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Shoe

That reminds me of two cartoons I drew years ago:

I haven’t thought of them in long time.

January 27, 2026

Bliss

The pup is so happy. It’s a good balance to my keeping up with what’s going on in the world.

January 26, 2026

For higher resolution click on the comics.

Calvin and Hobbes en Español

Calvin and Hobbes

Garfield en Español

Garfield

Spending a little bit of time on Spanish each day, and having fun in the process, is working just fine. I’m gradually recognizing a few more words, which is an added treat. The real reward is it reinforces the idea that patience, persistence, and enjoying the process can be the super powers of a happy life.

At least that works for me. What works for you?

January 25, 2025

https://youtube.com/watch?v=R27LLnyeDYQ%3Fsi%3DgTSbTVMdVJDtn2xs

January 24, 2026

Item 1: an article I read about 60 years ago on being “nostalgic for the present.” The author noticed that every time they moved she was nostalgic for parts of the old location. Then she realized it was often for things she hadn’t consciously noticed while she had them. She decided that was dumb, so she consciously decided to start noticing and appreciating more parts of her present life, not waiting until she lost them.

Item 2: a TV version of Thorton Wilder’s Our Town that I saw about 70 years ago. Emily has died in childbirth but is given a chance to go back to life for one day. The other dead warn her not to do it, but she chooses her twelfth birthday.
She returns expecting joy, expecting to relive a happy day. Instead, she can’t bear it — everyone is so hurried and distracted. They take life, and its everyday moments, for granted. Emily has to leave because it’s too painful to watch.

Needless to say, those two incidents made a big impression on me! And those two messages explain why a lot of people are happiest in their 70s and beyond — if health problems don’t intrude too much. They do understand how short and precious life is, so they pay attention and savor it.

January 23, 2026

Click on the comics for higher resolution.

For Better or Worse

That comic made me laugh, not just for itself, but because it reminds me of this comic:

gocomics.com/pickles

Which in turn reminds of a verse I read in the Wall Street Journal over 40 years ago:

I wish I could retain,
By some Herculean feat,
As much of what I read
As I do of what I eat.

My hats off to that author, whoever he was. I have retained those words after all this time.

Tomorrow I’ll talk about something I read about 60 years ago.

Andertoons

When I was a kid I used to worry about spiders in the foot of my bedding, so I slept curled up. I hadn’t thought of that in years. And my folks would leave the hall light on until they went to bed, so I tried to get to sleep before they shut it off. I was still afraid of the dark long after I stopped worrying about spiders.

What about you? Was there anything you were afraid of?

January 21, 2026

I posted this cartoon in June, 2017.

Bliss

For some it’s even more relevant today. A lot has happened in the past eight and a half years.

The bean plants still look as if they won’t last much longer, but one of the ones on the right is putting out a blossom.

And the birthday balloon is getting weaker.

But it is still managing to be almost upright.

They’re doing the best they can with what they have left. Just like Andy and me. 😀

January 19, 2026

I read these lines from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Ulysses from time to time — they always make me laugh:

Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

That is so not me. I can happily stay in my apartment for days and still feel a sense of adventure. I’m with Marcel Proust:

The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

It reminds me of the Zen Buddhist idea of “shoshin,” meaning to approach situations with openness, eagerness, and a lack of preconceptions. That may subconsciously be where the first line of my mantra came from:

Stay curious and open to life.

Anyway, for me it’s an important part of enjoying my second childhood.

In The Summer Day Mary Oliver asks,

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean–
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down–
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

I don’t (thanks to ideas, books, and the internet) even need to leave my apartment to pay attention and open myself up to life.

January 18, 2025