Yesterday I used a Paffooney I had stolen to illustrate my gymnasium adventures, and in the caption I gave credit to the wonderful comic artist I shamelessly copied it from. The second imitation Takahashi that I did yesterday is now displayed next to it above. I am now compelled to explain about my goofy, sideways obsession with Anime and Manga, the cartoons from Japan. I love the art style. I have since I fell in love with Astroboy Anime as a child in Iowa. Rumiko Takahashi is almost exactly one year younger than me. As a cartoonist she is light years more successful than me. She has been crafting pen and ink masterpieces of goofy story-telling longer than I have been a teacher.
Her artwork is a primary reason I have been so overly-enamored of the Japanese Manga-cartoon style. I love the big eyes, the child-like features of even adult characters, the weird poses and still-weirder comic art conventions of this culture from practically a different planet. She has created comic series that are immensely popular in Japan, and have even put down sturdy roots in this country, especially with young adults since the 80’s. She is the world’s number one best-selling female comics artist.
Just as we Westerners have to accept numerous ridiculous things to appreciate the stories told in American comics (for instance, brawny heroes running around in tights with their underwear on the outside of their pants, nearly naked ladies with super powers diving into battle next to men encased in armored suits, and talking animals), the Manga-minded must also practice a bizarre form of the willing suspension of disbelief. In Ranma 1/2, the main character is a boy marshal artist who turns into a girl when splashed with cold water. Much of the romantic comedy of that work revolves around boys and old men finding themselves in the bath house next to naked young girls. For some reason that sort of naked surprise causes the boys to spout fountain-like nosebleeds. In Inu-Yasha the whole thing is about fighting demons with swords. Inu-Yasha himself is part demon. Apparently part-demon is a good thing to be. Japanese villains are spectacularly susceptible to fits of crying rage and tantrums. And everybody looks more like American white people than orientals. Oh, and there are talking animals.
Rumiko is a master of pen and ink. Here is a sample of of her black and white work.
And she does color well too.
The little people are a special style of Manga character called a Chibi, and all regular Manga characters can turn into one at any moment.
And, of course, to read actual Manga you have to master reading backwards. Americans read left to right. The Japanese read right to left. You have to open a Japanese book in a manner that seems both backwards and upside down.
This illustration shows how American publishers flip Japanese comics to make them more accessible to American audiences.
So now, by uncovering the fact that I am addicted to and seriously affected by Japanese cartoons, you have one more bit of evidence to present to a jury in case you decide Mickey needs to be locked up and medicated for a while. Japanese comics are a world of great beauty, but also a world unto themselves. It is an acquired taste that has to be considered carefully. And of all the many marvelous Manga makers, Rumiko Takahashi is the one I love the best.
Catch a Falling Star 
Special Snowflakes
When conservative cultural warriors, Twitter Trolls, or dyspeptic gasbags like Rush Limbaugh call you a “Special Snowflake”, I have discovered, to my chagrin, that they don’t mean it as a compliment. In their self-centered, egotistical world you have to be as emotionally tough and able to “take it” as they believe (somewhat erroneously to my way of thinking) they themselves are. They have no time for political correctness, safe spaces, or, apparently, manners polite enough not to get you killed on the mean streets where they never go. Being a retired school teacher who was once in charge of fragile young psyches trying to negotiate a cruel Darwinian world, I think I disagree with them.
Have you ever tried to draw a snowflake? Believe me, it is difficult. Snowflakes are hexagonal star-shapes with enough lace and filigrees in them to make it a nightmare to draw it with painfully arthritic hands. The one above took me an hour with ruler and compass and colored pencils, and it still doesn’t look as good as a first grader can create with scissors and folded paper. Much better to use a computer program to spit them out with mathematical precision and fractal beauty. That’s how all the tiny ones in the background were created. But even a computer can’t recreate the fragile, complicated beauty of real snowflakes.
You see how the fragile crystalline structures will break in spots, melt in spots, attach to others, and get warped or misshapen? That is the reason no two snowflakes are alike, even though they all come from the same basic mathematically precise patterns generated by ice crystals. Life changes each one in a different way.
And that, of course, is the reason this essay is really about people rather than mere physical artifacts of cold weather. Our fragilities and frailties are earned, and they make us who we are. I have a squinky eye like Popeye from playing baseball and getting hit by a pitch. I have a big toe that won’t bend from playing football. They both represent mistakes that I learned from the hard way.
As a teacher, I learned that bipolar disorder and anxiety disorders are very real things. I lost a job once to one of those. And I spent a long night talking someone out of suicide one horrible December. Forgive me, I had to take fifteen minutes just there to cry again. I guess I am just a “special snowflake”. But the point is, those things are real. People really are destroyed by them sometimes. And they deserve any effort I can make to protect them or help them make it through the night.
But people are like snowflakes. They are all complex. They are all beautiful in some way. They are all different. No two are exactly the same.
And I really think boorish bastards have no right to insist that we need to take safe spaces and sanctuaries away from them. Every snowflake has worth. Winter snow leaves moisture for seedlings to get their start every spring. If you are a farmer, you should know this and appreciate snowflakes. And snowflakes can be fascinating. Even goofy ones like me.
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Filed under 1000 Voices Speak for Compassion, artwork, battling depression, commentary, compassion, humor, metaphor, Paffooney, self portrait, Snow Babies, strange and wonderful ideas about life
Tagged as Christmas, compassion, humor, poetry, snow, snowflakes, winter