As many of you know, we’re experiencing some incredible flooding here in Iowa City, though it hasn’t yet become as drastic here as it has in Cedar Rapids or in Des Moines. The University of Iowa has several campus buildings that reside next to the Iowa River and they’ve been evacuating those buildings all week.

This morning Noah & I headed over to the University of Iowa Main Library to help move some of the books that were in Special Collections storage to upper floors. Noah did an incredible amount of moving heavy book carts for over 2 solid hours. Here he is bringing one to me to pass off to the next link in the book brigade.

After we tired of that, we moved back to my office in the Lindquist Center, which is across the street from the Main Library. This was being evacuated, too, so we spent another couple of hours packing up all my computer equipment (and all my toys) and putting them into storage — no one is sure for how long.

I also found out that my house is within the 500 year flood plain, and that this flood may reach those levels over the weekend or early next week. So far, however, the creek that lives across the street from me remains at normal levels.

Here’s hoping there’s no more rain this next week!

I’m sure most of you are aware that today is the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in Memphis TN. In marking the occasion today, I listened to his Declaration Against The War in Vietnam, much of which is applicable to the situation we as a nation find ourselves in (again) today. I was especially struck by the quote below, such a simple idea, really, moving to a person-oriented society, and yet, SO incredibly difficult for our culture to achieve. If anything, 40 years on, we’re so much MORE of a material, thing-oriented society than ever before.

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin..we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

This is something I’d like to keep in mind, as I continue my journey through life; how can I pass this idea onto my son, Noah, and work to make it true in my own life.

This year to celebrate the day of the dead, I’m lighting candles for all my granparents. I recently lost Jock and Lorraine within a 2 month period. My grandfather Jock gave me some nice pictures of him and my grandmother.Now you know where I get my facial features! I have Jock’s eyebrows and nose.

They all had a different influence on my life. They were my elders. I’m sorry to say that I lost Otto and Vera much earlier in my life, they were wonderful grandparents. I have a special soft spot in my heart for Vera, who was one of the people who showed me unconditional love all the while I was growing up.

Jock Sutherland — my paternal grandfather

Lorraine Sutherland — my paternal grandmother

Otto Willaredt — my maternal grandfather

Vera Willaredt — my maternal grandmother

a sketch I did from a damaged photo of my mom circa 1970..this was before I was on the scene. I can’t tell if it’s college or High School, I’m guessing it was her short-ish stint in College, but I’ll have to ask. She would have been about 18 here; she was 19 when I was born.

I promise to post something other than drawings soon! I’ve been really trying to make myself practice so it takes up a bunch of my evenings, and also the drawing is a great way to decompress, and I’ve been needing to do that a lot lately! August was a bizarre month, mostly for other people, but boy, I was right there with them.

Also I want to eventually do some auto-mytho-comics soon, but first I need to get a little better with drawing the comic versions of my parents, and myself when I was small.

I’ve sort of fallen off of my routine of regular blogging; I went travelling for 2 weeks, and then last week I was on call for my job. But now it’s all past me, so Onward Ho!

For my 4th relics post, I thought I’d drag out the 2 books I loved most as a kid, Juan And The Asuangs by Jose Aruego, and Carter Is A Painter’s Cat by Carolyn Sloan and Fritz Wegner. I remember reading these books when I was a tiny tiny kid, and I’ve loved them my whole life.

Juan And The Asuangs is a tale of Philippene ghosts + spirits. It is about Juan and his carabao who set out to find who is stealing the dogs + chickens from their village.

They run across many ghosts and creatures,

until they come upon the bottom half of the most fearsome creature of all, the Mananangal. They realize that the top half of the creature is off hunting, so they place hot peppers on the stump..when the creature comes back to land on it’s lower half, it lands on the peppers, resulting in my all-time favorite page in the book:

The Mananangal gets burned by the peppers, and it screams straight upwards into the sky and wobbles off, screaming. Something about the way my mom read, “geek! geek! geek!” totally amused me, so I made her read it over + over again. Plus, check out that awesome pespective! Juan and his carabao saved the dogs + chickens and so they returned to their village as heroes.

My other favorite childhood book is Carter Is A Painter’s Cat which is a story from England. It is very 70s groovy.

Carter belongs to Mr. Blot, a painter who repaints Carter in a new form every day. Sometimes Carter has a fancy suit, or 2 tails, or funny colors.

One day, Mr. Blot fails to show up and paint Carter anew, so Carter uses Mr. Blot’s studio and paints to patint Mr. Blot instead.

Then he paints Mr. Blot in the bathtub, and leaves him there and goes on vacation.

I think both of these books are out of print now, but re-reading them as an adult certainly gives me some insight into why I have such a taste for the surreal in life, and enjoy such quirky humor. The great part is, I have read them to Noah since he was a baby and he now has Juan and the Asuangs completely memorized.