Golden Dreams Were Shiny Days

 Today's Graphical History Tour rummages through my September cartoons from 1986, 1996, 2006, and 2016. I'll bring up another September at the end of our tour.

1986

in NorthCountry Journal, Poynette Wis., September 1986

My cartoons for the NorthCountry Journal were drawn to accompany the month's editorial by Susie Isaksen, in this case warning that "Lake Charlevoix may be in Michigan, but what happened there could happen in Wisconsin."

Citing an editorial from Northwoods Call by Glen Sheppard describing Charlevoix as an ideal lake for swimming and fishing, with restaurants and "prissy gift shops" nearby, the alarm is raised: "But Charlevoix's shoreline has been scandalously polluted by some of the most god-awful ugly nightmares of the north — condos."

I've moaned here before how much I dislike drawing buildings. They are mostly impersonal and repetitive, and the perspective is unforgiving. That said, there was no choice here but to draw a lot of  late-20th-Century high-rises.

I did, however, like adding a swimming pool on the roof  of the condo in the upper right corner.

1996

in Journal Times, Racine Wis., September 22, 1996

One of the banes of electoral democracy has been the telephone push poll. Push polls have nothing to do with determining how candidates or issues rate with the public. I doubt that the alleged pollster at the other end of the line is recording your responses at all.

No, the caller first determines which candidate or issue you support, and if it's not the candidate or interest group that hired him/her, then moves on to a series of questions like: "Would you still support Your Candidate's Name Here if you knew that he drops little puppies into boiling water?"

I imagine there are still campaigns that employ push polling these days. Someone picking up the phone is unlikely to remember that the caller represents American Eagle Minuteman Opinion Research or whatever long enough to complain to anyone about it. Most people probably just hang up within the first minute.

Which is the same length of a political campaign or issues interest commercial on television; dishonest ads on social media are even cheaper, and get through to the vast majority who do not answer calls on their cell phones from unknown numbers.

2006

for Q Syndicate, September 2006

Twenty years ago, Gays were effectively banned from military service in the U.S. under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," a worthless compromise from the Clinton administration with the prior complete and total ban.

The reasoning was that openly gay homosexuals were somehow "bad for unit cohesion and morale." Unit cohesion and morale failed utterly to suffer deleterious effects once the Obama administration lifted the ban on LGBTQ+ soldiers. Even the neo-Nazi and gangster recruits got used to it.

Well, except for one Minnesota National Guardsman who got put in charge of the Pentagon nowadays.

I have a note in the margin of this cartoon that I should have drawn the recruiter with an open collar and no tie. I can't think of any later cartoon I drew set in a recruitment office in which I could have corrected this costume error.

2016

for Q Syndicate, September 2016

I was away from drawing board for much of September, 2016, on a family vacation to Italy, so I left my editors a couple of non-political cartoons to release while I was gone. This one could still be run again today, save that now the President of the United States has weighed in against this kid.

We've just been through the 25th anniversary of 9/11. I thought about basing today's Graphical History Tour on my experience of that day, but I've done that before. I've also blogged about 9/10. And 9/13.

I just don't have any fresh new insight on 9/11, and my own experience was not as directly connected as was many others'. I considered, and rejected, posting some 9/12 cartoons by cartoonists who are no longer with us (Pat Oliphant, Stuart Carlson, Steve Benson, and Mike Ritter, for example).

We were chatting with the owner of a local restaurant Thursday night, and she said that it's hard to believe that 9/11 was a quarter century ago. She was in high school back then, to give you some idea of her frame of reference in saying that. I could have pointed out that on 9/11, hardly any of us had heard of Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, K-Pop, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Aaron Rodgers, or Game of Thrones. 

Donald Trump wasn't even host of The Apprentice yet. 

Speaking of that egomaniacal fascist liar, he came up with a fresh new memory this week of having been hauled away from Ground Zero by two brawny firemen (who, no doubt, had tears in their eyes and called him "Sir"). The organizers of this week's commemoration decided not to give him a speaking role in it, and I'd just as soon do likewise here.

I'll let others who have more personal connections to the events of that day share their non-fabricated, non-embellished memories and, perhaps, some cartoons for those of you too young to have caught them the first time around. Counterpoint's Substack yesterday had anniversary cartoons by some of my progressive, Pulitzer-winning colleagues, if you're interested. 

But as for me, I'm sitting this one out.

My, My, July

We've got more stuff from the Bergetoons vault in today's Graphical History Tour. 

You'll have to pardon me for indulging in rehashing my own cartoons three Saturdays in a row; in my defense, we had two prominent Senators knocking on death's door this month, and I didn't find much inspiration in cartoons published 100 Julys ago. "Oliphant's Presidents" has already been done (although I suppose I could have tried putting an "Oliphant's Vice Presidents" thing together).  

1986

in NorthCountry Journal, Poynette Wis., July 1986

The cartoons I drew for the NorthCountry Journal directly reflected the editorials in each monthly issue. This one had to do with 44 Wisconsin conservation clubs joining with the Wildlife Legislative Fund of America, a pro-hunting lobbying group, to "defeat the anti-hunting movement before it defeats us," according to WLFA chair Jim Glass. 

The NorthCountry Journal reported that the WLFA was funded by grants from Woodstream Corporation (makers of Victor traps), the fur industry, the Mellon Foundation, and national sportsmen organizations.

The WLFA had chosen Wisconsin as the pilot program for its "Protect What's Right" campaign because "if it doesn't fly in Wisconsin, it's not going to fly at all," said Glass, a Rockwell International executive from Columbus, Ohio. Wisconsin has a very strong and long-standing hunting tradition; I don't recall it ever being a hotbed of anti-hunting legislation. 

In fact, the legislation I do recall includes a 2003 constitutional amendment guaranteeing right to hunt and fish.

1996

"Our Problem" in Journal Times, Racine Wis., July 7, 1996

This cartoon expands on an neighbors' successful fight to block a proposed halfway house for offenders who had served their prison sentence (see the unpublished local cartoon posted back in May), as well as Racine taxpayers' objection to a .1% sales tax in Milwaukee and adjacent counties to help pay for the Brewers' new baseball stadium. The stadium tax had prompted a recall of a Republican member of the State Senate from Racine, which would result in flipping the State Senate to a Democratic majority.

The upscale North Bay neighborhood was up in arms against having a home for developmentally challenged adults nearby, successfully blocking that proposal, too. Complaints against property taxes funding the public schools coming from retirees whose children had graduated has been a never ending constant as far back as I can remember.

A letter to the editor responding to my cartoon argued a distinction between schools and the halfway homes on the one hand and the baseball stadium on the other. "Homes for the mentally retarded, prisons, and schools are all public problems," Annette Richie wrote. "Baseball is a private enterprise and should not be subsidized by citizens' tax dollars."

It's an argument with merit, but without a successful track record.

By the way, every little bit of that cartoon, including the diagonal line shading, I drew by hand. So don't give me that "AI Is Art, Too" crap.

2006

July, 2006

So now we turn from the local stuff to the gay stuff.

You wouldn't know it these days, but July used to be a lull in the news cycle. I can't recall whether I drew this cartoon in response to any specific gay celebrity getting caught with his pants down, or if I came up with it when there wasn't anything current in the news to draw about.

This was before Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) got arrested for lewd conduct in a rest room at the Twin Cities International Airport, after which late night comedians were guaranteed a laugh by citing the airport or inserting the words "wide stance" in a punch line. Years earlier, George Michael's public loo escapades had been fodder for fallback punch lines.

2016

July, 2016

I drew this cartoon a little too late for most LGBTQ Pride events. A number of Pride parades in the U.S. and Canada had been disrupted by protesters from within our community who objected to other the inclusion of certain other LGBTQ subgroups.

Toronto Pride had assigned the lead spot in their parade to the local Black Lives Matter group, which returned the favor by blocking the parade, setting off multi-colored smoke bombs, and refusing to move until a list of demands was met, including the removal of police from the parade ‒ both as participants and as protection.

The subgroups mentioned in later panels have not, so far as I know, gone quite so far as to disrupt Pride parades in progress. The objections raised by Palestinian, Jewish, animal rights activist, anti-corporate, and anti-religious LGBTQ groups, however, have been real. 

The overt hostility and persecution by Republicans running state and federal government has probably tempered any such controversies this year — except for either side of the Israeli-Palestinian divide.

Not that everything went smoothly this year. Police aggressively attacked people in Philadelphia's Gayborhood during that city's Pride festival. https://epgn.com/2026/06/09/community-responds-to-gayborhood-police-presence-pride/

Dallas Pride Board officials have been accused of embezzling funds and financial mismanagement

sponsors withdrawing support https://blog.presspassq.gay/2026/07/pride-celebrations-marred-by-controversies-cuts-in-funding.html

February Shorten Suite

Today's Graphical History Tour steps back forty, thirty, twenty, and ten Februaries ago to check out what I was drawing back then.

1986

in NorthCountry Journal, Poynette Wis., February, 1986

I can't remember the exact point of the editorial that accompanied this cartoon in the environmentally-focused NorthCountry Journal, but it's not difficult to guess the general drift. 

Drawing architecture is not one of my favorite pastimes; I must have used a straightedge to draw so many parallel lines, and somehow managed not to smear any wet india ink. There is, miraculously, no white-out on the original of this particular cartoon.

1996

Rummaging through my cartoon files from 30 Februaries ago, I first found a cartoon likening reactionary GOP presidential contender Pat Buchanan to Nazis — which I still think is valid — but then I came across this one.

in UWM Post, Milwaukee, February 29, 1996

Lamar Alexander, a former Governor of Tennessee and Secretary of Education in the George H.W. Bush administration, was dubbed by the professional punditry one of the moderates in the GOP presidential field.

Which just goes to show how long the positions he espoused in my cartoon have been mainstream in the Republican Party. Abolishing the Department of Education since became GOP platform boilerplate, so the Lawless Trump Regime's destruction of the DOE is no longer anything new or surprising.

Alexander's proposed "new military department responsible for drug enforcement" and "dealing with illegal immigration," put forth more than five years before 9/11, is now the Lawless Trump Regime's Department of Homeland Security.

2006

for Q Syndicate, February 2006

But enough about politics.

Awards season affords a welcome opportunity to step away from the news out of Washington and whatever politician is trying to capitalize on homophobia at the moment. Movies with Oscar nominations in 2006 included Brokeback Mountain, TransAmerica, and Capote, promising one of the most LGBTQ-centric ceremonies since, well, 1960. 

By the way, do I have to explain now where these women are and what they are doing? Naah, not gonna do it. Go ask your mother.

2016

for Q Syndicate, February, 2016

Staying with Hollywood, my cartoon ten Februaries later remarked how straight actors win praise for playing LGBTQ roles, but out LGBTQ actors can get pigeonholed having to play LGBTQ roles exclusively.

There have been some notable exceptions to the practice in the last ten years, notably Jonathan Bailey as Bridgerton heartthrob Anthony, Neil Patrick Harris as How I Met Your Mother's Barney Stinson, Jim Parsons as Big Bang Theory's Sheldon Cooper, and Matt Bomer in role after role after role.

Theater has a long history of white actors playing Parts of Color (from Othello to The Mikado to Apache), but that's decidedly out of fashion these days.

There are some who advocate that only LGBTQ actors should portray LGBTQ characters; but there is little chance of that as long as actors such as Rami Malek, Nick Offerman, Brendan Fraser, and Ewan McGregor keep winning awards for gay roles.

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Rev. Jesse Jackson passed away this week, so I'll close today's Graphical History Tour in his memory with one of the cartoons I drew of him during his 1984 presidential campaign.

January, 1984

My cartoon, drawn after Jackson led a delegation of Black faith leaders who secured the release from Syria of U.S. Navy Lt. Robert Goodman, seems not to have been published. The UW-Parkside Ranger instead printed a cartoon I drew in which a stack of papers on Secretary of State George Schultz listed a number of pending foreign policy issues, including suspended nuclear disarmament talks, yellow rain, a Korean passenger plane shot down by the U.S.S.R., and the 241 Marines killed in a Beirut suicide bombing.

One might argue that the 52 U.S. hostages freed by Iran on Reagan's first hour in office outweigh the one seaman freed by Syria; but I would argue that Reagan was responsible not for achieving but for delaying the Iran hostages' release, so that doesn't count.

In any event, freeing Lt. Goodman, who had been shot down over Lebanon, captured, and taken to Damascus, established Rev. Jackson as more than a special interest candidate in the 1984 Democratic primaries. He was among the front runners for the nomination four years later, then concentrated on leading his PUSH/Rainbow Coalition.

In spite of being visibly afflicted with Parkinson's disease, Jackson came to Kenosha to march in a Black Lives Matter protest a month after the 2020 riot there, and spoke at the church where I was working at the time. I did not get to meet him, but here's a photo of him at Grace Lutheran Church with an assistant and Greater Milwaukee Synod (ELCA) Bishop Paul Erickson, and another of some of the local television coverage.

Now Is the October of Our Recycled Content

It's a gorgeous fall weekend outside, so today's Graphical History Tour will be spent rummaging around the files in my basement, leafing through cartoons I drew ten, twenty, thirty, and forty Octobers ago.

for Q Syndicate, October, 2015

I'll start with a cartoon of Senator Rand Paul that parodies a character in the 1999 film Office Space. 

A cultural reference in a political cartoon is a hit or miss thing. If you're not familiar with the film, you're not going to get the cartoon. (The same is true if you hadn't heard about Sen. Paul opining that LGBTQ people wouldn't face workplace discrimination if we'd just stay in the closet on the job.)

Since Comedy Central showed the movie about a gazillion times in the ‘aughts, give or take a few myriads, I figured this character would be recognizable enough. Besides, I think “That would be great” was a meme once upon a time.

By the way, there's a very obscure Easter egg in the final panel: the graph on the bulletin board forms the shape of a winged ox, the symbol for St. Luke.

All it means is that I was drawing the cartoon on his feast day, October 18.

Moving from movies to television (and back again), we now time travel back to 2005.

Reacting to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's veto of marriage equality legislation, Star Trek actor George Takei gave an interview to Frontiers magazine of Los Angeles, publicly announcing that he is gay and in a long-term relationship with his now husband, Brad Altman. The interview also coincided with National Coming Out Day, but Takei had been out to friends and family for some time, and made no secret of his membership in various LGBTQ+ organizations.

for Q Syndicate, October, 2005

I took the opportunity to draw a silly cartoon of Takei as Sulu charging into a bunch of beefcake aliens. Lt. Hikaru Sulu didn't get much opportunity to battle aliens from Planet Thirst Trap — I don't think he beamed down to the planet where Apollo was cavorting around in a skimpy toga — although he did get to charge shirtless through the corridors of the Enterprise in search of a fencing partner.

2005 was before I started sending colorized cartoons for syndication, but for today's post, I thought it would be fun to color Ensign Expendable's shirt red.

Of course, then I had to colorize Kirk, Sulu, and Spock. And having done that, it didn't make sense for the aliens to be ghostly white... The hard part was knowing where to stop.

Eleven years later, John Cho portrayed Ensign Sulu in the third of the reboot series of Star Trek movies as openly gay, with a husband and daughter. While applauding writers Simon Pegg and Doug Jung  for including LGBTQ+ characters in Star Trek Beyond, George Takei objected to his character getting a gay make-over.

The new post-Shatner movies having started out as a prequel to the original TV show, while involving the complete destruction of Spock's home planet despite it being visited in the original series, I drew another Trek cartoon.

for Q Syndicate, August, 2016

Rather than get one's mind utterly bogged down trying to make sense of Star Trek's multiverses and time travel and warp drives through hyperspace, wouldn't it be easier to accept that in the 23rd Century, humanoid citizens of the United Federation of Planets will not have a problem with a Star Fleet officer being bisexual, ambisexual, pansexual, or gender fluid?

Heck, even in Roddenberry's universe, hardly anyone batted an eye, visor, or antenna at interspecies couples.

In the real world, of course, dozens of stations would have jumped ship if Lt. Uhuru had gotten into a serious relationship with anyone else on the Enterprise bridge.

Moving on to October of 1995:

in UWM Post, Milwaukee Wis., October 26, 1995

Charles Snollygoster III was my stock Republican congresscretin character back in the 1990's: a right-of-center conservative who went along with whatever party orthodoxy was at the moment. The nursing home provision in the budget bill on which Rep. Snollygoster was about to vote passed the House but was rejected in the Senate, both controlled by Republicans that year.

Snollygoster originally had a left-of-center Democrat counterpart, Luke Warmish, who was hesitant to support Bill Clinton's health care plan and got tossed out of office in the 1994 Republican sweep. I never had reason to bring Warmish back, except as one name among many in a cartoon about political attack ads.

I never drew any Snollygoster cartoons after the Clinton presidency; if I had, I believe Snollygoster would have been primaried in the Tea Party elections of 2010 or shortly thereafter.

Jumping back ten more years:

in NorthCountry Journal, Poynette Wis., October, 1985

I've posted in this here blog almost every one of my cartoons from October of 1985, so here's this one again.

It's the first cartoon I drew for NorthCountry Journal, a monthly newspaper out of northern Wisconsin with an emphasis on environmental issues. The editor and publisher, Susie Isaksen, would send me the gist of the next issue’s editorial, and I would mail her a cartoon to fit it.

“Sorry, Charlie" was an advertising campaign for StarKist featuring a tuna longing to be caught and eaten, only to be rejected by the StarKist folks. We don't have tuna in Wisconsin lakes and rivers, but nobody had come up with a catchy, recognizable walleye character in 1985.

Recognizing my allusions was can be a problem from time to time: I based one NorthCountry Journal cartoon on the character Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes, a hugely popular comic strip from the very first strip in November of 1985. Ms. Isaksen, however, had never seen it. To her, my cartoon made no sense.

In the past couple of years, I've drawn cartoons directly parodying a Monty Python sketch, a Saturday Night Live character, an Aesop fable, The Godfather, The Wizard of Oz, Cabaret, one of Sir David Low's most famous cartoons, and two or three internet memes. I guarantee you that not every person who has come across my cartoons has been familiar with each and every one of those references.

Such is the nature of our increasingly fractured culture these days. Once upon a time, it was commonplace for editorial cartoonists to quote Shakespeare, and expected every reader to catch the reference. Not so much any more. I'm not saying I would never base a cartoon on Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, but there aren't many readers nowadays for whom a reference to King Lear or Twelfth Night would instantly ring a bell.

And that's it for today's Graphical History Tour... until tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow!

Saturday through the Looking Glass with Alice

Detail from cartoon in Manitou Messenger, St. Olaf College, Northfield MN, Oct. 23, 1980

This week's syndicated cartoon was a parody of an illustration by Sir John Tenniel of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. That is a source I've drawn from quite a few times over the years: Carroll's psychedelic absurdities fit all manner of political shenanigans, and Tenniel's artwork set the standard for Aliciana. (Besides, one doesn't have to contend with Disney Inc.'s lawyers.)

 

"You Are Old, Ronald Reagan" is a parody of Carroll's parody of a poem; the original extolled the benefits of virtuous living for longevity. 

There was considerable talk about Ronald Reagan's age when he ran for president in 1980. Reagan was 69 years old on Inauguration Day 1981, taking the title of Oldest President At Inauguration from the previous record holder, William Henry Harrison (aged 68 and still the record holder for Briefest Presidency). 

Pikers both! Joe Biden is 78, and thus older today than Reagan was on the day he left office. Trump is 74. And of the other candidates we could have elected, four are older than Reagan was when I drew the above cartoon: Bernie Sanders is 79, Elizabeth Warren is 71, and Michael Bloomberg will celebrate his 79th birthday in February.

Unpublished, February, 1987

Here are two excerpts from a Lewis Carroll themed cartoon I started, but never finished, to comment on the Reagan administration in 1987. The Tower Report depicted the president as disengaged from the Iran-Contra scandal; meanwhile, it was supposedly First Lady Nancy Reagan who had insisted upon the firing of Don Regan as her husband's Chief of Staff.

Unpublished, February, 1987

In Through the Looking Glass, Alice encounters Humpty Dumpty, who sermonizes on his idiosyncratic definition of the word "glory." 

in NorthCountry Journal, Poynette WI, April, 1988

It is not one of the better known episodes in Carroll's books, and certainly not as popular as the nursery rhyme about Mr. Dumpty's fall. I have nevertheless used it twice (here and in a cartoon about Mitt Romney) because it comes in especially handy when Republicans give their policies an intentionally misleading name: such as crafting legislation to make polluting easier and calling it "The Clear Skies Act of 2003," for example.

in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, October, 1997

Elsewhere in Through the Looking Glass, Alice's encounter with Tweedledum and Tweedledee is well-known, if only because editorial cartoonists find it the perfect metaphor for any two entities that are supposed to be separate and distinct, but aren't. Indeed, the danger in using such an obvious metaphor increases the possibility that some other cartoonist might use the same image to express the same point about the same news item.

Q Syndicate, March, 2011

One way to avoid that possibility is to take the reference and stretch it out beyond its original limits.

Finally, I made use of Carroll's "Jabberwocky" a couple of times this year, in the background of a pair of cartoons about the presidential and vice presidential debates.

The Spearfishing Issue

I've just returned home from a two-week vacation in Spain, which is why Spearback Saturday falls on a Sunday this week. It also explains why my last two cartoons were curiously divorced from current events: they were drawn back when only moderate amounts of political shit were hitting the fan.

So anyway. In commemoration of Indigenous Americans Day this week, here are some of my cartoons about a local controversy coming to a head thirty years ago: spear fishing by members of the Ojibwe (Chippewa) Nation.

in the Journal Times, Racine, Wisconsin, May 1989

When the Ojibwe signed treaties with the United States federal government ceding away their land in 1837 and 1842, those treaties guaranteed the Ojibwes' continued right to hunt, fish, and gather wild rice and maple sap on those lands. In 1854, however, the state of Wisconsin began regulating hunting and fishing by both immigrant and Native Americans here. Ignoring federal precedent, the Wisconsin Supreme Court decided in 1908 that since those treaties signed before Wisconsin became a state in 1848, Wisconsin was not bound by either one.

in Journal Times, Racine, Wis., March 18, 1988. Note: The Ojibwe did not wear such headdresses.

In 1940, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the Ojibwe were free to fish and hunt as they pleased, but only on their reservation. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1983 that Wisconsin had to abide by U.S. treaties with the Ojibwe and could not regulate their hunting and fishing rights on or off the reservation.

in NorthCountry Journal, Poynette, Wis., August, 1987

Groups calling themselves Protect Americans' Rights and Resources (PARR) and the more militant Stop Treaty Abuse (STA), fancying that the Ojibwe weren't leaving any fish for paleface sportsmen, protested against the Ojibwe practice of springtime spearfishing at night. Traditionally, the Ojibwe had used torches to attract walleye and other fish; the modern-day Ojibwe used flashlights.

Large crowds gathered at boat landings to shout obscenities and ethnic slurs, and to hurl rocks and bottles at Ojibwe fishermen. In some cases, shots were fired; some whites used large motor boats to capsize Ojibwe boats in their wake. 1989 would be the peak year for violent incidents.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee, Wis., October 3, 1989

Republican Tommy Thompson had campaigned for Governor of Wisconsin in 1986 promising to abrogate Ojibwe Treaty rights; Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI; just announced his retirement this year) introduced legislation in Congress toward the same end. Neither the courts, congressional leadership, nor the Bush administration were open to the idea.

in Journal Times, Racine, Wis., November 8, 1989

Thirty years later, Ojibwe spearfishing continues. Leaders of the anti-spearfishing groups grouse that the opening day of hook-and-line season ain't what it used to be, but overall, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources finds PARR-STA fears not to be supported by the facts.

“What we have seen over the last 20 years is that angler-catch rates, the number of walleye caught per hour fishing, have been stable,” said Joseph Hennessy, the DNR’s treaty fishing coordinator. “People have been as successful as they ever have been. Walleye populations remain strong in lakes with good natural reproduction.”

Enviro-Stewardship: The Grass Is Always Greener

Once a month, I turn the blog over to my Dad's "Environmental Stewardship" column, which he writes for local church newsletters. John Berge is a retired physical chemist, a current member of the local Board of Health, and past president of the area chapter of the Sierra Club.

It has been said that you should never ask your barber whether you need a haircut. Likewise, you should never ask your lawn service whether you need more fertilizer and other chemicals.

Numerous studies have shown that urban and suburban lawns receive more fertilizer per acre than agricultural land, and more of it washes off and down the drains to our creeks, streams and rivers. From there, it ends up in Lake Michigan for most of us where I live, or going down the Mississippi River. The latter ends up in the Gulf of Mexico and its “dead zone” faster than Lake Michigan will drain it through the downstream Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence River and the Atlantic Ocean. It takes about 100 years for a complete change of water in Lake Michigan, so what washes in will stay around for quite a while!

So where should you go for analysis of your lawn, garden and their fertilizer needs? The University of Wisconsin Soils Laboratory will do an unbiased analysis for $15. It can also check for elevated lead levels if you are adjacent to a major highway, in an older home that may have received lead paints, or otherwise concerned about lead contamination, especially in a garden of edibles. The Turfgrass Diagnostic Laboratory can also help with other turf problems probably better than a lawn service with its own agenda and products for sale. Another source for soil testing is the Milwaukee Health Department Laboratory. Their fee is also $15.

If you must add fertilizer to your lawn, take care so that as little as possible ends up on the sidewalk, driveway or street. A quick trip with a broom can send this wasted and polluting run-off back where you want it, not adding to the algae blooms.

Consider carefully whether you want to include pesticides of any kind with the fertilizer. I don’t use any weed killer since I want to save the spring beauties and other natural plants within our grassy areas and I don’t want any spraying or leaching into the garden beds. Insecticides will not only kill off what you are bothered by, but also butterflies, moths, bees, lady bugs and other beneficial insects. Broadcast spreading of pesticides does not appear to be good environmental stewardship.

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In a whimsical extension of the “never ask” section of the first paragraph, may I suggest: Never ask an ex-senator from an oil producing state to establish automobile and truck efficiency standards (mpg). Never ask a lobbyist for a coal producers association to establish guide lines for power plant emissions. Never ask a climate change denier what our environmental policies and international accords should be. Possibly you have your own “never ask”; I ‘d like to hear them.

Watson a Name?

The cartoon I drew for the syndicate this week starred a fictional Hollywood character named "Brock Stoder." The name doesn't have any hidden meaning; it was merely something that sounded like a film star's name without actually sounding like a particular film star's name.

When I originally described the idea to my editors, he had the name "Brock Slater," but it occurred to me that I had better Google that name in case it happened to be someone's real moniker. As it turned out,  there's a business management consultant in Chicago by that name. Just in case I'm ever in Chicago needing a consultation on managing my business, I decided I might as well change it.

I had already inked "Brock S" by then, so I tried "Brock" plus a couple other butch-sounding surnames (one of which turned out to belong to a transgender soldier who might actually have a chance of having the cartoon brought to his attention) before cooking up "Stoder," which doesn't seem to be anybody's last name.

Coming up with names for cartoon characters can be a tricky business. Most of the generic characters in editorial cartoons don't need names, except when the cartoonist wants to have a recurring character, or if it would be weird for someone else in the cartoon not to call him/her by name. I'll often use a pun as a name to signal to the reader that the character doesn't represent an actual individual, and in hopes that no parent would have been so careless or mean as to inflict such an easily mocked name on their child. A page in one of my sketch books is devoted to names that I might find a use for later: LiBrarion Buchman, Juan Thieu III, Purmia Bruschi, Oliver Sudden.

For a few years, I drew a generic congressman, Luke Warmish, who was a kind of middle-of-the-road career politician:

I quickly determined that Congressman Warmish was a Democrat, but in 1993 and '94, I portrayed him shying away from overt support of President Bill Clinton's health care reform proposals. He lost his reelection bid in the Republican sweep of 1994, but his name showed up in one later cartoon about Political Action Committee ads on TV, without indicating what office he might be running for.

Meanwhile, I had given Warmish a Republican counterpart in Charles Snollygoster IV, whose surname comes from a word meaning a person, "especially a politician, who is guided by personal advantage rather than by consistent, respectable principles."

Congressman Snollygoster had no problem taking his stand on the bedrock Republican issues of the day — against flag burning, in favor of The Family, against taxes — so he lasted longer than Mr. Warmish did. I imagined him representing a safe suburban district somewhere in Illinois; I suspect, however, that he would have been primaried sometime since 2010.

I haven't found it necessary to invent fictional right-wingers, Tea Partisans, or Trump Loyalists; there is plenty to criticize in the real ones without making fake ones up.

Sometimes one's editor doesn't want to single out any particular legislator. It would have been irresponsible, for example, to have used a real politician in the cartoon at the top of this post, which was intended to highlight the underhanded tactics used in issue ads against politicians.

Sometimes the cartoonist wants the character to say something no politician in his right mind would say (at least in the Time Before Trump). I gave this state legislator, who appeared a few times in my NorthCountry Journal cartoons (and at least once later in the UW-Milwaukee Post), a name unlikely to belong to any elected politician anywhere in the English-speaking world.

Not all my fictional named characters have been politicians, or have appeared multiple times. These two simply needed nameplates in the first panel.

This daytime talk show host's name had been sitting in my notebook for years, and it's a good thing I've never been a drag performer.

(And yes, I've been informed that "transgender" is the preferred term nowadays. Sadly, nobody on Ms. Drewledge's staff had been so enlightened.)

You may have noticed this meteorologist's name on your shampoo bottle. I therefore hasten to stipulate that I have the utmost respect for the professionalism and dedication of America's weathermen and weatherwomen; even though I often wish that the news department spent the same amount of time, say, forecasting the chances of the bills making their way through the state legislature that the meteorologist gets every night to tell us what the jet stream is up to.

Ms. Sulfate, however, is not a professionally accredited meteorologist. But at least she wasn't saddled with the name Phil Kiesterlich.

Happy Earth Day with the NCJ

In celebration of Earth Day, Sierraback Saturday recycles a handful of cartoons I drew for the NorthCountry Journal roughly 30 years ago.

The NorthCountry Journal was an environmentally themed monthly newspaper published in Poynette, Wisconsin from 1986 to 1988. Each issue ran 12 pages, with news primarily of issues concerning northern Wisconsin, updates from the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR), activities of the state legislature, and regular columns about wildlife by Ced Vig, living close to nature by Justin Isherwood, and hunting by Jim Kalkofen. Plus the occasional handy household hints: did you know that cucumber peelings repel ants?

My cartoons became a regular Page 6 feature in the NCJ soon after the newspaper was launched. Editor Susie Isaksen would send me the topic of the next edition's editorial, and I'd send her a cartoon to complement it; for example, finding common cause between hunters and naturists above, and in favor of funding a Wisconsin soil erosion program below.

I've selected here cartoons that don't focus on specific politicians, although the guy with the bulbous nose in the background of this next cartoon was a generic politician character I used in the NCJ from time to time. (The unshaven guy was another recurring character.) The editorial was about industrial representatives and farmers "whining" to state officials about the so-called undue burdens of environmental protection regulations.

The U.S. Air Force was conducting low-level flights of B-52 bombers over northern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan in the spring of 1987, leading to complaints that people couldn't hear each other talk in the woods. There was also concern of the flights' effects on eagles and other wildlife. I tied the story in with another environmental concern of the time.

Where to put the state's garbage was a growing problem. There was such a thing as recycling back then, but it mostly involved taking your old newspapers, cans and milk cartons to a recycling center. Very few municipalities had curbside pick-up of recyclables, and rather than wait in line at the recycling company yard, many people didn't bother to separate recyclables from their other trash.

Recyclables aside, did you know that an apple core will completely decay in a couple weeks in a compost pile, but it will last for several months in a landfill? And that we've been stocking our landfills with non-biodegradable Styrofoam (well, almost non-bio-degradable) since World War II?

That unshaven guy from the third cartoon above puts in one more appearance in this last cartoon featuring a generic industrial plant, Slimeco, that was another recurring entity. I never made it clear what sort of company Slimeco was, other than that the corporation had a callous disregard for the environment.

Slimeco and its CEO Roger Slimec appeared in a few cartoons I drew for other publications after the NCJ suspended publication. I have not, however, had much call for it to appear in my LGBT-focused work, so Slimeco has been out of the public eye for a quite a while.

Heck, it's probably a wholly owned subsidiary of Koch Industries by now.