The Sweet Up and Down

This is the last part, I promise. I have a Lazy Sunday blog ready for Sunday and some recent developments I can now discuss although I'm not really prepared for them. I glad for the Spring weather though.

"I can dream about being Bugs, but when I wake up there's Daffy." Chuck Jones said this about how similar he was to Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Chuck Jones passed away in 2002 at the age of 89. He directed some of the best Looney Tunes cartoons, created the Roadrunner series and directed How the Grinch Stole Christmas. He knew how to make us laugh and we should be eternally grateful.

From there we move on to a subject near to my heart--Stull. Stull, Kansas is a tiny hamlet about 10 miles from Lawrence that reportedly had a haunted church and a gateway to Hell in the local cemetery. I say had because the church was torn down after standing for 135 years. The property owner arranged for the demolition after people expressed concern that the remaining two walls were a dangerous attractive nuisance. I actually traipsed around that cemetery and church a few times. It's because of Stull Cemetery and the church that I began getting into Kansas history and taking pictures to preserve the land and places I think need to be preserved. It's because of Stull I fell in love with where I am.

Shortly after Stull we come to another cemetery article about small, forgotten cemeteries that dot the Douglas County landscape. Then an article about the rebuilding of the Barber School, a one-room schoolhouse built in 1871 and named after Thomas Barber who was killed by a pro-slavery mob in the late 1850s. His body was displayed in the Eldridge Hotel and abolitionist John Brown is said to have uttered "This is the beginning of a civil war" upon seeing the body. The article was in 2003 and four years later the rebuilding is not finished...

Getting out of the history portion is a tribute to Christopher Reeve who, after being paralyzed in 1995 after a horse-riding accident, championed for spinal cord research and using stem cells to help reconstruct damaged nerves. Along with Michael J. Fox, they championed for stem cell research which was proven to aid in multiple afflictions. To make a donation to either foundation please visit the websites below. Also, Reeve portrayed Superman in the four movies between 1978 and 1987.

There are other things in there: tributes to other celebrities that have passed on, articles on historic buildings and other cemeteries in the area, a couple traffic warnings I've gotten, more Dave Barry columns, September 11th columns and stories and more Mutts comic strips. So many Mutts comic strips...

Donate to the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation
Donate to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research

Until next time, I remain...
~Brian

I am still doing this lame attempt to keep something posted on this thing. Sadly I've actually written two new things on my MySpace blog. There's something I'm tired of and it's high-time I get it fixed. More on that later.

"I have been grateful over the years for the loyalty of our editors and the wonderful support and love expressed to me by fans of the comic strip. Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy...how can I ever forget them..." is what Charles Schulz wrote in the last Peanuts strip. I saved every article I could and even saved the final strips. Schulz inspired me--and a lot of other people. I actually cried after reading the book Peanuts: The Art of Charles Schulz because it was so touching and gave some insight into his life.

The saddest article I have is about a biker who adopted a girl with cerebral palsy and made a promise: "I'll always be here for you." Roy Hutchison adopted little Tiffany and kept that promise for 15 years before Tiffany passed away. Tiffany was born at Truman Medical Center in Kansas City. Her mother was mentally disabled and didn't know she was pregnant. The umbilical cord was wrapped around Tiffany's neck cutting off oxygen to the brain. When Hutchison first saw Tiffany, she was blind, her spine severely curved, her hips and shoulders deformed. He was informed that she would probably die soon but he didn't care. He treated every day as if it were her last. Tiffany's body started shutting down and rejecting treatment and Hutchison decided to let her go. "You'll hurt no more, baby," Hutchison whispered as Tiffany passed away.

Next to that article is the obituary for my best friend's dad and then an article about an accident at my high school involving a boy being hit with a broom. I used to work with the boy who did the hitting. He stabbed me with a fork--in the hand but it still hurt. Anyway, then comes the newspaper announcement of the birth of my son. Don't bother looking, I'm not mentioned. I do have something amusing, a photo of a man in Pakistan setting fire to the American flag during a protest/celebration. In the next picture the flag burning got out of hand setting the man on fire. Hi-larious.

I also have an obituary for Kathryn Zeller, the special events coordinator for Baker University between 1998 and 2001. She was good at what she did and it seemed like she didn't get the respect she deserved. When she died I can't believe I missed her because she was bossy, pushy and other things but she liked working with me--I guess I made her laugh with my lackadaisical attitude and innocent stupidity about catering. Her last words to me before I left Baker were: "You'll be the death of me, Brian." She said it with a smile. I guess working for her wasn't that bad.

To be continued...
~Brian

This is my lame attempt to show that I am not really neglecting LJ. I am currently busy writing a lot of other which I will tell you about in due time. So enjoy this three-part yawn-fest I wrote several months ago.

I was looking through my scrapbook--yes, I have a scrapbook--and although it's not all that great--not a tribute to dead people and funny ads like my mom's--but it all is, or was, very special to me at one time. Several comic book covers are in there because they fell off the actual book decreasing their value exponentially. On the first page is a newspaper article from 1996 on a cemetery in the middle of Lawrence which is a little glimpse into what would become a hobby five years later. The second page has a Funky Winkerbean comic that started a story about a bombed post office. Since then Funky has gotten really depressing and it's quite sad now. There are also several--actually a lot--of Mutts comic strips which is actually a terrible strip in retrospect.

On page 14--I numbered them. Who are you to judge me?--is a drawing of Picasso, his bird and cat and a mouse done by an old friend Erik. I remember he did it in art class. His stuff was always 95 percent better than mine. I then moved away from art and focused on writing. Soon we come across an island nation we created together. Someday I want to use it for a story. There are way too many comic strips in here. Soon I moved the strips into a different book. Mutts is still a terrible strip on page 41 as it was on page 12.

After about page 50 the memories become more serious starting with an article on Phil Hartman, an actor who was murdered by his wife in May 1998. I also saved all the articles from my high school paper written by Emily, a girl I had a crush on. That ended horribly so we're gonna move onto a column by Dave Barry about The Blair Witch Project which is one of only four horror movies to be really scary to me. After that comes several articles on the 50th Anniversary of Peanuts and Charles Schulz's retirement. The cream of that is the article written by Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson about how much Schulz inspired him and millions of others. You turn the page and Charles Schulz has passed away...

To be continued...
~Brian