August 1993

Enough of the century-old cartoons for a moment. I realize that it's important to throw in posts every so often that are relevant to the Millennials. Therefore, for someone having a 25th birthday in August, here's what your uncle was drawing the month you were born.

Kenosha, Wisconsin joined the roster of mass shootings on August 10, 1993. As the Kenosha News reported:

On a sunny afternoon, Aug. 10, 1993, Dion Terres walked into the McDonald's restaurant at 75th Street and Pershing Blvd. and fired three random shots from a .44 Magnum revolver, killing two customers and wounding a third. Then Terres took his own life.
Bruce Bojesen, a 50-year-old Silver Lake carpenter who had come to Kenosha to buy a dog collar, died on the spot. Sandra Kenaga, 42, owner of a hair styling business near the restaurant, was shot as she dined with co-workers. She died in the hospital the next morning.
Eighteen-year-old Kirk Hauptmann was wounded, but escaped from the restaurant to a nearby supermarket to summon police. When officers arrived on the scene, they found that 25-year-old Terres had shot himself to death.
The loss of lives could have been far greater, police said. A semi-automatic weapon was found next to his car in the McDonald's parking lot. Inside the vehicle was a 30-round clip for the weapon and the gunman had another 30 rounds. Officers speculated Terres had accidentally locked the clip in his auto and, forgetting he had another 30 bullets, dropped the automatic rifle on the ground.

The shooting captured national attention for a time, with calls, as one would expect, for gun control legislation. Locally, there were also complaints from people (not patrons, obviously) that the McDonald's on 75th and Pershing reopened for business the next day.

Now, I know you're not a fan of gun control. I'm not into guns, but I'm not into this gun confiscation fantasy that the NRA sells, either. Heck, I've fired a gun or three myself.

It was my first visit to your place after you were born, so you wouldn't remember it. I remember that my first three shots with that rifle hit the target some 100 yards away. After that, my success was more in tune with what you'd expect from a novice; and with a .22 pistol, I couldn't hit my target at all.

Seeing this photo was my first discovery that I was growing a bald spot back where I couldn't see it in the mirror. With any luck, you've inherited the hair gene from elsewhere in your family tree. But if you've been thinking of sporting a mohawk someday, you probably shouldn't put it off.

It's a question people who have lost their homes in this year's California wildfires are sure to be asked: how can people build homes in the path of disaster?

The natural disasters in the above cartoon each happened two years apart, in 1993, 1989 and 1991. I posted another cartoon about the Mississippi River flooding of '93 a few weeks ago; the Loma Prieta earthquake hit the bay area just before a World Series game; you can ask your mother about her experience with Hurricane Andrew.

In response to these disasters, whole towns picked up and moved away from the Mighty Mississippi; efforts continue to reinforce freeways, bridges, and buildings to improve their resistance to earthquakes. But with climate change bringing ever stronger hurricanes nearly every year, it seems that mankind has few options other than improving early warning and evacuation systems.

Moving on from acts of God:

The Ceil Pillsbury settlement story is local to University of  Wisconsin at Milwaukee but became a cause celèbre in conservative circles statewide; Pillsbury was a professor at the university who claimed she had been denied tenure because she was a woman and pregnant. She had been the only one of four Business School candidates denied tenure in 1989 in spite of having had seven articles published and been named Faculty Member of the Year by the Business School's advisory council.

She had always discounted stories of sex discrimination, believing that they had to be false or merely isolated incidents. "I never thought it was a systemic problem. At first, I didn't think there was any way it could be discrimination. As I talked to other women in the business school, it was clear to me what had happened all along. Women were just not in a position to succeed."

Whether the school's denial of tenure was because she was the only female candidate that year or because she was a lifelong conservative Republican, the University ended up agreeing to pay Pillsbury over $125,000 and to rehire her with a salary commensurate with a tenured professor whether it granted her tenure or not. Ultimately, of course, it was students and taxpayers who ended up footing the bill.

Well, that's the sum total of my work in August of 1993. Not much of a unifying theme here. There was other stuff I could have drawn about yet didn't, most notably the nomination of Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court, but off-year Augusts are usually News Doldrum months.

Tune in again next week for some even-year August cartoons instead.