasn’t that interested in the longevity of the deceased. I was looking for stories about interesting lives. More often than not the obits I came across were perfunctory but sometimes I’d find one that hinted at a lot more than a life of convention or quiet desperation– A life I could imagine as accomplished and admired or intrepid and inspiring.

I realized years ago that everybody has a story but most of the time (mea culpa) we’re more interested in telling our own than listening to theirs. I got the chance to tell stories for a living as a television news producer and sometimes that meant crafting someone’s obituary. Almost always it was somebody famous of course. Network News rarely ever did fanfares for the common man or woman.

My first paying job in journalism when I was a teenager was at the Reading Times where I grew up in Pennsylvania. I was a copy boy running teletype wire rolls (gone) to the editors, taking reporters’ articles typed on sheets of carbon paper (also gone) to the linotypists (so gone Spell Check doesn’t even recognize the word). And I had a few other responsibilities. One of them was reconfiguring the obituaries that appeared in the evening paper so that they weren’t identical in the next morning’s edition. It was a mechanical task. I just switched the order of the sentences around and substituted similar words wherever possible. It was actually a lot like doing a lazy term paper, trying to avoid both any original thinking and the suspicion I was plagiarizing.

College newspapers don’t have an obituary section and only now as I’m past 70 do I realize how unlike real life that bubble of time was. Real life includes death and as I began a career in journalism certain deaths that were unexpected as well as those that were inevitable were always going to be news. I went to work at CBS News in New York after graduation and was low man on the totem pole on the Evening News with Walter Cronkite. This also made me the youngest person on the staff. In the summer of 1971 Cronkite’s lead editor asked me for advice.

“This singer Jim Morrison who just died in Paris. Have you heard of him? Should we mention him tonight?”

I told him yes and was dispatched to buy a Doors record album that was used as a picture behind the anchorman that evening. As far as I know I was the only one consulted about Morrison’s importance and for a brief moment I felt like I was a spokesman for my generation.

When I got to the ABC News Bureau in LA in 1982 we’d work up selected obituaries in advance for notable Hollywood stars whose health might be failing or were simply getting old. I worked on one for Katharine Hepburn that makes me smile even three decades later.

Hepburn did a number of interviews with Barbara Walters through the years and as we watched them I noticed something undeniable. Hepburn aged gracefully. If she was having any plastic surgery, it was not detectable. On the other hand Walters kept getting better looking as time went by. When the final tributes are paid to her and she’s shown doing the weather when she was the “Today Girl” 50 years ago, see if you agree with me.

During my career I learned a few things about when not to die if you’re famous. You don’t want to die on the weekend for instance when hardly anybody’s watching the news and skeleton news staffs don’t have the resources to put together something you’d consider worthy of your status and accomplishments. And you don’t want your demise to be competing for space with some other big event. Take Richard Burton, he had the misfortune of dying during the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics and on a Sunday to boot. He may have played King Arthur in Camelot and been married twice to Elizabeth Taylor but he was upstaged by the athletic heroics of Michael Jordan and Mary Lou Retton. ABC which was the network of the Olympic Games back then barely granted him a last curtain call.

And there’s another situation that you want to avoid if you’re a celebrity and at all able to put off knocking on heaven’s door. On October 10, 1985 Orson Wells and Yul Brynner died on the same day and got equal time on ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. This was probably half the amount of recognition they each might have gotten otherwise had they each died on different days.

Actually, despite Welles having starred in and directed Citizen Kane, one of the greatest films of all time, Brynner might have garnered a bit more coverage because there were powerful television public service announcements he made before his death about the dangers of smoking that caused his lung cancer.

For a posthumous TV tribute sometimes you only needed to be cast in a memorable moment occurring in a movie to make it into millions of homes. Take Slim Pickens. He might not have had the career of an author like say Grahame Greene but Slim rode a nuclear bomb into oblivion at the end of Dr. Strangelove which for TV is a picture worth infinitely more than the 500,000 words Greene produced with his work on the page. Greene’s acclaimed literary trove where the visuals he created could only be imagined inside one’s head was indeed slim pickings for television in comparison and his closing chapter went unread by any TV newsperson.

I got to do Roy Rogers’ obituary the day he died and was faced with a surprising challenge. It was a no brainer that we’d use Roy and Dale Evans singing “Happy Trails to You” in our remembrance. It was heard at the end of every episode of their TV series that my generation watched growing up. And that was the problem. “Happy Trails” was sung over the closing credits but you never saw Rogers and Evans actually singing it on camera.

Fortunately, we found a guest appearance by Rogers on a variety show where he performed his signature tune mounted on his horse Trigger so that we could have Roy ride off into eternity serenading us.

The business of doing an obituary before a person actually dies is certainly prudent journalistically but it occasionally upset those asked to participate in the effort. Case in point— Bob Hope. He warranted extensive preemptive preparation and I was assigned to work up a story on how he had influenced comedy as well as his peers.

I had no problem lining up contemporary comedians like Bill Maher (unpleasant but gave us a good soundbite) and Arsenio Hall (nice guy who gave us an even better soundbite). But I also wanted some of Hope’s contemporaries and was getting no where. In fact at one point I thought I might be heading for big trouble after I had this exchange with Sid Cesar’s agent.

“So, let me get this straight. You want Sid to talk about Hope as if Hope is already dead?” said the agent.

“Well, not exactly. We’re preparing a story about Hope that will be broadcast when he dies but we want to do it ahead of time.”

“So, Hope will be dead when you show this, right?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

“So Sid will talk now but Hope may as well be fucking dead!…  I know Roone Arledge and you should be ashamed of yourself.”

A few years later I did a much better job convincing no other than George Lucas to do an interview for me well before the death of another filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. I knew Lucas revered the Japanese director above all others and had credited Kurosawa’s film “The Hidden Fortress” as an inspiration for “Star Wars.”

After making a request for Lucas’s help I received a phone call from his representative.

“As you know George is a great admirer of Kurosawa but he feels uncomfortable speaking about him now and says he would be glad to do so if you ask him upon Kurosawa’s death,” she told me.

“I’m afraid on the day when Kurosawa dies, we won’t have time to get a camera to you. Please tell Mr. Lucas that giving us his thoughts ahead of time would be the surest way for him to have a chance to pay tribute to Kurosawa when that day comes.”

I usually don’t think quite as quickly on my feet but I had this time and got a call back the next day telling me George Lucas would be available for us to interview within a week.

Akira Kurosawa passed away six years later. It was on a Sunday and there was no other earth shattering news breaking on the planet. The obit I had produced, written and edited was in moth balls somewhere in the vaults of ABC News headquarters in New York. I phoned there to make everyone aware of its existence but by then  Kurosawa had through no fault of his own committed the ultimate dying gaffe that conspired against my homage and George Lucas’s salute to him ever getting on the air. For our perceived audience he had outlived his success and fame.

I’ve tacked on that obituary here for you to see now. I hope you will watch it. I think he might have liked my opening line…