BorgBlog

Speaking Truth to Power

2008-05-30T08:47:00.002-05:00

OK, so speaking truth to power is part of my job description as an editorial cartoonist. It ain't always fun (sometimes it is). Here's an open letter to Mr. Pluck and whoever else calls the shots on these blogs:

This new blog is a total letdown. We were told "this blog isn't changing, but it will have a lot of new improvements," and we were asked to tell this to our readers. BorgBlog's readers are responding with one giant, monolithic voice, "Who do you think you're fooling?"

The new Pluck blog is anything but an improvement in the case of BorgBlog. My readers used to be able to come to my blog and find an aesthetically pleasing column of drawings and essays, easy to navigate and post comments on, and enlarge the images with a single click for the many who chose to visit to scratch their graphic itch. Now it is a column of post titles, clicking over and back, over and back, over and back to miserly image files. What a disappointment.

There's no shortage of blame, some of which goes to Blogger, whose attention was increasingly difficult to capture when posting. A bigger share goes to the jerks whose inappropriate comments made it necessary to seek a more accountable format. I can hardly blame corporate for seeking a better system to police those whose fundamental incivility constantly threatened to sink the old blogs, as well as my faith in humanity.

Maybe Pluck is working well for those writers whose style fits it naturally. And Lord knows, I don't miss moderating comments. But for a graphics-oriented blog like this one, Pluck is no improvement. BorgBlog readers and I are all losing interest fast.

A Movable Blog

2008-05-23T08:04:00.000-05:00

This blog has moved! The new blog can be found at
http://news.cincinnati.com/borgblog, so be sure to update your bookmarks.

If you subscribe to this blog via an RSS reader, the new RSS feed is
http://sitelife.cincinnati.com/ver1.0/PersonaBlog/BlogRss?plckBlogId=Blog:e1
b6bfc0d9a24509a05e442a57e55e40

Blogged Down

2008-05-21T08:53:00.001-05:00

Blogger must be one busy little site, because once again I've been unable to upload my cartoons for a couple of days. Sorry for the delay.

Kentucky Primary

2008-05-19T16:54:00.002-05:00

Public Service Announcement

2008-05-19T09:13:00.006-05:00

So here's the scoop on the switch over to Pluck, in the words of our Enquirer guru of blogs Mandy Jenkins.

"Starting later this week, this blog will be published in a new blog tool
on a brand-new Cincinnati.Com website.

- This blog isn’t changing, but it will have a lot of new improvements.

- When we move to the new blog, this one won’t go away just yet, but it will
have a link to the home of the new blog. Eventually, any bookmarks and links
to this blog will take you to the new one.

- Once I start posting to the new blog, you’ll be able to get in and get a
sneak peek at the new website before anyone else."

I'm not entirely sure about the "this blog isn’t changing, but it will have a lot of new improvements" part. The Pluck blogs I've seen require the reader to click on each blog post in order to see the cartoon, and I'm not sure that's an improvement for a graphics blog, but I'm trying to keep an open mind. Generally, Pluck blogs are spoken of highly among those who've adopted them.

I do look forward to moving to the new post-moderation era, in which readers will apparently be able to shoot tranquilizer darts into the necks of inappropriate commenters. That should make for livelier repartee, don't you think?

The World According to Bush

2008-05-16T14:05:00.002-05:00

Thanks For Your Patience

2008-05-16T08:04:00.004-05:00

Blogger finally ended its Borgman boycott and here's the work from the last several days.

The bubble in the cartoon about frat boy Marc Dann originally read "'Bout Time" as he was being dragged away, but Dann held on another day and at the last minute I changed the caption to something a bit more equivocal. Late-breaking humor, don't you know.

Hillary's Rust Belt is a rare case of one of my cartoons that might have benefitted from color, but it ran on a Thursday. I tried to make the belt look rusty using tones and body english, but it was really her caricature that I enjoyed.

"Oh, the ...places you'll go!" earns a big thanks to my buddy Jerry Scott who talked me down from the ledge as deadline approached and got me brainstorming aloud long enough to trip across an idea despite myself. Jerry does that for me more than anyone will ever know. A tip of the Hatlo hat, old pal!

Talk Among Yourselves

2008-05-14T18:42:00.001-05:00

I've been unable to upload my last three cartoons to Blogger for reasons known only to God. You can go here to look at them until Blogger deals with its issues..

Hanging It Up

2008-05-12T20:34:00.003-05:00

The Bubba Gap

2008-05-09T16:59:00.001-05:00

Junior

2008-05-07T17:07:00.000-05:00

Myanmar

2008-05-07T15:19:00.002-05:00

Herblock Exhibit

2008-05-07T08:52:00.004-05:00

I just visited the Herblock Exhibit online.

The work, of course, is as seminal to our profession as kneaded erasers. And the online tour is fantastic. You can see all the battle scars on the originals and zoom in for a closer look as easily as if you were standing in front of the drawing in the gallery. This is the new standard for an online art exhibition, and no one's work deserves it more richly.

Disposable Income

2008-05-06T14:24:00.000-05:00

Shout Outs

2008-05-06T08:11:00.003-05:00

Oliphant is smokin'.

We were talking about Mike Lester's work in the comments section the other day. If you haven't discovered his work, here's an archive.

For those of you complaining that you're not getting your money's worth of Obama bashing on my blog (oops, sorry, forgot this was free), you'll find plenty in Glenn McCoy's archive. The guy cracks me up. Even better is his strip The Duplex.

Got a great email from Jeremy Nell who draws both editorial cartoons and a comic strip in Capetown, South Africa. Check out his stuff here.

Marc Dann's Last Stand

2008-05-05T16:02:00.000-05:00

Pandering

2008-05-02T14:17:00.001-05:00

Shout Outs

2008-05-02T09:50:00.003-05:00

Some cartoons I've seen lately that I liked.

Check out Pat Oliphant's great cartoon on the blather of TV's talking heads. Great image and cuts through the crap.

Matt Davies did a beauty on the relative insignificance of recent proposals to address the energy crisis. (Flies on Windshield)

Check out Richard Thompson's More Old Stuff post (about halfway down) on the Otterloops' visit to Open House. Have you ever seen a more charming moment than panel one?

I like Mike Luckovich's take on the Jeremiah Wright distraction. (May 1)

Tony Auth did a nice one on the gas tax holiday proposal.

Priorities

2008-04-30T16:16:00.002-05:00

An interesting story in today's paper -- Scientists are recommending the suspension of the production of biofuels in light of the growing global food crisis. We're fueling our cars ahead of our brothers. The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again. Not so long ago we were looking to biofuels as a significant part of an alternative fuels program.

Well, learn and adjust. We'll be doing a lot of that as we stumble our way into a post-petroleum future.

Ocho Stuck-o

2008-04-30T11:46:00.002-05:00

Globe of Death

2008-04-29T16:23:00.000-05:00

Control Tower

2008-04-28T16:26:00.002-05:00

Last week the Enquirer editorial board took a tour of CVG, our local hub. We visited the control tower where I did this sketch. Frankly, I've been itching for an opportunity to play with it.

Hard-Hitting Allergy Cartoon

2008-04-28T08:03:00.000-05:00

Remembering Matt Maupin

2008-04-25T16:48:00.000-05:00

Now What?

2008-04-23T16:44:00.000-05:00

Prediction

2008-04-22T16:34:00.000-05:00

VP Rob

2008-04-22T14:39:00.002-05:00

Sausage Factory: Pennsylvania Primary Edition

2008-04-22T09:13:00.004-05:00

So it's Tuesday and our Pennsylvania neighbors are scurrying to the polls even as we blog to determine whether Hillary lives to fight another day.

For editorial cartoonists it's another what-do-I-draw-for-tomorrow dilemma. The voting results are likely to be subtle and nuanced, and the spin alone can rip even a generally accurate cartoon guess right out of your hands and deposit it on the slag heap of history by morning.

I may draw about something else entirely -- I have something I wrote yesterday about John McCain and local VP candidate Rob Portman. Or something may present itself today that works no matter the primary's outcome, though that is an exceedingly rare bird indeed. Even hanging around the office until 11PM may not help tonight, since even a shift of a few last-minute percentage points can change the perceived outcome in a tight campaign like this one.

Here's a peek at my pile o' process so far:

Keeping the Hub

2008-04-21T15:30:00.001-05:00

Hanging Chad

2008-04-18T15:44:00.001-05:00

Public Service Announcement

2008-04-18T14:05:00.003-05:00

Did you feel it?

Shameless Plug

2008-04-17T16:19:00.002-05:00

In stores now, in time for Mother's Day!

Recent Roughs

2008-04-16T16:52:00.003-05:00

We Love To Fly And It Shows

2008-04-16T16:49:00.000-05:00

A Little Q and A

2008-04-16T16:45:00.002-05:00

Q.More editorial cartoonists are adding the dimension of animation to
their arsenal in recent years. Mike Lester, Ann Telnaes, and
Australia's Peter Nicholson are just a few whom have all been
regularly producing animated versions of editorial cartoons that
appear online. Wiley Miller (of the "Non Sequitur" comic strip) was
recently quoted as saying these animated editorial cartoons "tend to
go towards the entertainment value rather than the editorial or
political side of things. They're funny but they miss the point."
Do you agree with his sentiments on this new medium? And would you
ever consider making an animated version of your editorial cartoons?

A. Well, we can’t all be trailblazers through every thicket, can we? Animation isn’t one of the frontiers that interests me because I love line and rendering and these things are largely lost in the level of animation I could aspire to. Very few of my ideas present themselves to me in motion, so I would simply be imposing an unnatural task upon a drawing that wants to sit still.

That said, I’m opportunistic enough to take advantage of blazed trails, and if the pioneers work out the knots and eventually hand the rest of us an accessible map to the land of worthwhile animation, I’ll acquaint myself and see if ideas start talking to me in moving form.

Papal Visit

2008-04-16T13:54:00.000-05:00

Bitter

2008-04-15T14:48:00.000-05:00

AGnimal House

2008-04-14T16:35:00.001-05:00

More College Costs

2008-04-14T13:12:00.002-05:00

College Tuition Tips

2008-04-11T16:10:00.000-05:00

Have a Nice Weekend

2008-04-11T13:01:00.002-05:00

Wonk City: Random Moments from a Random Comic Strip

2008-04-11T10:01:00.003-05:00

In the mid-1990s I drew a weekly comic strip for the Washington Post called Wonk City. The main character was a bureaucrat in the Clinton White House named Gil Wonkmeister. The panel had an inside-the-beltway theme about the inner workings of government, which is ironic because not once during its two-year run did I set foot inside Washington DC and I have no idea how government works. After 100 or so episodes I quit because I felt like a fraud and have generally swept any memory of the endeavor under the rug.

I've been going back through WC lately and discovering to my surprise that there were actually some pretty fun and bizarre moments. Over time I intend to get them all scanned and logged into our archive, maybe even collect them in a little book. For now, enjoy these random scenes.

Don't Know Much About the Economy

2008-04-09T17:29:00.000-05:00

New Spring Training Home for Reds

2008-04-09T13:41:00.001-05:00

Ohio AG Frat House

2008-04-09T10:14:00.001-05:00

Have you seen this story from the Columbus Dispatch that broke over the weekend?

Congressional Testimony

2008-04-08T16:31:00.000-05:00

Got Game?

2008-04-07T16:37:00.000-05:00

Tribute

2008-04-04T16:01:00.000-05:00

Chinese Propaganda

2008-04-02T17:22:00.000-05:00

Welcome Home Vets

2008-04-02T14:34:00.001-05:00

Borgman Archive

2008-04-02T11:11:00.003-05:00

A massive effort on the part of Dave Burke and the Enquirer's IT department has culminated in a relaunch of the Jim Borgman Cartoon Archive on the Enquirer's website. We're current again. Search the archive for any previously published cartoon you've been trying to locate or galleries of cartoons on the topics that interest you. (The archive reaches back about ten years, to when we started keeping digital files of my cartoons.)

Pennsylvania

2008-04-01T17:33:00.001-05:00

R.I.P. Sgt. Matt Maupin

2008-03-31T15:26:00.002-05:00

The remains of Sgt. Matt Maupin have been identified after four years of being listed as Missing/Captured in Iraq. Matt was a local soldier and yellow ribbons have remained tied to trees throughout this area since he first went missing on April 9, 2004.

R.I.P. Sgt. Matt Maupin

2008-03-31T14:59:00.003-05:00

Opening Day

2008-03-31T09:13:00.003-05:00

Whenever I talk to my buddy on the west coast around this time of year and mention Opening Day, he askes, "Opening day of what?" After a dozen years of this ritual, I have to assume it's just to annoy me, but it reminds me that to much of the misguided world the beginning of baseball season is just another day. Man, what keeps them going through February and March? (Oh yeah, on the west coast the answer would be, "Surfing, going to the beach, strawberry season, biking, hiking....")

Well, here where you can't feel your toes for months at a time the coming of baseball season is sometimes the only thing that keeps us sane. We don't arrive at the park in the third inning and leave in the seventh. We know how to balance two metts and a beer on our laps while we clap for mediocre teams. Thousands of Greater Cincinnatians will line up along a parade route in the rain this morning to watch Pete Rose look-alikes wave from a float.

It's a Cincinnati thing -- you wouldn't understand.

Opening Day

2008-03-28T15:53:00.002-05:00

Baseball Portfolio

2008-03-28T13:40:00.003-05:00

Monday is Opening Day here in Cincinnati, an unofficial secular holiday. When I was in elementary school, if you showed your teacher a ticket to the Opening Day game you were excused from school for the day.

My files are brimming with baseball cartoons. Here are a few I like from previous years.

Tax Weekend

2008-03-28T12:17:00.002-05:00

Uncharacteristically, my wife and I have put off doing our taxes until this weekend, so we're facing a deadly Saturday of organizing papers and receipts. It strikes me that it's the left-brain equivalent to what I've been doing the rest of this week: crunching to meet a couple dozen right-brain deadlines. My brain will have had a good cross-training workout by Monday.

A Little More Q&A

2008-03-27T10:14:00.002-05:00

Q. I thought you weren't going to delete all my #@!*%$# obnoxious comments!

A. I changed my mind.

New rules: Civility gets published, incivility doesn't, regardless of political viewpoint. Spammers and barkers, go elsewhere. Sports statistics go in the box scores.

A Little More Q&A

2008-03-26T22:02:00.002-05:00

OK, this time I'll be more serious.

Q. Paul B said...
Which state and local politicians do you enjoy drawing -- and which do you think you ought to draw more often?

A. Not sure about the "ought" part -- I draw what I see and have thoughts about.

Of the local politicians I enjoy drawing, I like Mayor Mark's thin, angular face and tiny horizontal glasses; I've always enjoyed Simon Leis's great bullet head, especially when he's angry and pink; Tarbell is Christmas morning for a cartoonist; Steve Chabot's big stone head and Jean Schmidt's severe bun are trademarks; I have a file full of Roxanne, though none recently; and I'm still getting the hang of the caricature-defying Ted Strickland.

My nonpolitical local favorites: Nancy Zimpher in red plaid and Bengal warden Marvin Lewis.

Gone but not forgotten: Pete Rose, Marge Schott, Nux, Dave Mann, Norm Murdock, Tom Luken, John Mirlisena, Ken Blackwell, Lincoln Stokes, Sam Wyche, Bob Taft and Jerry Springer.

Airline Ordeal

2008-03-26T17:04:00.000-05:00

Super

2008-03-26T15:33:00.001-05:00

A Little Q&A

2008-03-26T09:06:00.003-05:00

BorgFan posted a few questions awhile back:

Q. Jim, what are some of your favorite things to draw?

A. People. Big doughy ones, particularly, such as I grew up among in Price Hill. Disheveled homes with stacks of magazines on the end tables and kids banging on pianos. Teenagers in someone else's clothes. Big mammals. Waitresses at Big Boy. Dinosaurs and baseball players. People with their mouths wide open. Hectic family life. Big guys in tight spaces. Dogs posing as humans. Literary figures. Backs of heads. Kids jumping on each other. People carrying laundry baskets. Giant planets splitting in half. People disappearing into a time warp.

I hate drawing cats and trains and anything seriously architectural.

Q. Why do you tape your drawing paper to your board when you draw?

A. I like drawing into a stiff wind.

Q. Do you have assistants? What do they do for you?

A. Tons of assistants. Several stay busy just burning old roughs. Another's sole assignment is to contact the target of the next day's cartoon to be sure they have the proper sedatives on hand. One assistant had collagen injections just so she could bring the tip of my brushes to a perfect point. I hardly know what to do with all the help around here.

Keep On SUVin'

2008-03-25T16:20:00.000-05:00

Meeting Cy Hungerford

2008-03-25T11:21:00.006-05:00

An email from fellow cartoonist Justin Green recounted his first brush with a professional cartoonist when Justin was 14. An excerpt:

"How well I remember the cold December day in ‘59 when I marched through the golden revolving doors of the Tribune Towers and demanded to see Carey Orr, as if that was my birthright. I was only 14. It was so windy that I was literally carried aloft for a few steps by my gigantic portfolio on the bridge over the Chicago River. The kindly guard said that he would give my message to Mr. Orr. Fifteen minutes later, he brought down a finished panel with apologies from the old master. “Mr. Orr is not able to speak with you at this time, but he wants you to have this drawing.” I was as overwhelmed by the gesture as by the look of the thing: it was four times bigger than a published piece and it had little notations in the margins and visible blue pencil! I thought his front page cartoons were drawn to scale, directly in ink."

Justin's memory prompted my own equivalent:

A relative of mine in Pittsburgh learned that I’d been hired at the Enquirer and wrangled an invitation for me to visit with the ancient editorial cartoonist at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Cy Hungerford. Cy was maybe 85 at the time and continued to come to work and draw a tired old editorial cartoon daily, even after they’d thrown several retirement parties for him. I drove to Pittsburgh, heart in throat, as I’d never met a cartoonist of any kind before.

Cy was burrowed into this cave of an office like an old badger from The Wind in the Willows. In memory he was drawing with a quill pen, though that is almost certainly not true; but it is true that his inkwell was now a mound like an anthill with a hole in the middle, the result of years and years of dribbled ink. It reminded me of candlewax down the sides of a chianti bottle, or a stalagmite on the floor of a cave. Cy looked at me through his thick glasses and spent an hour telling me about his career: drawing on assignment at the coronation of Edward VI or somesuch, and the drawings he did when Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated, Lincoln was shot, and Anne Boleyn was beheaded. I felt about three inches tall when he asked to see my work. He swept the Magna Carta and Treaty of Versailles off his desk to make room and I laid out the six drawings that constituted my lifetime output of published editorial cartoons. One, I remember, had Gerald Ford riding an elephant.

The sweet man suggested we trade originals. He picked one of mine and gave me one from his drawer showing his character Pa Pitt sitting atop the courthouse commenting on Napoleon’s retreat from Russia, I think. He allowed me to leave feeling almost like a colleague, which made the six-hour drive home seem like an instant.

Feel free to share any memory you might have of meeting your first cartoonist.

Iraq

2008-03-24T16:30:00.000-05:00

5 Years

2008-03-21T17:00:00.000-05:00

Losing My Religion

2008-03-19T17:27:00.002-05:00

Working Sketch

2008-03-19T15:18:00.001-05:00

Race In America

2008-03-19T15:00:00.002-05:00

Waiting...

2008-03-18T16:53:00.001-05:00

Oldie for Caroline

2008-03-18T12:12:00.003-05:00

Here's an oldie from my files, put up by request. Wish I had more occasion to draw dinosaurs. I did a lot of them when my son was five but I've gotten out of the habit.

Mac Madness

2008-03-17T16:22:00.002-05:00

Thank You

2008-03-15T12:36:00.002-05:00

I just wanted to say Thank You for the comments everyone has been posting lately. The last few posts' exchanges particularly have been uplifting because we're all talking with each other instead of at each other. Thanks. This is more fun.

By the way, a reader or two have mentioned the removal of comments from the posts. I want you to know that no comment is ever removed because of an opposing viewpoint, as charged. I sometimes remove the spammer's long cut-and-pastes, the Boston statistics guy, and the guy with the uncontrollable urge to bark bizarre nonsequeters so that the rest of us can talk and debate. I consider it the blogging equivalent of picking up litter in the park.

Union Terminal Field Trip

2008-03-14T09:04:00.005-05:00

You'd think that working for a newspaper editorial page would be about all the excitement a guy could handle, but you'd be wrong. The other day our department took a day-long field trip to visit behind the scenes at the 75-year-old Union Terminal building, current home of the Cincinnati Museum Center and formerly the most magnificent art deco train station ever built.

Head honcho Doug MacDonald and some of his staff took us into the bowels of the building, along the catwalks just behind the front windows of the building, and up over the top of the rotunda.

Here's a view to the left (into the rotunda) and then to the right (city view) through open windows on the highest catwalk. The catwalk is maybe three feet wide, sandwiched between two walls of windows.

The mechanism behind the huge clock on the front of the building.

The building's former life as a train station is still happily preserved. Check out these awesome mosaic murals. One stands beside the door for departing passengers, the other signals arrivals. How cool is that?

They've even preserved the color sketches the muralist worked from.

Eventually we made our way crosstown to the Geier Building, where the scientists and archivists do the real grunt work. They work with tons of great stuff -- stuffed mammals and birds, trilobytes, a whole roomful of snakes preserved in jars of alcohol, cool artifacts from Polynesian islands, Civil War uniforms and swords. They have drawers and drawers full of birds. It's nuts.

Thanks for prying us out of the office for a day, Doug. But that last photo reminds me, I've got deadlines.

Little Mister Sunshine

2008-03-14T08:57:00.003-05:00

The Enquirer will devote a lot of space this coming week to Sunshine Laws which ensure government transparency and accountability, which is a good thing. It's a rare occasion when my editor asks me to essentially illustrate a Forum piece, and I'm happy to oblige.

World Water Week

2008-03-12T19:58:00.004-05:00

My family visited Siem Reap, Cambodia last year and visited the staggeringly beautiful temples of Angkor Wat, awesome sights I never imagined I'd see in this lifetime. Our guide Sothy had the glowing inner peace we saw in so many Buddhists on our trip, despite the horrors he and his countrymen had suffered under the Khmer Rouge. Traveling in Buddhist countries put our western lifestyle in a new perspective for me, and I still reflect on the remarkable calm and kindness of the people we met in Cambodia and Thailand.

But the people of Siem Reap are crushingly poor.

Sothy took my family on a boat trip on a large lake from which we were able to observe a village in the course of its everyday life. We saw the residents washing their clothes on the rocks beside the lake, cooking in their open-air huts and going about their humble business, all with water dipped from the lake which also carried human waste. Both their humanity and their poverty affected us deeply and we came away asking Sothy how an outsider could help his much-abused country.

Most of their physical problems stemmed from poor sanitation, he explained, and a pump in a village could bring hygiene, safer food and improved health. When a village got a water pump, diarrhea dropped almost to zero and child death rates plummeted.

A pump in a village allowed the children, especially girls, to go to school instead of spending their days carrying water from the nearest river. Families could grow gardens and sometimes establish small businesses. My wife, a professor at NKU, has always believed that education is the key to a better life, and it became clear that safe water was the key to getting an education for these people.

We asked, "How much does it cost to install a pump for a village?"

"Very expensive," answered Sothy. "About one hundred American dollars."

We stared at each other. How many hundred dollars have we wasted in our lifetimes? Our new mission was clear. Through the organization Journeys Within Our Community we have been financing wells and scholarships since our return home.

One more story: My stepdaughter Mandi took action then and there. She began buying up the handmade bracelets children sell at every tourist stop, usually ten for a dollar. When Mandi returned home she sold the bracelets at her school for two dollars each and ultimately raised enough money to finance eleven village pumps in Cambodia all by herself.

Geraldine Ferraro

2008-03-12T19:56:00.000-05:00

$4 Gas

2008-03-11T08:19:00.001-05:00

Swoon

2008-03-07T16:37:00.000-05:00

Got Your Back, Mac

2008-03-05T18:04:00.000-05:00

Endorsement

2008-03-05T15:56:00.002-05:00

Houdini 2

2008-03-05T00:34:00.002-05:00

Bubble

2008-03-05T00:29:00.000-05:00

Bubble

2008-03-04T22:51:00.002-05:00

Houdini

2008-03-04T22:44:00.001-05:00

Closing Down the Joint

2008-03-04T22:43:00.000-05:00

We've Come A Long Way

2008-03-04T19:23:00.000-05:00

Nine Lives

2008-03-04T19:17:00.000-05:00

Down to Ohio

2008-03-04T19:14:00.002-05:00

On The Table

2008-03-04T18:02:00.000-05:00

Election Night

2008-03-04T15:35:00.004-05:00

I have my safety cartoon done for tomorrow's page (the 3AM phone call, below), so I came to the office midafternoon to begin the hurry-up-and-wait ritual of election night at the newspaper. Returns won't be announced until the polls close at 7:30 and it's unlikely we'll have any sort of drawable conclusions by my 10PM deadline, but it's fun to get the adrenalin pumping by hanging around the swirl of activity in the newsroom and hoping to draw something live and fresh for tomorrow's paper. And hey, free pizza.

My daughter and I were the first two voters at our precinct this morning. It was Chelsea's first time voting and she'll always remember that she got ballot #001 in her first election. The ballot itself was anticlimactic -- after marking our presidential preferences there was only one contested race on the rest of our ballot (between two people we'd never heard of), and then the zoo levy on the back. The poor poll worker's team hadn't arrived yet, so he fumbled through the process alone. My daughter probably has a pretty distorted sense of democracy in action after this one.

Nonetheless, I find voting exhilarating for reasons I can't explain. And voting with my daughter ranks right up there with watching her find her balance on her first bike. She's confident and passionate now and knows the candidates and issues as well as most people I know. I've raised two thoughtful voters now, and I feel just that much better about the future of our country.

I'll be blogging and posting sketches here throughout the evening if you care to tune in.

Enthusiasm Gap

2008-03-03T18:07:00.000-05:00

Fear Bomb

2008-03-03T17:07:00.001-05:00

Yesterday's Gone

2008-02-29T18:34:00.000-05:00

Clinton Fatigue

2008-02-27T18:36:00.000-05:00

Ping Pong Balls

2008-02-27T08:49:00.005-05:00

The Hillary/Titanic cartoon (several below) baffled enough people that we're not running it in the print edition. The Big Bopper came in scratching his head yesterday afternoon, and my syndicate editor called to make sure he understood what I meant. When the first comment on the blog begins, "I don't get it," that's a clue. I pulled it voluntarily and did the Cunningham cartoon instead.

It was another instance of a dilemma cartoonists have from time to time -- Who Knows What? I thought everyone had heard of the notion of raising sunken ships with ping pong balls (which the cable show MythBusters proved would work!) Seems the idea hadn't spread through the populace as I'd thought. "Why would they want to play ping pong on a sinking ship?" I was asked.

With its instant alert capabilities, the blog may have saved thousands of readers from scratching their heads all day today. If you got the cartoon, enjoy. It's a freebie. If you didn't, count yourself among the many.

On the other hand, I just opened the Slate site and the cartoon (which I had already filed for syndication) is on the splash page of Hillary cartoons. It'll be interesting to watch where this one runs.

McCain and Cunningham

2008-02-26T18:39:00.002-05:00

Mayor Mark's Pitch

2008-02-26T16:56:00.003-05:00

Unsinkable Hillary?

2008-02-26T14:45:00.001-05:00