​edited: 1/3


​A story about a new beginning:

"The seventy-five-year-old woman stepped gingerly out of a ‘98 Ford Taurus.  She surveyed the line of winter trees as a picket line upslope.  Dense woods surrounded the sweep of open ground at the Norma Johnson Conservation Center: Caterina smiled, she liked the way the tree cover crowded the snowy hilltops. 

"Cat buttoned the top button on her old gray overcoat.  It was cold. 

"Under a well-worn ski cap her strong green eyes were lenses that captured and considered all things.  A shifty breeze brushed gray bangs gently across her forehead.  Cat turned downwind and in two steps she was upwind as the unreliable breeze began to stalk and circle and to nudge her ever so gently from one side and then another. 

"She trudged uphill on a well-marked path, hitching up baggy blue jeans.  Without focus she looked back the way she had come: hers was the only car in the parking lot --

"She was alone." 

- from Caterina Zutscu and the Three Legged Dog, a short story by Kevin O'Kendley in Carbuncle Moon...


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Please give to The Sierra Club: 85 Second Street/ Suite 750/ San Francisco, California 94105/ 415-977-5000/  And: 
Maine Chapter of the Sierra Club: 565 Congress Street/ Suite 206B/ Portland, Maine 04101, 207-761-5616, [email protected].

                                                Sunrise at a small rodent colony...


1/3/19: The cow in this cartoon was taken from a similar picture of a cow, sans the rear-end (I believe), in 1990.  If there is more to the picture than that please, contact me, and I'll remove the cartoon.  This cartoon wasn't published in the last century, as were many of the toons in this blog. 

"I’m tired, exhausted, get home, grab a bottle of Tokay, write President Trump to comment on the beautiful landscapin possible in the Mexican-hyphen-American-Wall-coma that should be paid for by Canada  -- I spell comma as coma -- but before I can fix it I fall into one…"   

​
first posted 3/27/17:

Some facts about building a wall on the Mexico border and fences already in place:

"The border runs about 1,900 miles from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Some sort of barrier—made from concrete, steel mesh and/or barbed wire —currently stands along about a third of it, in areas U.S. Customs and Border Protection deems vulnerable to illicit cross-border activity."
"The hundreds of miles of border that remain unfenced fall into three categories: those deemed too topographically challenging for wall-building because of mountains or other rugged and rough terrain, those on Native American reservation land, and spaces identified for fencing that was never completed because the last project ran out of money. The largest swath of border without a barrier is in Texas."   - Los Angeles Daily News/ 2017




​Please give to St. Jude's Hospital: Danny Thomas Place/ Memphis, Tennessee, 38105/ 800-822-6344

Happy Kwanzaa:

​

"I figure apartheid in the old South Africa didn’t end because of morality or outrage, but because of all the public toilets they had to build. See, there were four racial classifications:  white, black, coloured, and Asian.  Instead of building, let’s say in a public park, one restroom for each sex, and a single drinking fountain for everyone, the South Africans had to build eight bathrooms and four drinking fountains.  Think about it.  Cricket fields.  Amusement parks -- suppose you owned a real small telephone-booth of a diner -- a place where you could only fit about five big eaters and you had to build eight restrooms?  Crazy, huh?  Then, of course, they had to build separate septic tanks, use separate sewers…”


​
edited 12/28:
​first posted 12/26/16:
(Happy Kwanzaa) 12/26 to 1/1/17:
​

"Dr. Maulana Karenga, professor and chairman of Black Studies at California State University, Long Beach, created Kwanzaa in 1966. After the Watts riots in Los Angeles, Dr. Karenga searched for ways to bring African-Americans together as a community. He founded US, a cultural organization, and started to research African “first fruit” (harvest) celebrations. Karenga combined aspects of several different harvest celebrations, such as those of the Ashanti and those of the Zulu, to form the basis of Kwanzaa.
"The name Kwanzaa is derived from the phrase 'matunda ya kwanza' which means 'first fruits' in Swahili. Each family celebrates Kwanzaa in its own way, but celebrations often include songs and dances, African drums, storytelling, poetry reading, and a large traditional meal. On each of the seven nights, the family gathers and a child lights one of the candles on the Kinara (candleholder), then one of the seven principles is discussed. The principles, called the Nguzo Saba (seven principles in Swahili) are values of African culture which contribute to building and reinforcing community among African-Americans. Kwanzaa also has seven basic symbols which represent values and concepts reflective of African culture. An African feast, called a Karamu, is held on December 31."
- History (history.com)

Please support the National Museum of African American History and Culture, NMAAHC:
1400 Constitution Avenue NW/ Washington, DC  20560/ 844-750-3012




Please  give to the NAACP: 4805 Mt. Hope Drive, Baltimore, Maryland  21265/ 410-580-5777 

Merry Christmas:

​

                                    
      "Larry still has the Rutherford B. Hayes Monkfish Hat, a swatch of Tomas Orenstein’s hair (the dog passed away unexpectedly at 37 after getting hit by a propane truck), and even though Larry has naked pictures of both ex-wives he’s a relatively moral man and never emails the pictures to anyone, though he did lend them out once to the Elder O’Brien who, of course, never said what he wanted them for (still, if you can’t trust a dead guy with naked pictures of your ex-wives who can you trust?)."   - from Little Anthony's Taverna, a Christmas Story in the short story section of this blog.

(edited 4/21/19) 



Please give to the Jimmy Fund: 10 Brookline Place West, 6th Floor/ Brookline, Massachusetts  02284/ 800-525-4669

edited 12/25:

       "In room 420 at St. Mary’s Hospital:  Lucky Louie’s lips were pursed, his bloodshot brown eyes protruded slightly from sunken sockets; a lightning bolt of a vein throbbed in his forehead from monumental mental stress.  He stared intently at his coffee cup on the bed stand.  
         "Fortunato walked in.  'Uncle Louie -- what, what’s the matter?' 
         "'You can speak up the guy in the other bed died yesterday.'
         "'Mrs. Catalina?  She had gout.'
        "'Really?  Huh?  Thought it was a guy.  The voice -- I was trying to make that coffee cup float through the air and land on my belly so I didn’t have to move my ass over to the table.'  He raised an arm with intravenous tubes attached.
       "Fortunato chuckled.  'It’s only two feet away.'  He opened the curtain between bed spaces with a quick ripping noise, making Lucky Louie’s immediate world larger, and moved from the back of the bed, or from Uncle Louie’s aft, forward.  The nephew picked up the cup, and gently, ever so gently, handed it to his uncle. 'Your, uh, teleportation didn’t work.'
          “'Did.' 
          "'Did what?'
       “'Did work.'  Lucky Louie sipped his coffee and grinned."      - from my short story, Lucky Louie...

​


Please give to the U.S.M.C. Toys For Tots: 18251 Quantico Gateway Drive, Triangle, VA 22172 / 703-640-9433

“It's about the Govmint shutdown.  It's from, uh, a radio broadcast, it says: Um, 'Day 4,380 of The Govmint Shutdown: a 14-mule-team school bus was broadsided by a herd of Bronx Water Buffalo.  The driver and all children are safe but were forced to eat two of the mules before help could arrive.  The lights have gone off temporarily at New York’s Electrical Appliance Museum due to a shortage of whale oil.  The Democrat-Republican Party is taking in boarders and hems in Flatbush, see Fast Eddie.  The last corn crop of the season is in at Central Park.  Looters will be shot on sight: all others, ah, must pay in Mexican or Canadian currency.  This is Wolf Blitzer of Fox-MSNBC-Coleman Camping Supplies signing off before dark at the Interim Capitol of the United States, Hoboken New Jersey.’”  (edited 1/14)

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​Please give to the Sacramento SPCA: 6201 Florin Perkins Road/ Sacramento, California, 95828/ 916-383-7387 and:
The Pennsylvania SPCA/ 350 East Erie Avenue/ Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19134/ 215-426-6300
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(previously posted toons aren't noted as such after July 4, 2018, in this blog.)


Originally posted 9/22/16:

1 in 8 Americans face hunger."  - U.S. Hunger Relief Charity

"1 in 6 people in America face hunger."
"In 2011, households with children reported a significantly higher food insecurity than households without children: 20.6% vs. 12.2%"  - DoSomething.org

"In 2014, there were 46.7 million people in poverty" in the U.S.  - worldhunger.org/ Hunger Notes

"The 2014 poverty rate for Blacks was 26.2 percent, for Hispanics 23.6 percent, for Asians 12 percent, for non-Hispanic whites 10.1 percent."  "(The poverty rate was at 22.4 percent in 1959, the first year for poverty estimates.)"  - Devavas-Walt 2015/ worldhunger.org/ Hunger Notes

(added 9/24/16): The U.S. poverty rate was 13.5% in 2015. - U.S. Census Bureau/ census.gov

(added 10/23/16): Please see Carbuncle Moon post 5/14/16; Four banks control...



Please give to Feeding America: 35 East Whacker Drive, Suite 2000/ Chicago, Illinois, 60601/ 800-771-2303
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                                                 Incident on a Tasmanian beach.

                             (adapted from my copyrighted cartoon of 2004 and 1992)



​
Please give to the National Breast Cancer Foundation, Incorporated: 2600 Network Boulevard, Suite 300/ Frisco, Texas  75034/ 972-248-9200