Tag: funnies

Telling Stories around the Fire

March 25, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Fire – the Storyteller’s Fundamental Friend

It’s such a treat to listen to a story that’s told by a fire—

storytelling by the fire

 

especially an outdoor fire (apologies to presidential fireside chats and digital firespaces of the 21st century).  The snaps and hisses of burning wood provide a lovely soundtrack to accompany the teller’s spoken words.  The dancing light and shadows created by the flame add drama to the teller’s face.  The lighting and music established, the storyteller need only be concerned with his or her primary function: to tell the story.

Mysteries and tales of revenge and horror play out especially well by the evening blaze, but any tale will do.  Before theater popcorn and movies, youngsters would be drawn to these natural outdoor cineplexes.  Here, the same source would light the stage and pop the kernels.  Here, they’d gather to be mesmerized, and often to be scared to death by the storyteller’s tale.  No Hollywood director had so intimate an encounter with an audience.

The next time you’re looking to escape modern entrapments, go and experience a story delivered in the age old way. Yes, consider calling on a friend who owns a fire pit.  Or better yet, build one yourself. Then you’ll have a story to tell.

An Homage to The Sunday Funnies

March 4, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Remembering…

Remembering back to the holidays and birthdays of my childhood thirty some odd years ago, I realize that I’ve forgotten many of the presents I was given.  Generally speaking, I could count on my uncle for a Lego set (at the time the only options were Lego town or space) and my grandparents on my mom’s side were always good for an outfit.  I never did much appreciate the clothes they gave me–but I was always grateful for the wrapping paper.  You see, my grandmother would wrap my gifts with the pages of the Sunday comics, aka “The Sunday Funnies.”

I loved reading comics.

I especially loved reading them on Sundays, when they were given the color treatment.  I would come home from church and stalk the house for the paper, so I could get my hands on the latest escapades of Beetle Baily and Hagar the Horrible and Heathcliff and Garfield and–am I forgetting any other orange cat cartoons?

My hometown paper had a couple pages of color comics, but my grandparents?  They lived much closer to New York City, and their “big city” Sunday paper had two or three times as many cartoons!  Those that didn’t end up as gift wrap sat in a pile in gran’s attic, awaiting my arrival.  Truthfully, there wasn’t much for a kid to do at my grandparents’ house when the weather outside was poor, so I just sat–sometimes even in the attic, immediately after grabbing the topmost pages from the pile–and read and read.  I would read so many colored comics that my fingertips would ingest the ink from the pages and my eyes would begin to see halftone dots everywhere I looked.

Looking back, my grandmother, alive during the Great Depression, was probably just being thrifty when she chose to wrap my gifts in Sunday funnies.  But in doing so, she presented extraordinary blessings–blessings of laughter and artistic appreciation that stimulate me to this day.

See the evidence as follows:

cartoon by Jeremy Gates, an homage to the Sunday funnies

 

(My crack at a punchy 1-panel comic, a la “The Far Side” or Bizarro.”)

I’ll venture to post a cartoon such as this every week.

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