Uncle Jam 108 by Eastwind Studios

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 45, #108 2018

uncle jam Uncle Jam Quarterly, Issue 108,Vol. 45, 2018 Copyright © 2018 by Eastwind Studios - All Rights Reserved. All images copyright 2018 by respective artists, writers and photographers to cover the entire issue. Burr Jerger 1917 - 1982

Stu Weiner 1915 - 1985

Uncle Jam Quarterly is published whenever we get enough people in one room to do it, usually once every quarter by Eastwind Studios.

Quarterly, Volume 45, #108, 2018

Any similarity to any other publication, living or dead, is purely the fault of the other publication. Single issues are available by mail for $10 postage paid in the USA. Subscriptions are $20 for 4 issues in the USA. Order through our website wingedtiger.com or send a check to Eastwind Studios, P. O. Box 750, San Bernardino, California 92402, USA. For ad inquiries please contact LindaAdams35@yahoo.com or call (909) 867-5605. philyeh@mac.com Follow Phil Yeh on Facebook Please support our advertisers who made this publication possible. Phil Yeh~Publisher Linda Adams Yeh~Co-Publisher & Editor Vincent E. Martinez~Art Director Peggy Corum, Mary Chartier, Debra Bemben~Copy Editors Edmond Gauthier~Archivist Lim Cheng Tju~Asian Bureau Chief Michael Carvaines~Film Editor Sarah Carvaines, MPH, RD~ Health Editor Beth Winokur~Facebook/Blog Editor CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS & WRITERS Rod Underhill, Beth Winokur, Theresa VanOrnum, John Mottern, Todd S. Jenkins, Lim Cheng Tju, Ken L. Jones, Terri Elders, John Weeks, Rory Murray, Roberta Gregory, Miel, Nick Cataldo, Jon J. Murakami, MB Roberts, Batton Lash, Al Davison, Tom Luth, Donna P. Crilly Mary Chartier, Todd Jenkins, Thomas Bowen Jr., Ted Lai, Mary Justine Lanyon CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Lim Cheng Tju, Lieve Jerger, Tom Luth, Linda Adams, Bruce Guthrie, David Folkman, Greg Preston, Allen Freeman, Jessica Christian, Christopher Ng

available online at wingedtiger.com

Greg Escalante, photo courtesy of Annie Adjchavanich

Joanna Mersereau

It has been well over a year since we produced an edition of Uncle Jam. It’s now May 2018 as I finally sit down to collect my thoughts. I am sifting through a collection of newspaper clippings, random writing, and a number of books to start off my memories of four people whom we lost recently. In Laguna Art Museum’s wonderful catalogue Heart and Torch Rick Griffin’s Transcendence 2007 on page 88 my late friend Greg Escalante (1955-2017) writes; “This was the beginning of my realization that Rick Griffin wasn’t a mere magazine illustrator. My recognition of Griffin as an artistic entity worth appreciating had gotten a kick start in 1970 when I noticed an ad in Surfer, sent in $1.50, and bought his Man from Utopia. Once I got my hands on this Griffin book my eyes feasted on the psychedelic and surreal interpretations of a world I could never have imagined. This was the first art book I ever owned and even now, years later, after obtaining art degrees, purchasing hundreds of art books and periodicals, and even publishing a few myself, Rick still stands up as one of the best. His unique vision, unparalleled narratives, and mysterious secret language and symbolism are conceptual statements worthy of serious analysis.” “After a time, Griffin and Murphy disappeared from the pages of Surfer. Stories came down regarding bizarre antics up in San Francisco. Of comics of a different sort. Of posters that advertised experience rather than events. We all wondered what was going on, and my friend, the publisher Phil Yeh, managed to connect with Griffin. Knowing my interest, in 1976 Yeh took me down to Griffin’s house in San Clemente; he was interviewing Rick for Cobblestone newspaper.” Editorial continued on page 42 Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 45, #108 2018

Uncle Jam Jam Quarterly, Quarterly, Volume Volume 45, 45, #108 #108 2018 2018 Uncle

A Conversation with Painter Michelle Montrose Uncle Jam: How long have you been painting? Michelle Montrose: There hasn’t ever been a time when I haven’t painted. My grandfather was an art teacher, so having that background my mom was never dismissive of the arts and never viewed it as not valuable. So, as a kid I would do finger paintings, then I got into brushes, and then I kept painting and painting and painting. I drew all through elementary school, and then probably around 2nd or 3rd grade my mom enrolled me in a semi-private art class. About four or five of us would go to this woman’s house on Tuesday afternoons after school. We would have a 45-minute art class and then she would make us nachos afterwards. It was the best thing ever. I took a little bit of a break when I got into middle school. I kept drawing; however, I really got into anime, so I drew a lot of anime. I was also in band and theater, so those kind of overtook my creative outlets until high school. I started to take classes in high school as an elective, so I took art all 4 years of high school and then somewhere in there, before I was 18, I started to go to adult schools to take additional classes. I remember being at Watts Atelier on my 18th birthday because I bought a scratcher from the gas station down the street, right before my art class. After that, I went to San Diego State and got my degree in

Montrose continued on page 10 Uncle Jam Jam Quarterly, Quarterly, Volume Volume 45, 45, #108 #108 2018 2018 Uncle

Vince’s Spaghetti Route 66 “A family tradition since 1945”

8241 Foothill Blvd Rancho Cucamonga, CA (909) 981-1003 www.vincesspaghettiroute66.com 6

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 45, #108 2018

Catching up with

Kevin Eastman Since I conducted this interview with Kevin Eastman, we made arrangements to have him come out on May 11, 2018. I was recovering from the flu so I basically stayed apart from them, but Kevin and his wife Courtney were great. Filmmaker Ron Austin and his son Liam flew down from Seattle to film this historic event at the original site of the first McDonald’s restaurant. Ron also shot an interview with Kevin for his documentary about my work. Albert Okura, who owns the unofficial McDonald’s Museum also stopped by to greet Kevin and Courtney. Kevin not only drew all four Ninja Turtles in a car drawn by Rory Murray, he insisted in painting them in greyscale on the wall. It took about three hours to finish his contribution. Press coverage was excellent with The Sun doing two stories on this event that week as well as front page coverage in El Chicano Weekly. -By Phil Yeh Uncle Jam: First of all, what have you been doing lately?

Kevin Eastman

Kevin Eastman: What’s been so awesome and exciting over the last maybe 6 years has been the re-emergence of the Turtles through Viacom. I’ve been mainly working with IDW Publishing on new Turtles comics. It has been a real treat, considering that doing comics was the reason I got into this nutty business in the first place and also going back to my roots and working with such a great creative team like Tom Walsh, who’s the head writer, and Bobby Curnow, the main series editor. We’re kind of the main creative team; plotting out the issues and the arc. Actually we just finished issue #75, which makes us the longest running ongoing Turtle comic series in the history of the Turtles, which is crazy. I get to work with not only these 2 great guys; I get to work with a lot of artists. Some of them grew up on the Turtles and now can all draw Turtles better than I can. They’re fantastically creative, incredibly inspiring, and they really push me to bring my A game to everything I do on the Turtles stuff. I do a little work on the animated series. I wrote an episode and I do a voice of a character on the animated series, called Ice Cream Kitty. I just finished one of the most exciting things on top of all that, which has been such a treat. I just finished a Kickstarter campaign launching a new independent project I’m doing called Drawing Blood, which actually takes place entirely in the world of comics. We call it “a completely fictional true story.” David Avallone is the co-creator of the project based on an idea I had. Ben Bishop is the main series artist. It is really neat to work with this young up-and-coming artist because he’s also from, and still lives in, my home state of Maine. We are working with another artist named Troy Little on some of the aspects of the project. I spend my days drawing, which is the biggest treat of all. UJ: Sounds good! I wanted to go back a little bit, to when we first met. Rick Veitch introduced me to you and you were gracious enough to fund my book Theo the Dinosaur. I just wanted to say; because of that book we launched a whole campaign. We had billboards with ABC Television. We went to the White House. Barbara Bush wrote the introduction to the book, even though I’m a Democrat. (Laughter) We really can’t thank you enough for your generous support. When we painted the murals that I was doing, promoting reading was our key focus, and it still is. I wonder what your thoughts are on reading.

Shots from a Cartoonists Across America mural event in Northampton, Massachusetts in the early 90’s. We were joined by Kevin Eastman & his friends.

KE: First and foremost, let me say thank you very much for all you’ve done. I could not be more proud to be associated with you from the earliest days. I’m so proud of all your efforts, most importantly the reading, because it’s so critical and so important, considering growing up myself going from children’s books into comic books. The thing that got me interested in reading was the combination of words and pictures in children’s books and the craft and narrative of storytelling in comic books. It got me interested in so many things, because comic books cover such a wide

Eastman continued on page 12 Uncle Jam Jam Quarterly, Quarterly, Volume Volume 45, 45, #108 #108 2018 2018 Uncle

Trina Robbins Stands up for Women Cartoonists in her Memoir Last Girl Standing By Donna P. Crilly Seventy-nine-year-old Trina Robbins has carved her own path as a cartoonist. In the process, she became a prominent voice for women in comics. Robbins’ memoir, Last Girl Standing, is her origin story. It begins with her love of sci-fi as a youth and her search for friends with similar interests. What came next is one long, bohemian ride. She created fashion pieces for the rock and folk scenes of the ‘60s. She spent decades as a semi-underground, semimainstream cartoonist. Nowadays, if Robbins isn’t traveling, she can be found in front of her computer doing what she loves: writing. What makes Ms. Robbins’ memoir stand out is the way she describes her slow awakening into women’s liberation. She realized much of the “free love” being passed around in the ‘60s was really a bunch of older men passing around younger girls, who gave them free sex. Robbins was part of the Underground Comix scene, but says she never felt fully accepted into the clique, because she’s a woman. She sought out other women writers and illustrators, also looking to get published. Throughout the next few decades she contributed to anthologies of comics written and illustrated almost entirely by women, including It Ain’t Me Babe, Wimmen’s

Comix and Ah! Nana, to name a few. She has also written and illustrated issues of Wonder Woman. In the interest of finding out how Ms. Robbins managed to navigate through the uncertainties of life while staying true to herself as an artist and a woman, I decided to pick her brain. Here’s how she responded: Donna Crilly: There are many women in the U.S. who argue feminism is no longer necessary. Do you think this is true, or are there still barriers we need to overcome? Trina Robbins: There have always been women who argue that feminism wasn’t necessary. Usually it’s because they feel threatened: speaking out will cost them their jobs or boyfriends or husbands, or they want to be “one of the boys” and not be identified with what they think of as “losers.” OR they are very ignorant, and really believe that feminism is about hating men and/or being lesbians. DC: It seems like even in its heyday many of the challengers to the Women’s Lib Movement were women. You mention some of the girlfriends

Uncle Jam Jam Quarterly, Quarterly, Volume Volume 45, 45, #108 #108 2018 2018 Uncle

and wives of your peers as examples. It also seems like some of the women were not aware of the misogyny taking place right in front of them. Can you expand on this? TR: See above. I have never forgotten one wife telling me, in the 70s, “You know, Trina, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.” When I reminded her last summer that she had told me that, she was embarrassed, and commented that some people take longer to be aware of things than others. A lot of women who were not feminist in the 70s have become feminists as they have grown. DC: In your book you mention you pursued comics because you were following your bliss. Have you ever considered a 9-5 career? If so, what was it? TR: If I did, it was a very fleeting moment. Actually, I think it was mostly sheer orneriness that would not allow me to quit. DC: What advice would you give to people who are afraid or unsure of how to follow their bliss? TR: There’s nothing mystic about following

your bliss! It’s doing what you most want to do in the whole world -- from baking pies to playing baseball to making comics -- so you do it! Sometimes your bliss may turn a corner -- mine has -- so you just follow it around the corner. DC: Despite the fact that it’s difficult to make a living as a comic artist, the Underground Comix scene was also a boys club. Were there times where you felt discouraged and wanted to quit? TR: Of course I got discouraged! See Q&A 3 -- but there were all those guys who would rather I just go away, so I wasn’t gonna give them the satisfaction. Also, any fan mail I got or people just telling me they liked my stuff, kept me going. I could live for a month on one fan letter! DC: What made you want to tell your story? TR: You mean my memoir? Well, over the years there have been so many unfounded rumors about me, from being the creator of Vampirella, to statements about me being a feminazi bitch, that I decided a book would be a good place to clear things up with the truth. And anyway, it was time! DC: Do you have a writing process? TR: Hah! I start at the beginning, and go on from there, with frequent coffee/tea breaks, and occasional email checks. DC: You seemed to have carved your own path as an illustrator, writer and editor in that you were not really an underground artist and did not fit in with the mainstream. You discuss this throughout the book. How does this tie in with finding your own voice as an artist? Did it take a long time to discover? TR: One’s voice simply emerges if you let it. A couple of years ago I went to a memoir talk at the SF Writers Conference, where Adair Lara, who was an autobiographical columnist for the SF Chronicle, told me to write my memoir in my own voice, and that’s what I did and people

seem to like it. Thanks, Adair! My memoir went through 3 different editors. The first one wanted me to write it in the voice of a memoir that she had read and thought was the be-all and end-all of memoirs, but it wasn’t and she just didn’t get what I was doing. Second editor still didn’t get it, but not as bad as the first editor. Finally, my last editor just let me be me. DC: There’s an emergence of younger generations who are getting into comics and graphic novels; sort of a renaissance of the medium that also includes movie franchises

it?” To which I answered, “I am very sorry to tell you that Jane Austen passed away about 200 years ago, but I enjoyed adapting her wonderful book, and if you liked it, someday you might want to read the book.” DC: A few years ago my friend (who is a dude) asked me who my favorite comic book superhero was. He was mainly referring to Marvel and DC characters. I had such a hard time coming up with an answer. First I said Buffy, but he said that didn’t count, so I chose Jessica Jones, and now I would probably add Wonder Woman to my list, with the new direction of her character. Even today, there aren’t as many interesting mainstream women superhero characters as there are men. In my opinion, the stories can get a bit boring and repetitive. I’m glad you mention in the book that there’s WAY more to comics than just superheroes. For those who are just getting into comics and who might feel the same way I do, can you expand on this?

TR: If you MUST have a costumed action heroine, I suggest taking a time machine back to the 1940s and Miss Fury, drawn and written Trina Robbins, Photo courtesy of Jessica Christian by a woman, who and video games. Does all of this ever seem fights Nazis and other bad guys, sometimes overwhelming to you or do you think it’s a good in a skin-tight panther skin, but more often in thing? fabulous stylish 1940s frocks and sling back heels. Miss Fury actually looked just like Tarpe TR: Are you kidding? It’s wonderful! In my Mills, her creator, who also gave her character a wildest dreams, I never thought there’d be so white Persian cat named Perri-Purr, who was an many women creating comics and so many girl- integral part of the story line. It just so happened friendly comics! that Mills herself had a white Persian cat named Perri-Purr. DC: Do you have younger fans who reach out to you? I hate traditional “big two” superheroes! What kind of message do they give to the little boys TR: You mean young women or kids? Yes who read them: to solve a problem, use your to both. It’s always so rewarding to hear from fists! And with the exception, sometimes young women comic creators who tell me how (depending on the writer) of Wonder Woman, I’ve helped or influenced them. Also, kids! I’ve the superheroines are really just large breasted written a lot of graphic novels for classrooms versions of the superheroes. I admit that this for publishers like Scholastic, and sometimes I IS changing, as even Marvel and DC comics get the cutest letters from school kids who read become more accessible and girl-friendly. my books. One of my favorites was from a girl who read my adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma, DC: What are you currently working on? who wrote, “Dear Ms. Austen and Ms. Robbins, I loved your book, Emma. How did you make TR: Too much and not enough. ~ Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 45, #108 2018

Montrose continued from page 5 Fine Art with a certification to teach English as a foreign language. Then after that, I graduated and here we are. UJ: Where is the Watts Atelier? MM: It’s in Encinitas. I also took classes at the La Jolla Athenaeum. I was 16, so my mom had to be there because there was a nude model and they felt uncomfortable with it because I was a minor. My mom would drive me to Encinitas and then hang out at the library while I was in class. She’s been very committed and supportive through the whole educational process that I’ve gone through. UJ: (looking at the paintings on the studio wall) Is this your newer work? MM: Yes, this is the Barrio Logan series. This is the greater Logan Heights series. I started in September of 2016, because there’s a painting challenge in September where a bunch of artists get together and do 30 paintings in 30 days. They post all of their paintings online. It’s hosted by a woman named Leslie Saeta, who has a blog called “Artists Helping Artists.” She hosts this painting challenge every year. I had done it in 2015. I experimented with some still life’s; I did some trees and a few things here and there. One of the paintings I did was a windmill. Half-way through I switched from oils to acrylics, because the oils were taking too long to dry and I had too many paintings. I was really fascinated by the negative spaces created by the windmill against the sky. The windmill was in 2015. In 2016, I attached onto the idea of focusing on my own city, so I would travel around, go on walks, and take my own photo references. This started with those 30 paintings in September of 2016. Since then I’ve probably done 75 of them, which is more than one a week. I have three sizes I work in. 24 by 24 is my largest; I’ve only done two of them. I do 6 by 6, and actually sometimes, I do 4 x 4 as well; just little guys. I also do 12 x 12. I have a piece in the Mermaid show, which I just dropped off on Tuesday and it opens this Saturday. It’s a charcoal drawing, which is very uncharacteristic from what I normally do. I’m currently in a portrait class because I’m prepping for my next series and I wanted to get some of my old figurative skills back. I kind of used that piece as a waypoint. That venue is called La Bodega Gallery and I’ve been doing shows there for almost 4 years down in Barrio Logan. It was voted the best gallery in San Diego; they do a really good job. In San Diego, there is a tendency to hang salon style, but that’s not how La Bodega does it; at most they’ll do three. Most of the time it is just one painting at eye level, or maybe two all around the perimeter

of the building. They get a few hundred people at their openings.

UJ: I notice these paintings don’t have any people.

UJ: Do you sell the originals or do you sell prints?

MM: Correct, with the exception of one. I have one painting where there’s a man on a stoop in the distance. None of the others have people in them. Part of that is because I have some social anxiety and I wait for the people to leave to take the photo. (Laughter) Because of everything that’s happening in San Diego right now with the climate and stigma towards homelessness and towards low income and affordable housing, which is what I do for my day job; I want to examine that and possibly move into doing portraits that are in a similar style and similar palette, but are of people. One of the goals with that is to do it in person to force myself to have a real human interaction with the model and then to possibly maintain contact with them later just to build human interactions and to make them feel valuable. I was thinking about what I would do if I sold those paintings--if I would want to give a portion to a charity that advocates for permanent supportive housing or to take a portion and give it back to the person. I’m still kind of working out the details for that. That’s why I’m taking the figurative class-- to kind of prepare myself to go into this new series, where I think I want to deal more with the people; not necessarily forget about the place, but to just kind of switch focus.

MM: I really need to sell prints, because people love these paintings; but I’ve been selling the originals steadily since I’ve started making them. I sell usually one a month, which is pretty steady for me because I don’t show them in that many places. I have 6 that are showing in the same gallery and I switch them out once a month. I have them in smaller shows here and there and I just hung another show this morning at Lite Bulb Coffee. UJ: Can I ask how much they cost? MM: The large ones are $750, 12 x 12 are $250, and 6 x 6 are $100 UJ: Wow, so you’re very reasonable. MM: Yeah, I want the work to be accessible to regular people. I’ve had people where this is the first painting that they’ve ever bought and I think that’s a really special experience. UJ: You have a really nice style. I look at a lot of art and I’m amazed, because you are so young and this art is so good. MM: I was always very serious about art; it was never a hobby. Even as a teenager, I knew I need to get good now, because if I get good now, then by the time that I’m a ‘real’ adult I’ll have something to work with, and maybe I won’t have to have a day job. I still have a day job, but it’s fine. UJ: We need to stop saying artists need to get a ‘real’ job because I think for people who are as good as you are—this is a job; this is work. I always say an actor, a singer, a painter, a dancer—you have to work to get good and you have done the work. What’s next? Are you going to do other series or continue your local neighborhood? MM: I’ve been feeling a change coming with the series, so I think I’m going to be ending it soon. There’s this poem that I like. I can’t remember who it’s by, but the essence of it is that if you write to what is true it will be good. So, that’s kind of what I’m chasing. I’m chasing what that means for me. These (Barrio Logan paintings) are all about the beauty of a place that people don’t think is beautiful. I think the next thing that I want to tackle is the value in people who are deemed not valuable.

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 45, #108 2018

UJ: That sounds really good. The tendency in the culture is that the media attention always seems to be on celebrity. I’ve always had a feeling that the spotlight is not on neighborhoods like this and I think the spotlight should be on these neighborhoods. What I notice is there’s so much humanity in places like this. MM: I grew very tired of postcard San Diego, which is Balboa Park, and the Hotel Del Coronado, specifically California Tower and the Lily Pond. All of those things are beautiful, but all of those things have been painted so many times. I wanted to do something that was significant, but also that still feels tangible and valuable. To be honest there are some of these that could be anywhere super urban. This could be Tijuana or this could be some urban corner of nowhere USA. It’s funny because the centerpiece of the Logan area is Chicano Park. I’ve never painted it. I don’t need to; people know what Chicano Park looks like, plus it would be really hard to paint the murals into that painting. Those aren’t the things that need to be seen, because that’s already seen. UJ: You’re using your artistic sense to show people, which is what an artist’s job is; to call attention to places that aren’t normally seen.

All the great artists did this. When you look at van Gogh, he painted what was around him. He wasn’t living in Paris with the other artists of his time. He was living in small towns painting what was around him. Do you have any advice for young artists? MM: My advice to young artists would be to find a mentor immediately. Find a mentor and find your cheerleader. My mom was my cheerleader. The guys at the Comic Creator Connection at Comic Con have this book called Epic Win. I’ve never read it, but they talk about it all the time. One of the things they say is that when you’re a creative person you need a team of people to support you. One of those people will be your critic and one of those people is going to be your cheerleader. My mom is absolutely my cheerleader. She loves everything I do. Once in a while she says, “This looks a little bright, I think you need to tone this down.” I’ve been very lucky; I’ve had two people I’ve considered mentors. One of them is Neil Shigley. He’s a teacher at San Diego State University and he’s also an illustrator. He does really excellent work. The other is named Pat Kelly. She was my still life teacher at La Jolla Athenaeum. There were so many things she taught me that have transferred from still life to all the other work I do. So, I would definitely say get a mentor and pick your cheerleader. I paint alla prima, which means all at once. Typically, I do more than one painting at a time. I prep my canvases ahead of time. I do a yellow to a red gradient on the canvas and then I paint over that. I will do a sketch usually in blue underneath. I will do it with a diluted oil mixture of gamsol and the pigment. I’ll do 3 or 4 sketches at the same time. By the time I’m ready to go to the next step, the first one has dried. Each of them has about three steps total. I do the sketch; the solid objects and buildings, and the sky last, usually. Sometimes I’ll throw in a couple of pieces of sky to get an idea of what my lightest light is going to be, but other than that, I just kind of roll with it. One of my mentors told me that when you find your vein of gold in the art world, then you keep digging it. If you love it and it works and people love it, then just keep digging it. ~ http://michellemontrose.com/

Printmaking in Florence: Florence Journals Part 1 By Theresa Van Ornum

I’ve been making art in a variety of media for over 40 years and about 17 years ago I fell completely in love with printmaking. My teacher, Ron Pokrasso of Santa Fe, New Mexico has been leading workshops in Florence, Italy for decades but that was an experience I judged as too grand to allow myself. I would always say, “How wonderful for those who can do that”. Finally the temptation to spend 2 entire weeks working at the Santa Reparata International School of Art became more than I could bear. In 2010 I decided it was my turn and I took the plunge. I spent very long hours in the studio, immersing myself in the work and losing total track of time most days. The trouble was I also wanted to be out exploring the city. Florence has so much to experience at any hour of the day or night. I made myself crazy and exhausted trying to do it all, afraid I would never be back there again. Before I knew it, my time was up and I had to return to California. At home I worked further on my prints, going about the tasks of framing and preparing for a show. I realized the work carried the energy of that great city and all that I felt while there. I began to experience an intense longing, as if I’d left behind a lover I couldn’t forget and simply had to be with again. That desire only increased over time and 2 years later I returned to Florence. This time I stayed longer, so I could

experience and explore more deeply. Still, it felt like a mere beginning and I have found myself returning every year since, staying as long as possible each time. Native people all over the world believe that a place holds the memory of all that has ever happened there. I believe this to be true and the reason that Florence draws such an immense number of people to it every year. When I walk the streets, which I find to be the hardest stones I’ve ever walked on in my life, I’m in awe of who else has passed this way. Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Dante Alighieri, Galileo Galilei, Sandro Botticelli; the names of famous artists, architects, poets and politicians too numerous to mention. When I’m there I feel like the entire universe came into being in that very place! The opportunity to make art in Florence is an honor and a privilege and a humbling experience at the same time. The city seems populated by spirits of past inhabitants guiding the minds, hearts and hands of the modern day artists who are there to absorb that energy and find our way to our own authentic expressions. But it’s a challenge as well, because tourism is intense. It’s crowded with tour groups rushing to see Michelangelo’s David, to climb to the top of the Duomo, to peruse the gold shops on the Ponte Vecchio, to blast through the Uffizi,

Florence continued on page 45

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 45, #108 2018

Eastman continued from page 7 range of subjects, concepts, and genres. I have aunts and uncles who would sort of steer me away from the edgier super hero stuff and give me Archie Comics and Sad Sack Comics and Casper the Friendly Ghost. My grandmother got me all the Classics Illustrated. That was a gateway for me to all kinds of reading. When my father finally said “Look, I know you like comic books and all that, but I have some great books I think you should try. I think you’d find them just as interesting.” At first I was sort of “I don’t want to read a ‘book’ book.” Watership Down was one of the first books he gave me that changed my world. Next up was The Hobbit, which led to so many different aspects of crossing over into the enjoyment of books. You can have one person’s illustrated version of a historical event or telling a story, but if you have the written word you can go to these wonderful places in your mind and in your imagination. That leads into my love of art and art history and reading so much about my favorite artist, which is where the Turtles’ names came from. Leonardo Da Vinci was a real hero of mine. In fact, during my graduating year of 1980 I did a mural in my high school Museum owner Albert Okura with Kevin in Westbrook Maine, as a tribute to Leonardo Da Vinci. I’m proud of any kind of charitable work that I’ve been able to be part of, especially the awesome things that you were doing promoting reading and diversity. Today, one of the charities that I’ve spent extra time with is a company called Traveling Stories. Traveling Stories is this wonderful organization that’s based in San Diego. They are called to a lot of areas that don’t have access to libraries and set up reading tents. They give books away and have kids come and spend Kevin being interviewed by Ron & Liam Austin an afternoon and have people read stories to them. The kids get exposed to that sure you’ve done work with Jim or know Jim and hopefully it will have the effect that it had McLaughlin and what he’s done. What I love on both you and me over the years and how about Hero Initiative is that it was designed and it’s changed our lives. It’s a wonderful charity based on the shoulders of giants that I stand on: that I really enjoy. Charities are always an guys like Jack Kirby, Steve Gerber, and Russ interesting concept. We’re so busy in our own Heath. They and so many artists created so lives that sometimes it’s hard to make that extra many amazing properties for companies based time to spend on something that you know is on the work for hire system of those early days worthwhile, so when you do it’s special, like the of comics. They never got to own or participate stuff we did together, or Traveling Stories. One in the success of some of their creations. Jack of my other favorite charities is also comic book Kirby, for example, created/co-created most based, which is called the Hero Initiative. I’m of the Marvel Universe with Stan Lee, or Stan

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Lee with Steve Ditko and Spiderman. They never profited from the success of those characters. The Hero Initiative is designed to help some of these aging creators if they have medical bills or even trouble paying rent or things like that. I do a lot of fund raising for them. Reading is critical to everything. It feeds our imagination, our knowledge of the world, the events around us. It’s kind of a critical tool just to get by in life. For you and me, it’s really changed our lives. UJ: That’s why I’ve spent all these years promoting reading and I want to talk a little bit about the trash truck we painted in Northampton. I think it was in 1994, but I could be wrong. It was a long time ago. KE: That was awesome. It was one of my favorite experiences. As you said, Rick Veitch introduced us and the program you were doing; which was going all over the country and getting involved with local libraries and institutions, civil and otherwise, to paint these murals to bring awareness to reading. When we had the opportunity to have you come to Northampton, Massachusetts that was around the time I was doing a lot of philanthropic things like Tundra Publishing, which was publishing a wide range of independent books. I had started the Words and Pictures Museum, which was dedicated to comic book art. That was really an event that was so special and heartwarming to me. Not only did we tie it in to reading and local libraries, but made something that was press-worthy that brings awareness. Even then, we’re talking ’93 or ’94; there was still this stigma to comic books. “Comics are just for kids. Comics are stupid and they’re trash. I don’t want my kid reading those.” (Mostly from people who never really had been exposed to all the amazing kinds of stories and adventures for all ages that you can find in comic books.) It was a start on that long road to bringing their awareness to “Comics are good. Comics are good for reading. Comics are good for education.” They’re a great way to communicate. They are a great way to expose somebody who won’t sit there and read page after page of printed type, but you can start them down that path. It was great and I love that you dedicated your life to going around and bringing awareness to reading and the importance of reading all over the country, all

or “I didn’t get that”, or “I need that.” It’s a great space. There are so few galleries and things of this type specifically dedicated to comic book storytelling. I’m thrilled to be part of this one. UJ: Is this gallery open every day?

over the world. You’re one of my heroes, bro. UJ: Well thank you Kevin. You mentioned The Words and Pictures Museum. I heard George Lucas is opening up a museum, devoted to illustrations and comic book art. I think it’s going to be in Los Angeles. Do you know anything about the museum? KE: I probably have heard as much about it as you have. I heard it was a bit of everything, in that there will be a lot of Star Wars based, historical stuff. Star Wars was one of those projects that crossed all forms of Science Fiction-the kinds of things that Lucas was reading when he was younger that inspired him to come up with the concept, as well as other forms of entertainment. The classic opening to Star Wars is right from early TV serials that would be these ongoing chapters of adventures like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers and things like that. He really blended all of his favorite things into this ever-growing, creatively and visually effects-wise, Star Wars. Star Wars has crossed over into so many different genres. Specifically some of the comics are just absolutely stunning; beautifully and passionately done; great stories that expanded the whole Star Wars universe. I’m going to be one of the first people in line to see it when it opens. I’m super excited, not only for the crossing of so many different medias that will be featured in that, but just to see some of the original art. One of the things I do down here, which I think you’re aware of, is that I work with IDW Publishing. I curate their San Diego Comic Art Gallery, which is located down in Liberty Station here in San Diego. Ted Adams and Robbie Robbins, two of the original founders of IDW, relocated their offices to a larger space. One of the components they wanted to add was a space to celebrate and give back to the community and showcase comic book art. I was able to bring some of the things I learned at the Words and Pictures Museum in Northampton

to the San Diego Comic Art Gallery. We have rotating multiple shows and multiple genres. There’s a kids activity area. Right now we have a celebration of Archie Comics as a show. We have a show featuring Walt Simonson, one of our greatest living legends. We’ve got art by our dear friend Stan Sakai, who I know you’ve

KE: It’s usually open Wednesday through Saturday, but in the summer months, we open Sunday as well. You can go to the San Diego Comic Art Gallery website and it will tell you the hours and what shows are there and in general what’s going on. We have special events. For example there is an event in Liberty Station, Point Loma, San Diego the first Friday of every month. They do Liberty Nights, where all the galleries and shops stay open later. We always do a signing or bring in an artist’s latest project, give away some free comic books for the kids, and just try to create a nice event for people who want to come down and hang out. UJ: That sounds great! That reminds me, we did a mural at the Petersen Auto Museum. Do you remember that?

Phil Yeh, Kevin, Rory Murray, and Courtney Eastman

known as long as I’ve known you. One of the centerpieces of the comic art gallery is my home studio. When they built the gallery, I took my studio from my house and moved it down there so people can look into the space. I want people to put a direct connection between my studio, my space, my desk and chair--that somebody actually writes and creates and draws all these stories that they’re looking at on the walls around them. It is filled with many historical things that I’ve kept over my life. For hard-core Turtle fans it’s basically torture, because they look at the collection of junk in there and say “Oh my goodness, I wanted that”,

KE: Yes, I loved that. That was awesome, I loved that . UJ: It ties in to what I’m doing now. I’m painting a mural on the site of the very first McDonald’s in San Bernardino. I have been painting this thing for 6 years, two mornings a week. It’s the most detailed mural in the world. We painted all these cars on the mural on the back of the building, and one of the things that I am doing is to have different friends of mine who are cartoonists paint their characters in the cars. I’d like to invite you to come and draw the

Eastman continued on page 22

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TudorVille: Breathing New Life into an Historic Venue By Mary Justine Lanyon

What began in 1928 as Club Arrowhead of the Pines is now TudorVille -- which incorporates The Tudor House, The Clubhouse and the Bracken Fern Manor -- in Lake Arrowhead, California. Club Arrowhead had been built as a luxury resort, catering to wealthy patrons from across the country. The resort included a dining clubhouse (now The Tudor House), a country inn and market (the Bracken Fern Manor), and a pool house and sports facility (The Clubhouse). Guests could enjoy riding stables, the first ski run in the San Bernardino Mountains, tennis courts and an Olympic size swimming pool.

the stage, where Lindsay Wagner performed her one-woman show. The cuisine is well known for its excellence and ranges from burgers every Wednesday night as diners listen and dance to rock bands to the camaraderie of Thursday night Family Italian Dining, special Saturday evening menus tailored to the shows being staged, and

Enter the Great Depression and Prohibition -- the clubhouse became a casino, the inn a brothel, and the waters that ran beneath the pool house were used to make moonshine. Watching over the operation were Los Angeles mobsters and Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel.

The Tudor House is now home to both original and classic plays, mounted by a growing company of actors. In addition, The Tudor House Theatre is now inviting theaters from “down-the-hill” to bring their productions to the mountain stage. The stage also hosts a variety of musicians, both local and international. Gloria Loring and Tonia Bern-Campbell have sung on

Guests today sleep comfortably in the 10 guest rooms, all of which have been completely renovated. Those renovations -- as well as the work done at The Tudor House -- were completed in keeping with the era in which they were built. TudorVille was recognized by the Ancient and Honorable Order of E Clampus Vitas as an historical site. A monument attesting to the area’s storied past and importance in the community was erected and dedicated in 2016. The complex is surrounded by towering pine trees in the heart of the San Bernardino National Forest. Guests who come and stay at the Bracken Fern Manor can venture out onto hiking trails, take a tour of the waters of Lake Arrowhead on the Arrowhead Queen, visit the newly reopened SkyPark at Santa’s Village and then enjoy dinner and a show at The Tudor House.

Over the ensuing years, the building now called The Tudor House has served a variety of purposes: a restaurant, a community church, a storage building, an antique furniture store and rental apartments. “This building has been a vagabond,” said John Connor, who bought the property with Peggy Butler four years ago. “I plan to end that. It is now a permanent home for a lot of people.”

explored both the Bracken Fern Manor and The Tudor House in search of phantasmic evidence. They also hunted for evidence of the tunnel that was rumored to have been built between The Tudor House and the Bracken Fern Manor. In the show, they claim to have found both.

the Sunday Champagne Brunch. The Bracken Fern Manor’s history includes reported sightings of ghosts of former occupants like Violet, one of the “working girls.” There are also tales of a small boy killed by a passing ice truck whose footsteps have been found in the fresh morning snow and a young Indian maiden who asks for help to cross the sometimes raging waters of Fleming Creek. Investigators Zak Bagans and Aaron Goodwin of the Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures

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Information on upcoming events is available at www.TudorHouseEntertainment.com ~

Healing America with Nelson Campbell By Phil Yeh

Nelson Campbell

Uncle Jam: Health, Books, The Arts, and Travel has been our focus for over 40 years. I have always believed that these issues relate to all people. Although I stopped eating beef 30 years ago I didn’t become a 90% vegetarian until I read The China Study in the fall of 2016. My cousin Zhou Jing actually gave me a copy of the book in 2007 when we went to China and I ignored it. I am sad to say that I waited so long. What would you suggest to motivate people like me to change their diet?

only prevent many diseases, but often reverse serious chronic conditions like heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

Nelson Campbell: In answering your question, I think it’s important to discuss first the way in which I think we should communicate this health message. I don’t think it works well when we are strident, or speak in tones that sound judgmental to people. I believe humble communication that resonates with the personal values of others, and coming from someone modeling the change they are seeking in others, is most effective.

UJ: Your new campaign Healing America sounds like it will be a winner. Can you give our readers some ways that they can get involved?

In terms of what I suggest to people who express interest in learning more, I usually lead with the health evidence. Most people have no idea that a whole food, plant-based diet can not

But this is not the only reason to eat plant-based. What we choose to eat affects many other issues that people often care about, such as climate change, our economy, issues of social justice, and of course animal welfare. I often delve into those connections as well, if they are of interest to the person I am speaking with.

NC: We first want people to understand our Healing America campaign, which they can learn about at HealingAmericaTogether.com. We also encourage people to join the campaign, at the same website, so that we can update them on our progress, and best of all, send short videos to them as they are cut. This campaign is especially exciting because we plan to film everything we do, and then stream out short videos that enable people to look in, not only

to follow along, but to learn about a community model we have developed. Our goal is to launch a comprehensive campaign in a single city to bring the health message of plant-based nutrition to as many people in the city as possible. We will use a new social networking platform we have developed, along with other tools we have developed, including affordable food, to support this campaign. Importantly, we will focus much of our effort on the neighborhoods often ignored in the past, and where the healthcare crisis is most severe. Once we validate this community model, which we will document on film, we want the people following us to help bring that model into their own communities. We will kick off our Healing America strategy with a cross-country tour by my father and me, where we will lay out a philosophical foundation for what we plan to do, and then present those plans in a little more detail. (By the way, for those of you who don’t know, my father, Dr. Colin Campbell, is a well-known

Campbell continued on page 16

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Campbell continued from page 15 to Veggie Island. I did this book more than 25 years ago; perhaps it’s time to relaunch the themes in your new campaign. Would you be open to considering this idea? NC: I am open to this Phil. I believe there is a strong role for the creative community to play in the movement we are seeking to launch. If I could wave a magic wand, I would first ask all artists - musicians, actors, painters, cartoonists and others – to take up the cause by putting out creative work that not only helps to educate people on the issues driving the cause, but that also inspires them to join the cause. UJ: I even created a t-shirt years ago featuring my character Patrick Rabbit saying “Eat Your Veggies. Don’t Have A Cow, Man.” Perhaps we can have a contest for new ideas along this same idea. What do you think? Phil with T. Colin Campbell

scientist considered by many as the ‘science father’ of the plant-based nutrition movement.) We encourage people to visit our website at HealingAmericaTogether.com and to consider attending one of these events. UJ: I was raised with the myth about a vegetarian diet lacking protein, but since I have been working on some murals at the historic site of the first McDonald’s in San Bernardino, the opposite seems to be the truth. Loma Linda is just south of the site and most people there have a very healthy vegetarian diet. It’s one of the only spots in North America where people live to be over 100. Loma Linda Medical Center is one of the sponsors on our mural. It gives me a chance to discuss diets with folks from all over the world who come to look at the mural. Do you have plans to do some events in both San Bernardino and Loma Linda? NC: One of our tour stops will be in San Diego. We hope to draw people from all of Southern California. UJ: Your film PlantPure Nation was excellent. How will the new film Healing America differ? NC: PlantPure Nation was focused on the states of Kentucky and North Carolina, telling a dramatic story that explains to people how the life-changing message of plant-based nutrition could have been suppressed for so long. This first film helped to create a platform for us, which we are now using to launch our Healing America campaign. As we roll out this campaign, we will film what we do, streaming out short videos but also

eventually producing a sequel film to PlantPure Nation. Our Healing America sequel will document the evolution of a national movement that begins in an initial city, and then spreads across the country. We hope to also create a climactic moment in the film when we go to Washington DC, to hold a major rally and concert. UJ: Will you use well-known people in this new film to influence the masses? NC: Yes, we plan to bring on board several wellknown celebrities and other public figures in 2018. We also are recruiting other leaders from the plant-based nutrition, environmental, social advocacy, and animal welfare communities to provide guidance and input. UJ: We see how the fast food industry has marketed their food through the years. Our museum at the McDonald’s site illustrates how they tie in popular films with cartoon characters made into toys aimed at children. I have long wondered why the vegetarian companies can’t adapt some of these tactics to sell healthy food. What are your thoughts? NC: I think the vegan foods industry will employ more sophisticated marketing tactics as it evolves. This healthy foods industry is still in its early stages, but one thing is for sure, competition among the players in this industry will drive innovation, not only in product development, but in marketing as well. UJ: As an artist, I have created many cartoon characters that are vegetarians. Long before I became one, I did a graphic novel called Voyage

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NC: I love the idea of a contest. Let’s discuss this further. UJ: Any final thoughts for our readers? NC: Many people would say we are living in dark times. We hear news that our economy is growing, but we know that many people are not participating in this, and we have a generally unsettled feeling about the direction of our world. There are many things to be concerned about; such as climate change, international tensions, unsustainable governmental and economic policies, cultural and technology trends, and social justice concerns. And worst of all, we worry about these problems without any sense of how we can contribute to solving them. I understand these feelings, but am optimistic about our future. I think we live in revolutionary times. Because of their anxiety, people are open to transformative ideas, and are anxious to get involved in solutions. People are craving connection with one another, and more meaning in their lives. With the right strategies, we can tap into these feelings to create change that prior generations could have only dreamed about. I encourage your readers to check out what we are doing at HealingAmericaTogether. com and get involved with us. The world is full of negativity, but as I said at the end of our PlantPure Nation film, “the future is bright, all we need to do, is see it.” ~ www.HealingAmerica.com www.PlantPureNation.com

Roberta Gregory, Joyce Farmer, Mary Fleener

The Artist Within, Book 2: Behind the Lines By Greg Preston, book review by Phil Yeh

Greg Preston’s long awaited series of portraits of artists in their studio was well worth the wait. Imagine how much time was needed to go to every single location and get these pictures. Thank God that Preston captured some of the truly great geniuses before they passed on. His portrait of Chuck Jones, the man behind some of the classics in animation notably Bugs Bunny, Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner, also shows a biography of Mark Twain on his drawing table under some drawings and a framed picture of Twain on the wall. It’s these kinds of details that really allow the viewer to get a sense of the artist we are Willie Ito meeting.

of Hal Scroggy that describes Armstrong as one of the best watercolorists around. I should mention here that Scroggy is himself one of the best watercolorists. That’s the joy of taking the time to visit each one of these artists. Have

He caught Ollie Johnson, one of Disney’s nine old men, and the man who gave the world so much of the Marvel universe, Jack Kirby. I was lucky to know Jack whom I met at the first San Diego Comic Con in 1970 when I was 15. Preston’s portrait shows the warmth of The King as he shows the man with his work. Roger Armstrong has a sample of his excellent dog cartooning in Napoleon but it is the words

your computer ready and type in the names of their characters to really give yourself a solid education in art history.

Roger Armstrong

There’s an excellent portrait of three women, Joyce Farmer, Mary Fleener and Roberta Gregory on one page. All three women advanced comics history significantly. We should note that our first cover of Uncle Jam

was done by Gregory in 1973. Speaking of this publication, our logo was drawn by artist Alex Nino in 1976. Preston’s excellent portrait of Nino shows him with some of his paintings. I consider Nino one of the few true geniuses of the field of visual art. It’s a shame that more people know of his work as a principal artist behind Disney’s film Mulan but not his name. His work in animation is not credited in Preston’s book and I am guessing that it was Nino’s decision. Another veteran of Disney is my old friend Willie Ito. Aside from his career in animation at Disney, HannaBarbera, and Warner Brothers, the story continues with Ito’s children’s books about the plight of Japanese-Americans during World War II. This book is an excellent source of inspiration: the perfect launching pad for any young artist wishing to change the world. Order from Sampselprestonphotography. com. The cost of the book is $59.95 plus $10 shipping and handling. ~ Phil Yeh

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Book Reviews by Phil Yeh Why Comics? From Underground to Everywhere By Hillary Chute I met one of the students who invited me to that class years later. His name was Scott McCloud and he had written his own volume about comic books called Understanding Comics. I mention Spiegelman’s landmark work Maus because Chute gives it a massive amount of space in her book Why Comics? In an early chapter, Why Disaster? Chute explains the disaster of World War II, specifically the holocaust, shaped in Spiegelman’s cartoon story; much in the same way that across the planet artist Keiji Nakazawa was writing and illustrating his memories of the atomic bombing in Japan. Nakazawa’s I Saw It became an international bestseller just as the graphic novel Maus was translated in multiple languages.

This is a modern book trying it’s best to explain the history of comics from the first comic books to the underground comics and beyond. When my friend Richard Kyle coined the term graphic novel in 1964, I believe he had an idea that comic books could indeed tell one complete story in a single book, a “graphic novel” that could indeed sell on the shelves like any classic prose book like War and Peace or To Kill a Mockingbird, forever. Richard didn’t turn his idea into reality until 1976 when he published Space Time and Beyond by George Metzger which I followed a few months later with Even Cazco Gets the Blues in May 1977. In 1982, a couple of students wrote to me inviting to speak to Art Spiegelman’s class at The School of Visual Arts. The students heard me talk passionately about the need for more graphic novels based on real life experiences. I had a very spirited coffee after class with Spiegelman where I told him that he should make his comic book Maus, then appearing in RAW magazine, into a full-sized graphic novel. Art argued with me that it was impossible to get a New York publisher to see that vision.

From the chapter on disaster we explore Superheroes, Sex, Illness & Disability, War and other topics. Joe Sacco’s brilliant coverage of the war torn region was captured in Palestine. Chute brings out a full portrait of Sacco in her book. Clearly the comics medium is an excellent way of telling the truth about these horrible events. If we are truly going to advance our art form, then books like Why Comics must be taught in every high school and college English language course. This form can be considered literature and we must always promote the best our field has to offer. ~ Phil Yeh

The Healthiest People on Earth By John Weeks

I waited with great excitement for the arrival of this book by my friend John Weeks. John is the great-great-grandson of Seventh-day Adventist founder Ellen White but this book is not a religious book. Instead, it is a direct common sense approach to the subject of eating healthy in order to avoid some of the pitfalls that can come from eating meat. I have known John for over a decade and he has fallen off the path of healthy living many times. But now John is back on track and hopefully you will consider taking some simple steps to improving your own diet.

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One of John’s chapters is titled The World’s Best Beverage. Worth reading by everyone who wishes to live a long life. And he devotes a whole chapter to Sleep Well, which is a problem that many people suffer from. In one chapter John writes about many of the myths that continue to wreak havoc on our health. And he offers up a wide selection of easy to prepare recipes. Lastly, John offers a whole list of suggested reading that will go a long way to increasing your quality of life. One of the books, The China Study by T. Colin Campbell & Thomas M. Campbell, was instrumental in convincing me to become a vegetarian a year and a half ago. My cousin Jing Zhou had actually given the book to me in China in 2007. Jing had worked with T. Colin’s son Nelson for many years. I didn’t read the book and put it into storage. But when my good friend Ted Lai invited my wife Linda and me to a vegan brunch at his home, for some reason I found The China Study the next day. I read 20 pages of the book and announced that I was now a vegetarian after a lifetime of eating meat. I don’t believe in coincidences. Everything happens for a reason and you have to be aware of the signs. When I moved out to the Inland

Empire in 2006, I had no idea that I would paint a mural at the historic site of the world’s first McDonald’s in San Bernardino and that the town across the freeway was where John Weeks’s great-great-grandmother would found a religion in Loma Linda; America’s only blue zone. ~ Phil Yeh

Ray & Joan By Lisa Napoli

woman who wed Kroc (his third marriage) and inherited his fortune when he died in 1984. This book should be read by anyone seeking to do some good in this world. It shows the power of giving, especially in your community. Ray Kroc was a conservative businessman and as shown in the film, very ruthless in his drive for success. He basically stole the idea of McDonald’s even though he paid them for the right to franchise the restaurants; but as the film points out Kroc was out to erase the brothers from history. After Ray died in 1984, Joan became one of the greatest philanthropists in the world. She was actually more of a liberal and often chose people and causes that were very unlike her late husband. Norman Cousins was a very influential editor in America, but when he was diagnosed with a deadly disease he tried to do something about it using positive thinking and humor. Cousins documented his work in his book, Anatomy of an Illness, which led him to a job at UCLA. Joan Kroc met Cousins and helped him with his work financially. I interviewed Cousins for Uncle Jam back in 1984. As this book shows, there are always interesting twists and turns in any life. ~ Phil Yeh

and songwriting but even though it’s not my field, I could appreciate what he says about the craft of making music. As I read the passages about Dylan and the Band living up near Woodstock, I came across the name of Al Aronowitz. Suddenly, it came back to me - waiting in New York City for Al in the early nineties. Al still lived up in Woodstock and we were waiting at a friend’s midtown apartment for him to arrive. He was late. Al was a respected journalist who had pitched an article for Uncle Jam, and when he finally showed up he talked a mile a minute. Robertson prints the story that it was Aronowitz and Dylan who had turned The Beatles on to weed in New York’s Algonquin Hotel and I can see Aronowitz smiling at his name being in the same sentence as these great artists. In my life I have met a lot of people who love to drop the names of famous people they have met. I used to find this kind of obnoxious unless there was a point to inserting those famous names in the story but as I get older, I find it more amusing. It is a way to remember a time and a place where you met these folks. Robertson tells his story about coming from Canada as a young teenager and entering this whole world of rock and roll when things were still fairly innocent. It just happens his world included some of the best musicians of his time. How they became this good is one reason that every young person needs to read this book. I want to check out The Last Waltz again. ~ Phil Yeh

Testimony By Robbie Robertson This book by Lisa Napoli has an intriguing tag line right on the cover. “The man who made the McDonald’s fortune and the woman who gave it all away.” It made me want to check this book out immediately as we have been painting these murals at the historic site of the very first McDonald’s in San Bernardino for over 5 years. We watched the film The Founder starring Michael Keaton as Ray Kroc twice in theaters since it came out. The first time was in December 2016 in Hollywood in a limited run to qualify for an Academy Award but sadly, no award was forthcoming. We saw the film a second time in Redlands in January 2017 because it was not playing in San Bernardino, which makes you wonder about the powers that be in this world. When you see this film, you finally understand what we have been telling folks for the last five years that we have worked on the murals. And when you read this fascinating book, you get the whole story about what happened to the

When I was growing up in Los Angeles, I lived in an area bordering on Watts. My musical tastes were strongly influenced by Motown, as this was the sixties; but for some reason I also liked the songwriting ability of Donovan and Bob Dylan. The first two singles I purchased with my own money was Colours by Donovan and Like a Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan. I was 10. Years later I discovered the Band, who had played behind Dylan for many years. In Testimony the Band’s guitarist and principal songwriter, Robbie Robertson, offers his story of how the Band came to be and how they ended with a great farewell concert captured in the film The Last Waltz by Martin Scorsese in 1976. A lot of time has gone by but Robertson’s style of storytelling really makes you feel like it happened yesterday. There is some detail about playing instruments Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 45, #108 2018

George Lucas: A Life By Brian Jay Jones

through film without using the traditional means of screening your movies. I have always preferred small films without special effects, but have always admired George Lucas for sticking to his vision. This is a book well worth reading for film students and for people who want to understand the business of films. It is also a great book for anyone who dreams big.

I am Brian Wilson A memoir with Ben Greenman

playing were Motown, even though The Beach Boys lived relatively close to where I grew up. Hawthorne was a White neighborhood in the early days when Wilson was growing up. My neighborhood was very multi-ethnic by the 60’s. After the Watts Riots in ’65 it became much more African-American. As I read this book, I could very much relate to the struggles that Brian and his brothers had in their home life and how music was his ticket out; at least until he discovered alcohol and drugs as a way to calm his nerves. The book deals with his relationship with Dr. Landy, who treated him with very controversial results. What is especially intriguing to me is the way he describes his process for creating music. I have absolutely no musical talent, but really got into the descriptions of his creative process. I have, of course, heard some Beach Boys tunes on the radio; but until this book, I had not understood the complexity of Wilson’s songs. I definitely plan on buying some Beach Boys albums and really listening.

Although George Lucas is very much alive, Brian Jay Jones has done an excellent job covering his whole life up until recent times. In fact, the book ends with kind words by Francis ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg, encouraging Lucas to make some smaller films like he has so often promised. This book offers a very good tutorial on the film business and how you can make up your own rules. I think it should be required reading for anyone interested in a career in the arts (or anything for that matter), because there is much that can be learned by Lucas’ career. It shows, in great detail, how much the studio system was against this artist as he tried to make the movies he wanted to create. It shows how Lucas managed to out-maneuver the film studio regarding Star Wars. What excited me most was hearing about how much Lucas loved comic book and illustration artwork. He is now in the process of building a museum to show his collection. I have always believed in the power of image and some of the best image-makers are our illustrators. Building a museum is not that easy, even when you are George Lucas. When the museum is finally finished, I hope that future generations can appreciate the talents of two-dimensional artists. Cinema history is still in its infancy, with all kinds of new and exciting ways to tell stories

Louie,Take a Look at This! My time with Huell Howser By Luis Fuerte, as told to David Duron

This memoir, written with Ben Greenman, talks about the oldest Wilson brother’s rocky journey through life. Many of the critical episodes were portrayed in the film Love and Mercy, in which Paul Dano plays Wilson as a younger man and John Cusack portrays him as an older man. I have always loved biographies. When I was a kid, I tried to read as many as I could, because I could see what a career in architecture or baseball might be like. After The Beatles hit the Ed Sullivan TV show in 1964, I thought about what life would be like as a rock and roll singer…the only problem was that I couldn’t sing. I bought all The Beatles records and read as much as I could about John Lennon. His troubled life mirrored my own and I started to see that you could find meaning through art. In my own case, it was visual art, not performance art. I vaguely knew about The Beach Boys, but most of the sounds that my friends were

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This is a fun book describing the person responsible for the long-running PBS television program, California Gold. Luis Fuerte was Huell Howser’s cameraman for the show’s

entire run. I have only watched a few episodes of California Gold, but I have always been taken in by the show’s enthusiastic host, Huell Howser. His natural way of conducting a conversation relaxes you into taking in whatever subject he covers. I enjoy traveling and especially love discovering the hidden gems in my own state. Howser’s program really opens up the viewer’s eyes to these places. Since I haven’t seen most of the programs that Fuerte describes, this book is a perfect menu for feasting on California Gold. We also learn a bit about Howser’s life story, as well as a bit about Fuerte. The book is filled with color photographs. It is a delightful trip down memory lane for those who have seen the program and an excellent book for anyone wanting to check it out. Even though Howser died in January 2013, you can still view episodes of California Gold on your local public television.

I Blame Dennis Hopper By Illeana Douglas This funny book is a loose memoir of sorts. Illeana Douglas starts off with an explanation of how the title came to be. Dennis Hopper

way of living to a child. She was influenced by movies at a very young age, which I guess would seem natural to the grandchild of Melvyn Douglas. There is a memorable chapter with actor Peter Sellers, who starred in the film Being There, based on the book by Jerzy Kosinski. Illeana’s grandfather was cast in the film and took home an Oscar for his performance. It was brilliantly directed by Hal Ashby, who is my favorite director. This movie gave Illeana a close-up look at making movies when she was invited onto the set by her grandfather. We go from watching films to being in them, as Illeana becomes an actress and then starts directing her own films. Her love of movies is contagious as she becomes one of the regulars on Turner Classic Movies, discussing the great films of history.

directed and co-starred in the 1969 film Easy Rider. Douglas’ father was so moved by this film that he gave up his middle class existence for an alternative hippie lifestyle. Illeana was a child when her father adopted this new way of living and her memories are perfect for describing this

As I read this book, I flashed back to my own experiences making small films in high school and college. I decided to just write and draw books instead, but this book has rekindled my own love with film. Perhaps I will make a movie one day in the future. Maybe this book will inspire you to make a movie or TV show, now that the technology makes it easier to write and shoot one yourself.

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Eastman continued from page 13...

Phil and Kevin

Turtles. Just let me know when you’re free--we’d love to have you. KE: Absolutely. Let’s lock something in. I’d love to come up and hang out with you and paint for the day. That will be something we’ll definitely have to do. Courtney and I do about 15 shows a year. Half or more are domestic, but this year, for example, we were lucky enough to go down to the La Mole Comic Con in Mexico City. It was the first time we’ve been down there and the fans are just so amazing and wonderful. We did a St. Petersburg, Russia event this year and a few others. One of the things that always amazes me is that wherever we go, whether it’s here or abroad, the Turtle fans are the same. After 34 years of the Turtles being around it’s become this crazy generational thing, which is mindblowing to me. UJ: I wanted to ask about Daniel Merriam. We’ve interviewed him for a past issue of Uncle Jam and I know that you know him. Can you tell our readers a little bit about how you came to meet him? KE: Now you’re going to test my memory. It was in Maine. He was one of my favorites from the early days. It was Daniel Merriam and David Bates and a couple other guys who went to the Portland school of Art, which is a lovely school in Portland, Maine. It was one of those things that I couldn’t afford to go to more than six months. His process is just so imaginative and so beautiful--his rendering techniques and his brush techniques. The subject matter has always been incredibly mindblowing to me. It’s this blend of vivid imagination, surreal combination of scenes and characters, and it’s such an original unique style, which I just absolutely adore. Besides the fact that he’s a fantastic world

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renowned illustrator, he’s from what I call home turf. I think I remember he was from York, Maine, which was not far from where I used to work in the summers. What you did in Maine was work from Memorial Day to Labor Day, cooking lobsters and working for the tourists so you could make enough money to make it through those long, cold Maine winters. To me it was all about having enough money left over so I could do night classes and continue the study of art. As a surrealist I think Daniel is one of the best artists out there. I’m a fan and equally proud that he’s from my home state. He’s a good guy, gone big-time. UJ: Is there anything you want to add? KE: I’ll say that this interview is long overdue. I know that we’ve been chasing each other around conventions for years. I had a period when I didn’t do any shows. Our son was born in the middle of Comic Con, interestingly enough. He’s definitely my kid. I didn’t travel for a while, so it’s nice to be back up there these past 7 or 8 years, reconnecting with folks like you that I haven’t seen in a long time and reconnecting with Turtles fans. Whether it’s to the fans personally at events, or at some of the bigger shows where I’ll do a slide show that tells a little bit of history of the Turtles, one of the things that I emphasize is the fact that I have fans. They are the sole and singular reason why I have the greatest job on the planet. I essentially get to get up and write and draw comic books for a living and I get to hang out in my imagination. It all comes down to the early exposure to reading, drawing, and imagination. That can take you anywhere in the world you want to be. So I thank the fans, and I thank you for chatting me up for this interview. I look forward to coming up and doing some painting with you brother. ~

MICHAEL CANO: Color, Environment, and the Transforming Power of Love By Todd S. Jenkins

Michael Cano has developed a thing for hummingbirds. The flying jewels that flock to the artist’s comfy home in Redlands are bright reminders of the positive changes in his life over the past few years. From the East L.A. streets of his youth to Inland Empire suburbia, Cano’s path has been rocky but colorful. Cano’s work has evolved along with his personal outlook since he began pursuing art as a teenager. His series of Primates -- close, almost sculptural head-shots of grotesque figures done in oil -- reflect both the influence of brutal expressionists like Kokoschka and the primitive mask and bust carvings of Mesoamerican cultures. His politically oriented works draw from the Mexican Muralists, Basquiat, and comic book art. Most recently he has returned to his first love, monochrome pen-and-ink drawings, and nature has become his primary muse. These transformations in his art echo his personal life, particularly since he met and married his wife, Patsy Faragher. Their love and the enlightenment that accompanies it set him on a far different path than he faced as a young man on the streets of East L.A. “I was one of the luckiest guys I know as far as my associations, because I could have very easily gone the other way with the people I hung out with as a teenager. I was this close to prison or death. I faced death any number of times. I had the first gun pointed at my head when I was twelve years old by an alleged friend. He had just gotten out of juvenile hall; he was sixteen, I was twelve, and he was the cousin of my best friend. I heard he was home from the camp, so I went over to see him. I said,

‘Hey, Bobby, how’s it going?’ He turned around and said, ‘There’s that M.F. right there,’ and he pulled a .45 out of his waistband, pointed it at my head and chased me around the kitchen with it, to the point that I was literally trying to crawl into the space between the refrigerator and the stove to get away, screaming ‘Please don’t kill me.’ Then he put the gun back in his pants and said, ‘I’m just screwin’ with you, cuz. Good to see you. How’s it going?’ I’m twelve! I’ve been accused of murder by police twice, with my hands on the top of my head, being stuffed into the cage in back of the car while they check me out. And when I was eighteen or nineteen, that same friend whose cousin pointed the gun at me got mad at me because I was pulling away from his friends; I had seen better things and I didn’t want to keep hanging out with these gangsters. One night we were playing poker and I beat them. I never beat them, but now I burned them for fifty bucks. About three in the morning, when the game was over, I went to the bathroom. When I came back, my alleged buddy is sitting there with half a Coke and I had half a Michelob left. He said, ‘I bet I can finish this Coke before you finish that beer. Five bucks.’ So I said okay, put five bucks on the table, and threw the beer down my throat. He had put powdered PCP in it. I swallowed the equivalent of like a dime bag of PCP. I got instantly high, and I barely made it home. I only lived two blocks away. I crawled into my room and I almost died. I woke up choking on my own stomach lining, throwing it up straight into the air. I finally blew some of the chunks out of my nose and recovered. That was my best friend for ten years. So it was really easy to go the other way, but I said, ‘No,

I want out.’ I straightened up, I got rid of those friends, stopped doing any kind of drugs, and I started drawing.” Cano had some idea of what he wanted to pursue in the way of an art career, but he had little formal knowledge of what to do with his innate talents. “It was 1983 when I started at Rio Hondo College, and at the time I was mostly interested in black and white illustrations. My goal at that time was to somehow submit to, and be accepted by, Disney or someplace like that. See, I grew up on comic books. And then Heavy Metal came along; they were kind of the avant-garde of comic books, so I wanted to do that. I spent several years doing pen-and-ink illustrations of dead rock stars and fantasy-type things, and other things that I was assigned to do, but nothing really grabbed my interest. I knew I wanted to do some art, but I didn’t really have a burning passion for it. Then in 1985, I went to an exhibit at the Plaza de la Raza in Lincoln Park. My friends had told me that there was an exhibit by a guy with an interesting last name, Siqueiros. I’d kind of heard of him in art history, so I said, ‘Let’s go, why not?’ We went to this exhibit by this painter and muralist, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and that was it. I was completely blown away. I’d never seen anything like it, and I’ve never seen anything like it since. He was an activist painter, very charged up politically. He was a card-carrying member of the Mexican Communist Party; he was the guy who took shots at Trotsky’s house when he was staying there! He went to jail a

Cano continued on page 38...

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Eclipse on the Range By Mary Chartier “It’s starting!” someone shouted. “Yeah!” we answered, and put on our solar eclipse glasses to look up at the sun. Sure enough, at 10:22 am the shadow of the mooan was beginning to creep across the sun. The Great American Eclipse of August 21, 2017 was starting for us. It was a hot, dusty summer day and we were parked along I-25 on the Wyoming range with over 200 cars filled with eclipse seekers. The skies

of Casper, Glendo State Park, Wheatland, and then into Nebraska and on across America. The shadow of the moon would slowly move across the sun until 11:42 am at our spot. Then there would be a total eclipse with the moon-shadow completely covering the sun. It would last for 2:30 minutes. While people were watching the sun, my sister and I walked around the cars and the people. We noticed the many states they were from. That was very fitting from an historical point of view. Four historical trails crossed the land near Lake Glendo: the Oregon Trail, the California trail, the Mormon trail, and the Pony Express Trail. It was as if the spirits of people in the past were sharing in this solar event with us. Joey, my daughter’s fiancé, tried an experiment with two sheets of paper as we waited. He poked holes in one paper and holding it in the sun, looked at the shadows from the holes on the other paper. The shadows reflected the way the moon was crossing the sun.

were not cloudy that day, but there was a breeze that pulled at my sun hat. People settled in to watch the eclipse. Some sat in lawn chairs in the scrub grass along the road, their faces lifted to the sun with dark slant-eyed solar glasses. Someone down the road was waving a large American flag. Others were climbing a nearby hill for a better view. I stayed in the car for a while because it was cooler and shadier there and I could still watch the eclipse. It looked like we were at a giant solar eclipse tailgate party. We had started traveling from Fort Collins, Colorado in the dark of the early morning. We took the back roads because we were afraid I-25 would get too jammed with traffic. It took us three and a half hours to go 200 miles and reach this spot in the Totality Zone where we would be able to view the complete eclipse. The Totality Zone would go across Wyoming, and the town

As the moon crossed the sun, the sky got darker like a cloudy day, although the sky was not cloudy. It began to get cooler and the breeze got stronger. I put on my sweatshirt. As totality approached, you could see Venus to the west of the Sun. There were few cars on the highway, and life around us seemed hushed. Along the edges of the horizon for 360 degrees, the colors were changing into twilight shades of light orange, pink, turquoise blue, and deep purple. We were entering the twilight zone. Light flashed around the sun and then the moonshadow covered it except for a thin golden light around the edge. A cry went up from the people below, and people clapped and oohed, and aahed. It was enchanting. We took off our solar glasses to see it, staring at the sun with our naked eyes. It was so beautiful! For two and a half minutes, we were in the totality experience. Then there was a flash of light on the sun’s west side. A bright, brilliant, beautiful light was coming out like a flashing diamond ring. It was the sun and this moment was the most awesome of all. We put our solar glasses back on so we would not be blinded as the sun became stronger. Totality was over, but the eclipse would go on for another hour and 20 minutes. I was standing and started to sit in the lawn chair, but things

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were happening all around me. The people in front of us had jumped in their car and were racing down the road. “Quick! Let’s go or we’ll never get home,” said Michelle. So we threw the chairs in the car’s trunk and jumped into the car. All was fine for about 5 miles down I-25. Then we hit a wall of cars. It looked like it was jammed all the way to Colorado. We pulled over at the first exit and found ourselves on a bumpy dirt road. The GPS system didn’t show the area very well, but I had a trusty AAA map and we were able to plot a way. At one time, we reached a dead end. On the other side of a gate was a narrow road made of wagon wheel ruts. “Oh, no Michelle,” I cried “you’ve got us onto the Oregon Trail!” We turned around and bounced back to the main dirt road. Finally, after 30 minutes we came to a paved road that led us to highway 34 and on to Laramie. We were hungry when we reached Laramie, but it was hard to find an open cafe as all the people had gone to the middle of Wyoming to view the eclipse. We finally ate and then continued on our way back to Fort Collins, Colorado. The actual traveling time took 4 hours which was very good time. One of Joey’s friends took 9 hours to go from Lake Glendo back to Fort Collins. Thank heavens for a AAA map, a spirit of adventure, and a bumpy dirt road across the Wyoming range - we made it in half the time. The hard journey made the event even more memorable. ~

Thrice in a Lifetime By Terri Elders The saying, “third time’s a charm,” dates at least as far back as the early 17th century when it cropped up in Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor. For me, it goes back to my childhood. “I want this meringue to reach as high as the sky,” she’d say, dragging out her egg beaters, preparing to make her signature lemon pie. “Knock on wood. Three times.” Dutifully, I’d bang my knuckles on the side of her kitchen table. Obeying my lifelong habit, I searched for a chunk of wood in the predawn, August 21, 2017, when Frank and I stepped out of the car in a parking lot in Keiser, Oregon, safely within the path of totality. This was to be Frank’s first solar eclipse, my third. I’d been feigning nonchalance as we’d raced down Interstate 5, leaving Portland at 3 a.m. Anxious now, I wanted this to be perfect. Though it was still

pitch dark, Venus shone brightly. “I hope we get a decent view. There are still a few hours and clouds could drift in.” “There’s a maple over there,” Frank said. “And a Starbucks just beyond it.” I laughed. Frank knew my knocking habit. We trudged toward the tree, I knocked for good luck, and we joined the crowd outside Starbucks. People had formed two lines, one for coffee and one for the restrooms. Frank joined the first, I the second. We were charmed, as Lady Luck stuck with us all morning. We lounged against the car, sipped our lattes, and watched the lot fill up with others as eager as we were to witness this rarest of celestial treats. We donned our darkened glasses at just the right moment. And though I didn’t see much of the Milky Way, as I had the first time I witnessed an eclipse, this one still took our breath away. As the moon finally obliterated the sun, the parking lot throng cheered, uncorked champagne, and set off Roman candles and rockets. To the north the sky lit up. Over 5,000 had gathered at the Salem-Keiser Volcanoes Stadium to watch two minor league baseball teams make history. This was the first

Once in a Lifetime

By Terri Elders

In l990 when I first moved to Antigua, Guatemala, my birder knowledge was for the birds. Or at least my housemate, Kelly, saw it that way. I knew enough to feed spinach greens, not stale muffins, to the domestic ducks at Recreation Park in my hometown of Long Beach, CA. Enough to avoid annoying the thirty-pound swans in London’s Hyde Park. Enough to understand that silence is golden while trailing knowledgeable birdwatchers in the woods near The House of the Doves at Uxmal. And once, at my grandmother’s house in Los Angles when I was ten, I learned the hard way that it’s wise to avoid poking a thumb inside a budgie’s cage. But I never quite understood birders like Kelly, who hiked the John Muir Trail with binoculars, packsack, and pen. Or who toted notepads to record every winged creature that soared overhead. Now Kelly tried to recruit me to share his obsession. I’d heard about “The Bird Man of Alcatraz,” but never a bird woman. Batgirl didn’t count…bats were flying mammals, not birds. “I don’t think so,” I said. “I’m not really interested. Is birding a ladylike activity?” “Of course, it is. Just think of our sundeck as a portal into a world of magic,” he answered, patting the bench beside him, inviting me to join him staring out at our neighbor’s coffee finca. Kelly could sprawl out there for hours, tallying the varieties of feathered creatures that fluttered among the overarching trees. “Yeah, right. Like Disneyland.” But Kelly persevered. “Birding is the number one sport in America. It even beats basketball,” this lifelong Lakers fan declared. “And here there’s over 700 species of birds. You gotta pay attention. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity.” One afternoon he dropped in at Un Poco de Todo, the bookshop nook that faced the Parque Central, and bought me a guide to local Aves. “Thanks,” I said, “I guess it won’t hurt to give it a try.” So that sunset we sat on the deck together, sipping Gallo, the local beer, right out of the bottle. I’d ceased to care if that were ladylike or not. After a while Kelly cocked his head toward the flame-hued bougainvillea vine draping the brick wall separating our sunken garden from the finca. “Just listen to that warbler!”

professional game to be delayed by a total solar eclipse. The stadium, located on the appropriately-named Field of Dreams Way, provided some fireworks during the interval. Luck didn’t hold up entirely for the Volcanoes, who lost the game but won a mention in Sports Illustrated. Before we started toward the Oregon Coast, I treated myself to a slice of lemon meringue pie at a nearby diner. The pie, like the eclipse, proved heavenly.

When it came to bird clatters, I scarcely could distinguish a skylark’s carol from a barn owl’s screech. Now I heard a harsh, persistent trill, okey dokey, okey dokey, tweet, tweet, tweet, followed by a cacophony of raucous caws and kissy sounds. “It sounds like more than one bird.” Kelly shook his head. “Just one.” “Is it a crow?” Kelly laughed. “It’s a mockingbird! Most likely a bachelor. The males without mates usually are the ones who sing at night.” He winked at me. “The ladies are much more silent. A rare feat of nature.” I chuckled, and then took another swallow of my Gallo. “All right, Mr. Ornithology, I’ll learn. I promise.” So, I studied my manual. Here in the highlands, I read, we had brown-backed solitaires and blackheaded siskins, gray silky-flycatchers and blue-throated motmots, white-winged tanagers and greenthroated mountain-gems. I loved the rhythm of the names, and hoped soon to be able to single out some of these rainbow-hued creatures. Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 45, #108 2018

In the Valley of Pink Dunes We trekked through the Coral Pink Sand Dunes under the bare sun, hiking boots slung over our shoulders. The air was warm and dry amid shifting winds. I stopped atop the crest of a baby dune, and Bruce followed. We surveyed the scene. Orange and pink peaks and valleys of sand undulated toward the distance. Around me, patches of desert plants poked out periodically, the foliage bespeckled in the sun’s glare. Framing everything were the mountains of Kanab, Utah. When Bruce wasn’t looking, I took a purple bag the size of my thumb from my pocket and

emptied it onto my palm. Out came a small stone and a square of tinfoil, both given to me as an early birthday present. I unfolded the tinfoil and held up a piece of paper. On the paper was a picture of a cherub resting on a tiny cloud. For a while I stood there, sucking on the square, until it began to gum up and eventually dissolve. Bruce had wandered off to scope out some yucca plants. When he came back, I told him I took acid. I could see Bruce’s eyes pondering whether there was enough for him, but unfortunately, there wasn’t. “Handle your scandal,” he said. “It’s your

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By Donna P. Crilly birthday weekend, so ring it in proper.” “I don’t think it’s working, though,” I said. I scanned the horizon for the tallest dune my eyes could see and pointed at it. “Let’s climb to the top.” The mother dune seemed to grow as we approached it. It was shaped like a star with points that stretched and twisted, merging with the ground. When we made it to the top, I sat down and closed my eyes; colliding winds showered us with debris. I had to wrap my bandana around my nose and mouth to keep the sand out. My eyes were still closed, and when

I opened them, my jeans had turned blue as a crayon, contrasting the resplendent orange-pink sand. My hand patted the dune and scooped up handfuls of sand, letting the soft granules run through my fingers. Bruce came up to me and handed me his flask of whiskey. We wet the whistle a few times before drifting back into our own meditative worlds. By the time we were ready to head back, nature had covered our tracks. I could only gauge which direction we needed to walk based upon the position of the sun and the shape of the mountains. Bruce said he remembered where we came from and led me back to camp. * The sun was beginning to set. Our campsite was large and semi-private, with a circle of trees creating a fortress of sorts. It was meant for parties of four or more. I thought our friends, Jane and her wife, would be joining us for this leg of the trip, but they had set off back to California earlier that morning, after all four of us spent the weekend toiling along the cliffs of Zion National Park. So then, it was just the two of us. Bruce and I had set up our tents facing each other under the trees. Our site had a picnic bench and a deep fire pit situated toward the front of camp. The public bathrooms were directly across the street and came complete with hot showers. It was Bruce’s turn to make the fire. I made it the first night in Zion and burned all of my mail; Jane was second. I sat on the bench rolling cigarettes while Bruce chopped wood. Then we went back to our tents and I said, “Let’s go to D-Realm.” I didn’t say what D-Realm was. It was not something that could be explained. The door of my tent was in the shape of the letter D. I unzipped it and we stepped inside. The atmosphere was cozy and luxurious with ample pillows for leaning. I had set up a soft, heavy blanket upon the floor and hung my lantern from the apex of the tent. Bruce complimented me on the D-Realm for its ambience and said, “B-Realm is a bunch of blankets piled up on the floor.” Then he chuckled to himself about his own selfness. After smoking weed and drinking whiskey, I read to Bruce awhile. I was giggling uncontrollably when Bruce pointed out I had spilled whiskey on my comforter, and it was still spilling. It was quiet when all of the sudden Bruce declared, “It smells like whiskey and balm.” I kept laughing, patty caking the wet spot on my rug in a futile attempt to sop it up. Bruce was pleased he could make me laugh so hard. I explained to him how I had spread Tiger Balm on my chest because it felt right at the moment. He unscrewed the lid and inhaled a whiff. “Yup. Hella balmy.” “Not the right use of ‘balmy,’ but I’ll accept it,” I said. “Wait,” Bruce said. He looked at me under the

glare of the lantern. “Are you still tripping?” “I don’t think so,” I said. But then the ground came up and was level with my head and my whole body flattened like a pancake, until I began stretching and growing taller in my tent, and somehow my jeans had come up to my neck, and I was nothing but legs and a head. By then I realized we were slowing shifting into the B-Realm, so I decided to lean into it. “Time for fire,” Bruce said. Bruce unzipped my tent door, and when we emerged, the night was black, except for the stars. It was frigid and windy. I became frozen in place, rocking back and forth with the wind. In the black distance, Bruce was a moving shadow, building a fire. Bruce stacked the wood in the shape of a triangular log cabin with pillars supporting a horizontal plank at the top. He explained to me his philosophy of the Top Fire. Top Fire is necessary for a big fire in the B-Realm because it makes the fire flicker just right. Top fire is not like the middle-sized fires of the D-Realm, which are built to endure. Top fire is beautiful and reckless, and is the most fun type of fire. The construction of Bruce’s art installation took up about half of the wood, but my, how it flickered. When the smoke from the fire rose in the direction of the wind and the logs began to crackle, I found myself melting into the folding chair with my feet dangling on the edge of the pit, dangerously close to the fire. Bruce took to swinging the axe and threw in logs. I’m not sure how much time passed or if time was passing at all. I became transfixed on a triangle of orange inferno deep in the pit of the fire. Bruce was talking and talking, but I had no idea what he was saying. Eventually he quieted down and went to work rubbing out his neck, which consumed his attention. I decided to battle the demons inside of me, but the acid wasn’t strong enough, so the slightest buzz of anxiety consumed me in waves; I clung on to each wave in order to confront it and let it ride over me, like the masochist I am. When all was done and dandy, I felt a stillness coupled with the purity of the loss of my cat, who had died two weeks ago. When you lose someone you love, all of the trifles fall away and what’s left is raw. You notice the slightest day-to-day sensual things that otherwise pass into your subconscious: the errant breeze on your neck, the sound of a creaky sign swinging from a store front, the hard realization you’ve been eating food that doesn’t taste as good as you tricked your mind into believing. The feeling of getting your heart broken is similar, except your ego goes a little with it, sometimes your dignity; but when you bounce back, you’ve leveled up a little. By you, I mean me.

Before parting ways that morning, the four of us had a funeral on the outskirts of Zion for my cat, Jezebel. Jane selected a spot next to a stream beneath a pine tree with jutting roots that formed a circle large enough for the four of us to sit. We sat next to the stream and remembered Jezebel. She was a talkative Siamese with ocean blue eyes and black paws that made it look like she was wearing boots. Jane was her human before me. Years ago, Jane had asked me to watch her while she traveled to Peru. When she brought Jezebel over to my apartment, she told me I could change the cat’s name if I wanted to. I thought it was an odd thing to say, until I later realized Jane wasn’t coming back any time soon. * Somehow, the flasks of whiskey had multiplied from one to two, and one had made its way into my hand. I took a sip for John Lennon’s birthday, another for mine, and poured some into the fire for my dead cat; then I leaned back and looked up at the cloudless sky. It was the last night of the full moon. I remembered the big ass bag of Hot Cheetos Jane bought me for my birthday. I was going to save them, but eventually, I found myself digging out the bag from the rental car and ravaged the whole thing in front of the fire. Red Hot Cheetos, red-hot fire, and pink sand dunes on a cold October night. Soon the fire died, and we were out of logs. I straightened up and snapped back from a waking dream. Bruce was slumped over his chair with whiskey dangling from this limp hand. He was drunk as a skunk and gliding in and out of sleep. It was time for me to return to the D-Realm. I got up and took the drink from his hand. “Bruce, don’t you want to sleep in your pile of blankets in your tent?” I said, nudging his shoulders gently. “Hmm? OK,” he muttered, but stayed put. “It’s cold.” I said. As if on cue, he arose and stretched, and scuttled off to his tent, leaving me in the cold with the smoldering ash. I tidied up camp, and when I was done, I lit one of his cigarettes and took a last look at the fire pit, as if to siphon what was left of its heat, and wandered off to bed. I arranged myself comfortably in my tent and lay with my eyes open, until I eventually drifted off. It was too cold that night to dream anything good. In the morning, my fingers were stained orange. I took a hot shower in the public restrooms. It was spacious and clean, and I felt refreshed. We drove west in the open desert, sometimes with music blaring, sometimes in silence. ***

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 45, #108 2018

Comic Con2017: Concentrated Creativity By Thomas Bowen Jr.

For fans of the comic book world and the devotees of all things film – fan - and pop culture – there is nothing to equal San Diego’s Comic Con. From its small roots in a local hotel, everybody now seems to know something about the huge, clanking, noisy, crowded, ground-zero destination for summer – “The Con”. Now, every year over 130,000 people make the trek to San Diego and many more thousands suffer in sadness once tickets are sold out. There are now Conventions and gatherings all over America, but nothing can match the godfather and model for them all. So now, what is the draw? Is it just too big? Has “The Con” lost its way? Are all the people who are now sneering and snarky about it just mad they didn’t get tickets? First, a little context here about my own odyssey; I first went in 2011, on a one day ticket. Let me tell you from my own personal experiences – the first time was overwhelming; everything coming at you with the force and volume of a fire hose. (MOVIES! TOYS! COMICS! BOOKS! COLLECTABLES! AND EVERYBODY LINING UP FOR -EVERYTHING!) It seems like it’s just you and 130,000 of your very closest, sweatiest friends. When first peering into the maelstrom on the convention floor, you might have the understandable impulse to drop your swag bag in fright and just make a run for it. Reflecting on it after my first year’s experiences, I suddenly realized that the real secret of this giant, noisy event is that there are actually multiple cons - all going on at the same time. I’m very happy to say that, even with the overwhelming nature of the experience, there is almost certainly a Con for almost everybody taking place somewhere in there. Even more exciting is that a tremendous amount of crosspollination now takes place there – bringing a host of new, unexpected fans to genres that might not have been on peoples’ radars before now. You eventually learn to see the nuances and subgroups within the tide of attendees. Such as: Collectors – frantic folks with giant bags filled with the newest and most jealously desired items, no matter if it is some new glow-in-thedark gismo from that new movie franchise; to grim-faced, hardcore, comics folks leafing

Gal Gadot, 2017 San Diego Comic-Con, photo courtesy of Thomas Bowen Jr.

through endless racks of gold, silver or bronze issues. There is serious product tonnage to be found and hauled home for these people. Hall Walkers – seemingly on a quest for some booth or signing somewhere on the main floor. When at peak, a simple jaunt across the hall could take 40 minutes and involve getting past 20,000 people. This distance will be covered in labor intensive sidetracking paths that look like a Ms. Pac Man maze on some skill level you never got up to in high school. There is always something to do and see on the floor and some people spend the entire Con awash in the tides of humanity. Line Dwellers – these are the ones that seem

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to never set foot on the main floor, spending their entire Con in lines and in panel after panel. Extra street cred can be gained, I guess, in how many hours you can spend in line for perhaps 7 one- hour panels, spread out over 3 days. Showers and sleep mean nothing to those who sleep out on the concrete overnight to get into Hall H. One perk – (it seems to have become a thing), is for some of the stars in the upcoming panels to pass out coffee, and even donuts, to those that saved their spot in line all night on the cold concrete. Cosplay at the Con - There are hordes of Cosplayers and Steampunkers doing their things. I have to say that there are some seriously amazing costumes going on. The

Masquerade, where the best costume creations are on display, is usually well worth the effort to see. The Steampunkers also take things to an extra level. Not content with prepackaged icons and super hero garb, they create intricate and well thought out vintage--inspired wardrobes, for a time that never will be.

vistas to be explored – new lines to be stood in – and suddenly, it was all over.

and personal appearance by Congressman John Lewis.

In year two I made a plan for my one -day ticket and was able to map out what to see and where to go; things that I “had to do” and things to do “if there is time.” That 2nd year I stood in some lines for my first panel. I also finally

Another encouraging example of creative crosspollination was seeing people that are deep fans of the TV series Firefly and the follow-up movie Serenity. They now have access to graphic books and storylines marketed by Dark Horse. These fans started with a TV show, followed

2017 San Diego Comic-Con

David G Brown, Dean Yeagle, Phil Yeh

Linda Yeh & Sergio Aragones

All of the above still only represents a portion of the attendees. I could go on about Gamers, LARPers, Whovians, Browncoats, Aspiring Artists, and of course, Trekkies, but you get the idea.

saw my first super-secret movie preview. It was getting better and more fun over time; but there is never enough time, and never enough stamina, to see it all or do it all in a day. The real transformative moment was in the 3rd year of attending. On this trip I realized that I was planning out (and eagerly anticipating) some portion of Comic Con that I had never considered important before. My personal cross-pollination had begun. Now, it was about maybe seeking out the new web comics, or meeting some of the artists of the remaining daily strips, or seeing the effort to involve kids in historical education. They had the 3-book series March, an amazing educational example in 2017, which portrayed the Civil Rights movement in America. This was with a signing

the same characters into a motion picture, and are now reading further pen and ink storylines of what came after “Earth That Was.” Truly, a creative “hat-trick” - matching in a small way, the same path as the mighty Star Trek franchise. So, for all the naysayers out there; I have no doubt that “The Con” is drastically different than what many remember from the early days. Certainly today it is a four day behemoth of overcrowded, nonstop, frantic activity; but once you get over the shock of the crowds and the size, there is a perfect meeting, a perfect item, or a perfect moment, for just about anybody that goes there and is willing to seek it out.

Now personally, I’m a collector at heart. I look for the old sketches and vintage cartoons from Playboy Magazine for my Dad’s collection. The first year, I just let it wash over me with my oneday ticket and had no idea of where to go or what to do. After a time, I finally figured out the section where most of the artists were and the dealers that specialize in the original work. Eventually, I found the perfect item for my dad – and was then able to look at some of the other things going on around me. There were new

I hope to see you there next year. ~

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 45, #108 2018

Wonders of the West By Terri Elders

When you’re short of time or money but longing for a quick getaway, there’s real reason to think of our West Coast as the “best coast.” It’s about a 1250-mile drive or a three-hour plane flight from San Diego to Seattle. If you add, as I did, an additional flight to Spokane, and a drive up toward the Canadian border, that’s still only a couple of extra hours. Still doable. Here are nine highlights from my own Best Coast 2017 excursions.

California

Riverside Art Museum and Mission Inn The Riverside Art Museum, with its airy, spacious galleries, is housed in a building designed by Julia Morgan, perhaps best known as the architect for La Cuesta Encantada, otherwise known as Hearst Castle. Though its exhibits change frequently, it features American, Californian and Inland Empire artists. Don’t miss pausing at the History Wall in the lobby that provides an overview of Morgan’s career and how this Spanish Revival building, erected in 1929, transitioned from a YWCA into the present museum. It’s a great place to spend a couple of hours while you wait for your guided tour through the Mission Inn, across the street.

Hotel Del Coronado

San Diego’s Gaslamp District and Hotel Del Coronado Gaslamp, one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, has tons of architectural charm. It’s filled with restored Victorian buildings, including restaurants, shops, and clubs where once stood brothels and saloons. Wyatt Earp operated gambling halls in the Gaslamp in the mid-1880s. You can join a guided walking tour of the area from the Davis Horton House, 410 Island Avenue. Happy Birthday to me, and I blew out a candle at The Field, an authentic Irish pub and restaurant. Try the sampler that includes corned beef and cabbage, Shepard’s pie, whiskey chicken boxty and Guinness beef stew. The Field has won awards for best ambiance, best happy hour, and best perfect pint. 544 5th Avenue, San Diego.

Bigfoot Museum in Downtown Felton

Can’t get enough of Victoriana? Stop by the Hotel Del Coronado, where you can look for the ghost of Kate Morgan, who wanders through the grounds dressed all in black. Here you can ride the famous electric elevator which has graced the main lobby since the hotel first opened in 1888. 1500 Orange Ave, Coronado.

A hint: make a reservation for the trained docent-led 75-minute Mission Inn tour, since a limited number of people are escorted through each time. The last tour begins at 4:00. If you arrive too late, you can take a selfguided history tour, visit the wine tasting room, or sip beer or wine, with a healthy helping of tortilla chips and salsa, at the patio’s Spanish cantina,

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 45, #108 2018

Las Campanas. Highlights of your visit should include a glimpse of the oldest dated bell in Christendom and, a favorite photo location, the Garden of the Sky. 3649 Mission Inn Ave., Riverside. Don’t miss the huge Mission Galleria Antique Shop while you’re visiting the area. It’s filled with home décor, collectibles, vintage clothing and jewelry, and even features a small café if you want to take a break from browsing. 3700 Main Street, Riverside. Museum, 3425 Mission Inn Ave., Mission, 3649 Mission Inn Ave., Riverside. Santa Cruz Mountains and Salinas Time for something different? How about stopping by Felton’s Bigfoot Discovery Museum, a few minutes from downtown Felton. The tiny two-room shrine to Sasquatch contains a collection of Bigfoot footprint casts, memorabilia, and clips from a film, along with a list and map of Bigfoot sightings dating back to the early 1900s that includes all the sightings since the early 1900’s. Owner and curator Michael Rugg claims he wandered off from his home and spotted Bigfoot on the Eel River when he was only about 5 years old. He’s devoted his retirement years to collecting memorabilia and researching sightings. You can pick up a copy of Dr. Jeff Meldrum’s Sasquatch Field Guide. 5497 Hwy 9, Felton. The National Steinbeck Center honors the legacy of one of California’s most beloved authors and the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, John Steinbeck. This imaginatively designed museum is filled with movie posters and film clips, quirky interactive exhibits, and a history of Salinas’s agriculture, which plays a major role in so many of the author’s works. This is that rarity, a hands-on memorial that children will enjoy. The Steinbeck House, the Victorian home where he spent his childhood, is nearby at 132 Central Avenue. 1 Main Street, Salinas.

Oregon Portland Many bibliophiles claim Powell’s City of Books, with its 1.6 acres of shelves in nine color-coded rooms, to be heaven on earth. This may be the largest bookstore on the planet. In a recent visit, I located several books I’d been seeking for years. The clerks suggested mailing them to me, and it cost only around $12 to ship a dozen books to my home. Located in the downtown Pearl District, the shop was founded in 1971. The Pearl District, with its reclaimed warehouses, features many craft breweries and artisan coffee shops, if your hunger and thirst for knowledge gives way to a different kind of craving. 1005 W. Burnside St., Portland. Grande Ronde Spirit Mountain Casino and Lodge is a great place to stop if you’re heading back to the Portland airport from the Oregon Coast. It features a terrific and inexpensive breakfast buffet if you’re just driving by. It’s Oregon’s busiest tourist attraction, drawing three million visitors a year. The day I stopped for breakfast, it didn’t feel crowded at all. I spent an hour looking at the exhibits that line the hallways, filled with tribal lore and history. Rooms are reasonably priced, and noted entertainers play in its showrooms. 27100 SW Salmon River Hwy. Newport Even if you don’t book a room, at least peek in at the lobby and gift shop of the Sylvia Beach Hotel, an oceanfront B&B for booklovers. Built between 1910 and 1913, the Nye Beach bluff house in its early days was Oregon’s honeymoon capitol. Now on the Register of Historic

Sylvia Beach Hotel Lobby

Landmarks, this hotel honors Sylvia Beach, who owned Shakespeare & Co. in Paris during the ‘20s and ‘30s. Its 20 guest rooms are named and decorated to reflect authors ranging from Dr. Seuss and JK Rowling to Mark Twain, Agatha Christie, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. It offers fine dining at its Table of Contents Restaurant. Breakfast is available for groups. Dinner is by reservation only, one serving at 7 p.m. 267 N.W. Cliff, Newport.

Washington Stevens County Yes, there’s more to Washington State than Seattle. Washington isn’t all coastal. It also boasts lofty mountains and dense forests. The Spokane metropolitan area, on the Eastern side of the Cascades, has a population of half a million, the largest between Seattle and Salt Lake City. Just north of Spokane County lies Stevens County, home to the Colville National Forest and Lake Washington on the Columbia River. A few years back, the National Christmas Tree came from the Colville National Forest. Highway 395 takes Canadian-bound travelers through the towns of Chewelah, Colville, and Kettle Falls. Chewelah is home to 49 Degree North Ski Resort and Chewelah Golf and Country Club; Colville features Keller House and Heritage House Museum; Kettle Falls lays claim to the fantastic Woodlawn Community Theatre and Meyers Falls Market. If you keep driving north, you can cross the border into Canada and a couple of hours later you’ll reach Nelson, one of the most charming towns in all British Columbia, the backdrop for the filming of Steve Martin’s romantic comedy, Roxanne. But then you’d no longer really be in the States, or on the “coast.” But no explorer of the three westernmost states should quibble over details. ~

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 45, #108 2018

Another Beginners’ Guide to Going Vegan By Ted Lai

So you’re thinking about going vegan Good for you! Whether referred to as ‘vegan’ or ‘plant-based,’ it doesn’t really matter. Just know that a lot of people are either moving towards it or thinking about it. Going vegan in this day and age is so much easier than it used to be. Even compared to five years ago, the number of restaurants, market products, and awareness have increased. There are plantbased alternatives for practically every dairy or meat option possible, and they can be found in almost every major market chain in the US, Canada, and beyond. So whatever your reasons for dipping your toes in this lifestyle, just know that you have plenty of support and options. In fact, according to Allied Market Research and Technavio, two market research firms that focus on trends, the plant-based milk market will grow to over $21 billion by 2022. Allied Market Research also predicts that the global meat-alternative market will reach $5.2 billion by 2020. Meanwhile, Grand View Research has projected that the vegan leather market will grow to $85 billion by 2025. Even traditional meat and dairy purveyors are following the trends; with Tyson Foods investing in Beyond Meat (over 5% ownership); Maple Leaf Foods (one of Canada’s largest meat processors) purchasing Lightlife Foods; and Elmhurst

Dairy (a New York dairy that has been in business 90 years) ditching dairy and creating a line of beverages featuring ‘milked’ almonds, hazelnuts, cashews, and walnuts. My family and I have been vegan since 2003. In relative terms, we’re veterans when it comes to living plant-based. We’ve been through rough times and easy ones when it comes to food options. That said, we’re always learning things. Here are some tips, tricks, and resources that I wish we had back when we started. Start with Why Simon Sinek has a great Ted Talk and book called Start with Why. In it he communicates how the greatest speakers and companies all have a clear WHY that guides their actions, messaging, products, and services. Going vegan isn’t necessarily a business for you, but do you know Why you’re doing it? Make sure you’re clear on that because people will ask you, and there will be times that you may question it yourself. Clarity on your Why helps with resolve and determination even in the tougher times. Most people go vegan for one of three reasons: personal health, ethics of animal welfare, or environmental considerations. A lot of people

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 45, #108 2018

are considering veganism because of recent documentaries like PlantPure Nation; Forks Over Knives; Cowspiracy; What the Health; Food, Inc.; and Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead… just to name a few. None of these three things are a fad. If you believe in animal welfare, that usually doesn’t change later on. It’s not something you do just because you hear others are doing it. The same goes for helping the planet or your own health. Starting with health is a common place to begin because a meat and dairy intensive diet, often called the Standard American Diet, has resulted in a plethora of health issues like heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. So we’ll begin with health as a Why. Most people want better health. That’s probably not an earth-shattering revelation. Although many people don’t want to put a lot of work into having good health, we logically desire it because we equate better health to a better life. There are many books and articles written about the health benefits of a plant-based diet. From The China Study, to Eat to Live, to How Not to Die, there are plenty of options to read more about the health benefits. In his book How Not to Die, Dr. Michael Greger elaborates on his work Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death, where he talks about the top 16 leading causes of death and how research shows that

going plant-based can help in 15 of the top 16. These top 16 include diseases of the heart, cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and more (the one area where being vegan won’t help is with accidents or unintentional injuries). So whether you’re trying to lower your cholesterol, normalize blood pressure, lose a few pounds, or make a better effort to consume 5-9 servings of fruits and vegetables per day, your health won’t be harmed by eating a nutritious, plantbased diet. To see Dr. Greger’s presentation, visit a video of it here; http://bit.ly/16death. The ethics of eating animals is a sensitive one. People don’t like to think about where their food comes from, whether it was humanely raised, or what type of suffering and exploitation animals face through a life in factory farms and eventual death. And accepting and approving of any suffering goes counter to what we value as humans. In general, people believe in compassion. However, to continue eating meat and dairy while being aware of the animals’ condition requires a disregard for the natural empathy we have for beings that suffer. In her book Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism, author Melanie Joy describes this action as ‘psychic numbing.’ Her term ‘carnism’ refers to “the dominant, yet invisible paradigm in modern culture supporting the choice to consume meat.” Just because it’s pervasive does not make it the norm, so giving it a name, carnism, emphasizes the choice being made. The concept of psychic numbing can be observed when people protest dog eating in other countries while being fine with other animal slaughter at home. At county fairs, there’s a disconnect as people pet and fawn over cute animals while eating a burger or hot dog often made by the same animals they’re adoring. The increase of terms like “humane meat,” “cage-free,” and “free range” demonstrates that companies want people to believe that the animals are treated well prior to slaughter, but it never addresses the fact that the animals are ultimately slaughtered. This goes beyond the plate as well. Sheep shearing can be a brutal act that results in cuts, broken limbs, and even death. Silk harvesting requires boiling the cocoons and killing the silkworms inside. Some scientists believe that the colony collapse of bees is related to the pesticides in the high fructose corny syrup we use to replace the honey we take. Going vegan for the animals is indeed a great reason. You don’t have to watch a shocking undercover video of a factory farm to convince yourself… there are plenty of those if you want to watch them. Instead, here’s a video by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) that lays out some of the terminology and issues ignored. http://bit.ly/humanemeat. There are many things at stake when it comes to the environmental impact of factory farming.

From climate change, to deforestation, to water use, to species extinction, to pollution, there are many reasons why going plant-based is good for our world. In fact, according to information in Cowspiracy, compared to a meat-eater, a person who follows a vegan diet produces 50% less carbon dioxide and uses 91% less oil, almost 93% less water, and about 94% less land. The water use to produce one hamburger is equivalent to 660 gallons of water… which is about 2 months of showering. Animal agriculture is extremely land and resource intensive. In fact, 56 million acres of land are used for animal agriculture compared to only four million acres used for growing produce. Animal agriculture is responsible for an astounding 91% of the destruction of the Amazon (rainforest, not the company). Over half the greenhouse gases (51%) are due to livestock and their byproducts compared to a mere 13% as a result of transportation (what many people commonly believe is the main leader in pollution). It’s ironic that when people want to conserve water or save the environment they say to take shorter showers, water their lawn every other day, or carpool to work. These are all wonderful habits to follow, but would have nowhere near the same impact as choosing to go plant-based. For a great infographic on these statistics posted by Cowspiracy, go to http://bit.ly/meatecos. Currently, until we figure out interstellar travel and logistics of colonizing other planets, we only have one world. Starting with WHY is definitely more than a business strategy. It’s an acknowledgement of core values that should not alter if conditions don’t change. It’s what keeps you on the plantbased journey even during hard times when you might question continuing. For example, if you go vegan because of the environmental impact, then that won’t change unless the planet is 100% saved, and factory farms that provide meat, dairy, eggs, and fish have absolutely no impact while operating. In other words, it wouldn’t happen. The same goes for your health or for the animals. You wouldn’t suddenly decide that you’re perfectly fine with high blood pressure or heart disease or any of the myriad of health issues that are often caused by meat and dairy consumption. You also wouldn’t decide that being compassionate isn’t worth it anymore. So start with WHY. How to Start To take a slogan from Nike… “Just do it!” You need to start somewhere. Once you’ve determined your WHY, then you need to consider how to do it. Do yourself a favor and learn a little about nutrition, meat and dairy alternatives, clothing options, and ways to get support in your journey. Vegan is more than a diet, it’s a way of life, so understanding not just the dietary road forward, but also the ways to be

cruelty-free in your clothing and other choices is the goal many people strive towards. That said, starting with what’s on your plate and what goes in your mouth is where many people begin… so that’s what we’ll focus on. There are a lot of ways to be an unhealthy vegan. There’s nothing wrong with that necessarily but knowing the options for maximum nutrients is a good way to begin. For guidance, it’s beneficial to join a challenge. Some of the vegan challenges include a support group, accompanying app, or a book. Here are a few to consider: • https://veganuary.com is the website for Veganuary, an annual pledge/challenge to go plantbased for January (and hopefully beyond). It is a comprehensive site with a starter kit, recipes, tips on eating out, buying things at the market, common myths and misconceptions, and more. You also don’t have to wait till January to do it. • http://www.pcrm.org/kickstartHome is the website for the 21-day Kickstart through the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. The 21-day meal plan is both a guide and a challenge. There’s also a community forum to provide support. • https://www.peta.org/living/food/free-veganstarter-kit/ is the site for the PETA Vegan Starter Kit. The homesite is a wealth of information on advocacy, beauty, food, and more. The starter kit is well-designed and easy to use. • http://www.30dayveganchallenge.com is an actual course from acclaimed vegan cookbook author and personality, Colleen PatrickGoudreau. Although it costs money, it’s one of the more complete guides to help you through a challenge. There is an accompanying book as well. One great thing about a challenge is that it’s a finite amount of time, and that makes things feel much more achievable. The best challenges are the ones that are just long enough to instill good habits while also providing enough time for actual results (21-30 days). The included recipes in challenges are meant to provide you a wealth of diverse foods rich in colors and flavors without being intimidating. Some people don’t need guides and just want food. If you feel that way, then another option is to have a meal delivery service help you out. Here are just three of the options available to the US (double check delivery areas covered). In general, services like this send you refrigerated or frozen meals, and you just need to warm them up. Prices per meal vary but are more affordable the more you purchase.

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• https://www.veestro.com/collections/ kickstart, Veestro is a service that offers meal packs, a la carte items, juices, and weight loss plans. They deliver to all 50 states. When you do meal packs, the per meal cost drops, and they have a diverse menu of items. • http://www.veginout.com, Vegin’ Out began as a delivery service in Southern California but has expanded to nationwide. Led by Executive Chef Brian Patton (AKA the Sexy Vegan), they have a set menu that changes each week that ships out. Discounts are given to subscriptions. • https://www.plantpurenation.com/collections/ foods, PlantPure Nation is quickly growing into a larger movement beyond the movie. Started by the work of T. Colin Campbell and his son Nelson (interviewed in this issue), the PlantPure Foods is a mail-order service of meals and a la carte items that focus on a whole foods plantbased diet. They ship to 48 states. If you like cooking and just want to have ingredients, instructions, and encouragement, then there’s always Purple Carrot. It’s like Blue Apron for vegans. https://www.purplecarrot. com. In their own words, “At Purple Carrot we empower you to cook delicious plant-based meals that are good for you and good for the planet.” They have a few different options that change, depending on how many people you need to feed and how many unique meals you want to create. They also have an option for Performance Meals. What to Expect Your body will go through changes. In theory, if you’re a chips and soda junkie vegan, those changes may not be for the better. That said, you may notice your body functions changing. Some people new to eating more fruits, vegetables, grains, and legumes notice increased regularity in their bowels, more gas, and initial discomfort. Don’t worry, this happens when you have more fiber and you’re not used to it. Your body will adapt. Try to chew your food more, eat smaller meals, and consume more frequent snacks. You’ll be fine. Some people new to plant-based eating say they don’t feel as full. Honestly, our mind will play tricks on us. We sometimes equate the heaviness of eating meat and dairy with fullness. It’s something that your body will adapt to, but in the meantime, you can always eat more nuts or other concentrated protein sources for snacks between meals. In addition to physical changes, you’re going to have a lot of questions… both in your own head and from other people. You’re going to be in situations where choosing to be vegan may seem harder (like family celebrations or eating out). Don’t worry. There are definitely ways

to make things easier. We’ll discuss some tips below. First of all, try not to get annoyed by all the times you will be asked where you get your protein… or your iron… or your fill-in-theblank-nutrient. When you go vegan, everyone and their grandma is suddenly a nutritionist… and they never actually understand that eating meat is absolutely no guarantee that they’re getting all the nutrients their body needs, while they ignore the often vast amounts of fat and cholesterol that come with most meat and dairy choices. Our bodies need both macronutrients (proteins, carbohydrates, fats) as well as micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, trace elements, phytochemicals, and antioxidants essential for good health).

intake does not equate to more muscle. If that were the case he who consumes more protein would have bigger muscles.” To learn more about the different macro and micronutrients, and where to find them in a vegan diet, Simple Happy Kitchen has some colorful posters and resources that are great for anyone looking for a balanced diet. https:// www.simplehappykitchen.com And now, back to eating out and social gatherings… Other than the nutritional questions, one of the most common queries is what you can eat when you travel or go out with friends. It’s amazing how many resources are available to people who want to eat plant-based now. Here are a few of the most useful…

The protein myth is something that vegans are asked about a LOT, but if you know some basic nutrition, you know vegans with diverse choices in food get more than they need of both macro and micronutrients. Just for reference, the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) for protein is a mere 0.36 grams per pound for people with mild amounts of activity. That’s per day. For someone who is about 150 pounds, that’s only 54 grams… less than 2 ounces. Even moderately active and very active people don’t need more than 2x to 3x that amount. If you’re getting 10-25% of your caloric intake from protein, you’re fine. And you don’t even need concentrated protein sources like tofu, beans, nuts, or seeds. You can get protein from the different amino acids that make up proteins. These can be found in leafy greens like kale and spinach just to name a few. When you look at rhinos, gorillas, and elephants, you see that none of them focus on concentrated proteins, and their plant-based diets haven’t produced scrawny malnourished bodies.

• https://www.happycow.net, Happy Cow is a website and app that finds all the vegan, vegetarian, and veg-friendly restaurants, markets, and more by location. The app works off of geo-location, so it’s really easy. This is my number one go to app when I travel. We rely on Happy Cow, and its community to help us locate, and select places to eat.

Even hardcore athletes don’t have to worry. Whether muscle-building, developing endurance, or everything in-between, the world is full of vegan athletes at the top of their craft that include people like David Carter (former NFL player known as The 300 Pound Vegan), Brendan Brazier (former endurance athlete and founder of the Vega line of products), John Lewis (athlete also known as the BadAssVegan and founder of VeganSmart line of products), Tia Blanco (pro surfer ranked within top 50 in the world), and Scott Jurek (named one of the greatest runners of all time)… just to name a few. None of these athletes overly concern themselves with protein, and they have seen amazing results in their health, athletic performance, and recovery. Will Tucker, America’s Vegan Trainer ™ and a bodybuilding champion says, “Building muscle is an adaptive response to resistance training. Higher protein

• http://www.barnivore.com - If you’re into beer or wine, then I have some bad and good news for you. The bad news is that many beers and wines are not vegan. They use gelling agents that come from animals. The good news is that Barnivore is here for you. This website is great for helping you get your veg-friendly drink on!

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• http://www.veganxpress.com, VeganXpress is an app that displays what’s vegan at all the big chain restaurants and fast food establishments across the nation. This is great for those of you who are stuck in a large group and still want to eat in addition to socialize. • http://isitvegan.net - Is it Vegan is a mobile tool that works by barcode or manual input. It lets you know what products are and aren’t vegan. It’s sometimes a little hit or miss, and the ads can be annoying, but it’s a great tool for choosing the right veg-friendly Oreos, puff pastry, breakfast cereal, and more.

No matter what you decide, just know that the more you move towards a plant-based life, the bigger the impact on your health, animal welfare, and the planet. Be willing to try it, learn, and grow. Congratulations on taking this first important step, and best of luck in moving forward. I leave you with some additional resources below. About Ted Lai From humble beginnings as a four-year-old making peanut butter and pickle sandwiches to

his current work starting a food business and sharing meals with friends, family, and at special events, Ted understands the power of food in life. A vegan father of a plant-based family, Ted is known best on social media as @WokWildside and also hosts the @VeganMacGyver show, where he demonstrates how easily vegan can be by cooking in a hotel room with an iron, a coffee maker, a blow dryer, and an ice bucket. His biggest venture is Plant Alchemy, a small-batch vegan cheese, seitan, and plant-based protein-substitute business in Southern California. Look for @EatPlantAlchemy on Instagram. Additional Resources Cooking http://veganyackattack.com http://www.onegreenplanet.org/channel/vegan-recipe/ http://www.veganbaking.net http://www.isachandra.com/recipes/ Essential Cookbooks Vegan Bowl Attack by Jackie Sobon http://amzn.to/2rh7beh Vegan Brunch by Isa Chandra Moskowitz http://amzn.to/2mRnwBL

http://www.veganbodybuilding.com News and Information http://vegnews.com https://nutritionfacts.org https://www.truthordrought.com http://www.mercyforanimals.org/index Shopping http://www.veganessentials.com https://www.rabbitfoodgrocery.com https://vegancuts.com YouTube Channels

Fashion https://cowhugger.com https://nicorashoes.com https://www.herbivoreclothing.com https://doshi.shop

Maryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Test Kitchen https://www.youtube.com/user/marystestkitchen

Fitness http://www.nomeatathlete.com

Happy Healthy Vegan https://www.youtube.com/user/HappyHealthyVegan

hot for food https://www.youtube.com/user/hotforfoodblog

Uncle Jam Wants You! We are looking for motivated, Self-starting ad sales people Call 909-867-5605 Or email philyeh@mac.com Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 45, #108 2018

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 45, #108 2018

Cano continued from page 23... lot of times, and there are a lot of his paintings that were done in jail. You see photos of him in his cell with an easel and his paints. He would finish a canvas, hand it to the guards, then they would hand him another canvas. I was just struck so hard by his color, by his lines, by his subject matter--the size and scope of these things. What grabbed me the most was the commitment to the surface. I walked in wanting to be a contributor to Heavy Metal Magazine, and I walked out and said, ‘Yeah, I want to be a painter.’ And I’ve never been the same since. I went home, and I had this art bin full of stuff I’d collected over the years. I wanted to be a painter, but I didn’t know how to paint! So I just started putting stuff on surfaces, and eventually I made a lot of what you could call urban sculpture out of wood, broken glass, nails, whatever I could find. My explorations really paid off, to the point that I was named Fine Arts Student of the Year at Rio Hondo in ’87. I was part of an honors exhibit that year, and things really started to blossom from there. Within two years I was accepted to Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. I put together a portfolio that was impressive enough for them to accept me. I went there from ’89 to ’92, and that’s when I first discovered oil paints. I had been doing some acrylic painting and the sculptures with found materials, but I’d never done any oil. I knew a little about it because in all the museum listings you see ‘Oil on Canvas’, ‘Oil on Canvas’, ‘Oil on Canvas’. I figured it had to be important, maybe I should try to get good at it.” Despite the acclaim he received at Rio Hondo, any aspirations Cano had of an easy ride in Pasadena were quickly stomped down by his instructors and the rigorous curriculum. “My first semester at Art Center was mostly trying to get acclimated to the schedule and the volume of work that they give you. I learned a lot in the first term, but I was frustrated because I knew I wasn’t up to the kind of standards I thought they had. I stuck with it, got through it, and my second term was my first oil painting experience. To the uninitiated, it looks like paint, it smells funnier than it should, but you figure it’s the same thing, right? Nope. It’s colored mud to those who have never used it before, and that’s the way my paintings turned out to be. They were really, really bad. I was in school at the same time as some enormously talented painters, and they went on to amazing things. Alex Schaefer started there the same time I did. He had a natural gift for oil painting; he took off just like that. I had no such gift. I was really struggling, and it’s no exaggeration for me to say that I was the worst painter in my class. I tried and tried and tried, and I decided

that I could either embarrass myself or I could get better. I decided to get better. Our next assignment came from Peter Liashkov. It could be any subject matter, and we could bring it in and get it evaluated. Instead of one, I did two or sometimes three. They weren’t always good, but I got better. Near the end of the fourteen-week class Liashkov came to me and said, in his very pronounced Russian accent, ‘You are not very good. However, you have heart and you try harder than anybody. I have given you the only A in the class.’ I was blown away and honored because here I am, probably the worst technical painter in the class, but I had output and I made effort. He recognized that, and now I thought ‘Wow, I’ve got to try really hard to deserve that A.’ I spent the rest of my time there doing the Art Center thing: getting better at illustration, which was my major, and trying to get better at oil painting, which was still very difficult for me. There was a person who sued Art Center because the workload was so great, and the criticism was so intense, he actually suffered a heart attack in class. They had to tone it down a little bit because their method of critiquing was basically insulting you until you got better. They used to line illustrations up on the crit rail, and certain teachers were notorious for taking certain illustrations they didn’t like and putting them out in the hallway. They didn’t deserve to be addressed so they took them away. They had to change that, but when I was there it was still harsh. You got away with nothing. It wasn’t unlike the teacher in Whiplash. But it was necessary for me because I was someone who wanted discipline, and I didn’t have as much as I craved. In junior high I was the big fish in a small pond. Whatever I did, I got an A. I was in honors, and I think I did deserve that, but at the same time there was little to challenge me after a point. My teachers actually refused to take me in their classes after a while. They said, ‘You’ve done all you can here. You’ve got to go somewhere else.’ They suggested Art Center to me. I knew their reputation, and I thought, ‘I’m not going to get in there, not with my Expressionist leanings and rather naïve, radical approach to things. Turns out that I applied right when they were looking for just that--more unique approaches rather than the more polished style that they had been known for. I got lucky. I think it cost too much, but it’s an experience I wouldn’t trade for anything. Color absolutely mystified me in school. I had no idea how to use it, what the properties of it were, and so I just studied and studied and studied. And I had friends who helped. Shan Wells, who is now a cartoonist for Huffington

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Post and a fine teacher of environmental sculpture, really understood color. We would go shopping, and he would pick up a piece of fruit and ask me if the color was warm or cool. I would say so, and he would ask why. Then he would ask me about how two things combined; he would hold up an avocado next to a plum and ask me if I saw any similarities in color. I kept looking at this and that until I saw it. My teacher in color theory, the late, great Judy Crook, was the world’s foremost authority on color. Corporations across the country, and even the government, hired her to give lectures on the psychological use and perception of color and how to enhance its use to get what you want. When I found out I was getting Judy Crook I thought, ‘Well, I’m screwed.’ All I knew was the primary colors. But she took a liking to me. She also saw that I tried really hard. So at the end of the class she met with everyone and told them what she thought of their progress. She said, ‘Michael, what grade do you want? B plus or A minus?’ I was like, ‘Judy, what are you talking about?’ She said, ‘B plus or A minus?’ I said, ‘Okay, I’ll take the A minus.’ Judy said, ‘Okay. You might not deserve it now, but you’re going to. I’m going to give it to you as an impetus to keep going.’ So I kept learning how to work with color. And now I see color to a degree in my black and white. I’m learning shade and texture and subtlety as I apply color theory to pen-and-ink. I still stay in touch with a number of Art Center students and teachers. It’s not unlike the Army, where you do it together so you always have a bond. My friend Lenny Lee works for Industrial Light & Magic and does such terrific special effects. For the second Star Wars movie, George Lucas gave Lenny his own character to develop because he did such a beautiful job on the first film. He was so incredibly adept at anatomy and life drawing; Lucas brought him in to check all of the anatomical connections on every creature that was built. They had to make sense, even if they were alien. So he had to translate alien into human and check to see if this does this when this happens. That’s the caliber of classmates I had. Alex Schaefer might be, right now, the most phenomenal painter in the United States with his series of burning banks, and the plein air paintings he’s done in downtown L.A. are a lost art form that no one’s done in thirty or forty years.” Once his degree was in hand, Cano found that the marketplace was different from what he had hoped. “Eventually I graduated from Art Center in 1992 with a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Illustration. I tried illustrating for a year, and I just hated it. Illustrating for a living is just awful. You’re taking other people’s orders

and they’re sort of art-directing you, sending it back and not really liking what you did. You give them what you thought they wanted, but they didn’t want that. Most people who order an illustration don’t really know what illustration is. So after about a year I said, ‘To hell with it. I’m gonna go back to the studio and get better at painting.’ In 1994 I decided I was going to paint every day. Again, I had that same struggle where they were slightly provocative, but they weren’t that good. That first year I promised myself that I would finish fifty paintings that year. I ended up doing a hundred and thirty-eight. A lot of them don’t exist anymore because they were just for practice and I ended up painting over them. But some of them still do, and I look at them and I can see where the beginnings lie. I keep those around so I can remind myself of how I started. And I’ve been doing it ever since. It’s something that I decided to stick with. I don’t do a lot of oil painting anymore because I live in a house with my wife and two cats, and the smell isn’t very good for them. So I went to acrylic and then back to pen-and-ink which, as I mentioned, was my first love. It’s wonderful because it takes me back to my original inspiration. After Art Center I needed to figure out: did I want to be part of the art world, or part of the illustration world? I decided that I just wanted to be part of the world. There’s a line in Basquiat, the film by Julian Schnabel; Willem Dafoe informs Basquiat that ‘I’m an artist, too. I’m a sculptor… Yeah, I just turned forty last year, and you know what? I’m glad I never got discovered, man. It’s given me time to develop.’ I couldn’t agree with that more. I’ve had time to develop. I’ve had my successes. I’ve had artwork on album covers that sold a million copies. I’ve had maybe thirty exhibits. I’ve been interviewed for magazines. I was in a highly acclaimed documentary on Charles Bukowski (John Dullahan’s Bukowski: Born Into This) that was in the top ten films at Sundance that year. The portrait of Bukowski that I did that got me into this documentary was praised by Linda Bukowski, Charles’ widow, as the best piece of art to describe her husband’s soul and humanity that she had ever seen. My painting! In fact, I offered to give it to her and she wouldn’t take it. She said, ‘No, keep it and make as much money off it as you can.’ John Dullahan was a copywriter for Apple and some other companies. He really didn’t like it, and one day he suffered a mild heart attack due to the amount of freelance work he was getting. While he was in the hospital, someone gave him a copy of Post Office by Bukowski because it was an easy read. So he read it, and he likened himself to Bukowski as a guy who did what he had to do to survive.

John spent seven years making this documentary. What he would do was book some copywriting jobs for three or four months, take that money and fund this portion of the film, and then go back to copywriting, make some more money, because he didn’t want anyone telling him how to make the film. He said, ‘If I accept money, I have to accept advice.’ So he did it all on his own, and when word got out that a Bukowski film was being made, there was some talk because no one had been authorized to make a film. Linda denied everybody after Charles died. When she heard from John and he told her the story about the heart attack and the hospital, she said, ‘You know what? You’ve got guts. Charles would have liked you.’ So she gave him permission, and gave him access to personal film footage, correspondence, and introduced him to people like Charles’ editor, old girlfriends, people like Bono and Sean Penn and Tom Waits. They all came on board happily. At the time I was working for Bug Music Publishing, and we had a lot of artists who were influenced by Bukowski and loved him. I introduced a lot of those artists and writers to John, and they didn’t make the cut. In fact, I’m the only guy in the film who isn’t either a celebrity or a personal friend of the Bukowskis. The editor, Victor Livingston, who also edited the documentary on Robert Crumb, saw my footage and said, ‘You have to leave this guy in. He’s the most interesting one that you’ve got. Better leave him in.’ John was like, ‘Are you sure? I mean, I like him, but everyone else is famous or connected…’ ‘No, leave him in.’ About once a year, at least, I’ll get approached by someone on Facebook or in person who says, ‘Hey, aren’t you in that Bukowski film?’ So I just try to live my life that way, where the things I care about are reflected in my artistic pursuits.” Nothing has had a greater impact on Cano’s outlook and art than his beloved wife, Patsy Faragher. Her family is practically Redlands royalty, one of the most beloved artistic clans the town has produced. The Faragher Brothers band was a fixture of the Inland Empire music scene in the 1970s, and all of the siblings have continued to pursue the arts at some level or another. Brother Davey was the bassist in the hugely successful rock band Cracker and has since worked with Elvis Costello and John Hiatt. Eldest brother John is a renowned history professor at Yale University and the author of Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles among other works. Tommy was featured on the Stayin’ Alive soundtrack; Danny has written music for television sitcoms and served as backup singer on innumerable hit albums. Siblings Pammy and Marty also maintain musical activities. Patsy sings as well, but she has devoted her life to teaching art at the high school level.

“It’s no coincidence that my wife, the most wonderful, beautiful human in the world, is also an art teacher. We met at an art reception of my paintings. Around November 2009 I went on Facebook and I saw a lot of insightful, intelligent comments on this thread from (writer and music journalist) Mikal Gilmore. I put one in, and it was apparently insightful and clever enough for Patsy Faragher to notice. She clicked on my icon, she liked my paintings and what I had to say, so she sent me a friend request. I accepted because, even though she didn’t put a lot of personal pictures up on Facebook, what I did see was absolutely stunning. Everything else she put up was extremely intriguing and artistic, so of course I wanted to be her friend. A couple of weeks later, she happened to be house-sitting for her daughter and son-in-law and she was out of school for the holidays. She commented on a painting I had put up or a certain poem that I wrote, and we set up this beautiful correspondence. On February 6th, 2010, I was having an opening reception with some paintings I had done in the prior year. I invited her through Facebook, and I had some glimmer of what she looked like. For the first hour I was greeting my guests, saying hello, and then she tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Michael, I’m…’ I turned around and said, ‘You’re Patsy!’ And that was it. I didn’t leave her side the rest of the night. I really found her fascinating and beautiful, I introduced her to all my friends, and when I performed with my band at the end, she was right at the side of the stage taking pictures. It really was love at first sight. Within three weeks we were dating.” The Faragher family has warmly embraced Cano as part of their tight-knit clan. “The family I married into is astounding. I feel a real, natural collaboration with these folks. They’re just so welcoming. Today is actually Davey’s birthday but we’re having a party on Sunday. I haven’t seen him in a while because he still lives in L.A. This family is the kind that, when you go a while without seeing them, when you see them again it’s just like you saw them last week. We have Jimmy and Pammy over for dinner as much as possible because they live right here in Redlands. I told them the last time, ‘The wonderful thing about the Faraghers is that within thirty or forty seconds of everyone getting in the same place, there’s always outrageous laughter.’ We don’t need any music, we don’t take any pictures at these things because we just enjoy each other’s company so much. They’re a family of eight siblings, and to get along as well as they do is remarkable.” Deciding to leave urban L.A. for the peacefulness of life in his wife’s small hometown was a pretty easy choice for Cano. “I was an Angeleno for fifty-five years. (Moving to Redlands) has

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been culture shock, but only in the best way. I grew up in El Monte, which is a suburb of L.A., but it’s really East East Los Angeles. From there I moved to Eagle Rock so I could go to Art Center, then I moved back to El Monte for economic reasons. From there I met Patsy and moved into her apartment in the area of Wilshire and La Brea. So I’ve been around both sides of L.A. Of course I have a deep love for it, but at this point I also have a deep resentment for it because it’s just become so mean, so rude, so self-important and expensive and crowded and loud. Every day was a struggle. Just to go to Trader Joe’s I had to be ready for a fight every single day because someone’s going to turn right in front of you or something. They don’t care if you have the right of way. And it was the same inside the stores; people would push you with their carts because they wanted to be first. It was a constant struggle. Patsy was working in Upland at the time, so she would commute from L.A. It was at least an hour, and it was a very treacherous hour. She would get home, and for the first halfhour after she got in the door she would tell me about all of the crazy drivers she ran into and the confrontations she got into. Every single day! So a couple of years ago our little granddaughter Dahlia was born, and Patsy had to go stay with Dahlia and her mom because our son-in-law works for JPL and had to travel to Florida. While they were there, Becky, my honorary daughter, said she would love it if we could live closer. They didn’t like bringing the baby to where we were in L.A. because there was too much traffic, too much danger of being hit in a crosswalk, and too loud. She really didn’t want to bring the baby where we were, so could we move someplace a little more sedate and quieter? The ideal neighborhood would have been Altadena, but the prices were just outrageous. So Patsy came to me and asked what I thought about moving to Redlands. She thought I would object to it because I’d been an L.A. boy for so long. I said, ‘When do we leave?’ I was so ready to get out and go to Redlands. I had already been here for holidays because Pammy or Jimmy would have the family over to their house for holiday gatherings. They would all travel great distances to come together here, and I loved it because it was so pretty and so quiet, so park-filled and green, and the tallest building is seven stories. In L.A. everything is going straight to the sky so you can’t even see anything. It took a while because it was right when Patsy was going back to school after summer break, so we had to wait until that semester was over. We spent that summer looking in earnest, and over the Fourth of July weekend we were sitting in front of a house over by my brother-in-law Jimmy’s house. It was a Sunday and the realtor had forgotten he had an appointment. He texted

me and apologized and said he would be there as soon as he could. So while we’re sitting there waiting for this realtor to get there, I get a text from a guy I hadn’t heard from in a couple of years, a comedian named Bruce Jingles. He plays around Southern California quite a bit. I’ve known Bruce for a long time, and he texted me while we were waiting for this realtor. I told him what we were doing, and he said, ‘You need a realtor? I know a great realtor in this area.’ So he sent me this number for a realtor named Irene. I called her the next day, and damned if she didn’t get us a house. That was July 3rd, and by July 15th we had a house. Not just a house, but the house. Three bedrooms, beautiful back yard, all the parking we want. I walk over to Redlands Boulevard. I’ve had paintings at three galleries so far.” Cano’s assimilation into Redlands’ burgeoning art scene has also been fairly smooth. “Another great thing about Redlands is the art community and how welcoming they are. Trying to be part of the L.A. art scene is really like spitting in the ocean. It’s already settled as to who’s in and who’s not. And then you have the race factor come in, being considered a Chicano artist, which a lot of people consider me to be, except for other Chicano artists. I’m not Chicano enough for them, but I’m too Chicano for the mainstream. And then there are the conceptual artists who don’t even like art. They just like the concepts. So I was a man without a country in L.A. as far as the art world. After a few years I just stopped trying, so I just worked for the sake of working; which is the same as I do now, but it’s appreciated more here in Redlands. They don’t judge, they don’t ask you to fit into certain criteria. It’s more important to have passion and make what you do beautiful. That’s what I’ve been trying to do.” Patsy’s love began the transformation of Michael’s outlook, but a little bundle of joy sealed the deal. “My artwork has changed drastically since we found out about our granddaughter. My art before was pretty isolated. My characters against the world. It had a lot to do with my childhood, the type of environment I grew up in, and my reactions to such. Once we found out we were going to have a granddaughter, all of a sudden my perceptions started to change. I started noticing things that were just sort of peripheral before. I look for every bird in the sky. Before I would hear one and be like, ‘Oh, a bird.’ Now I’m like, ‘Where is it? What breed is it? Oh, there he is! Isn’t he beautiful?’ I started to look at nature in a way that I hadn’t for a while because I was so urbanized. I found that I couldn’t do what I had done before, with the sharp, angular, insulated, friend-of-loneliness type of thing. I started working more with nature: birds, animals, and just things of beauty. And I’ve returned to

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 45, #108 2018

pen-and-ink, which is the only thing that I’ve ever naturally been good at. I ignored it for the longest time because I wanted to get better at painting. I’m happy to be on the path I’m on now. When I was twenty-five I saw this Siqueiros thing and everything blew up. At thirty-two I graduated Art Center, spent a lot of years struggling with art and personal relationships, and at forty-eight and eleven months I met Patsy Faragher. My life has never been the same since, and she saved it in so many ways. I can never, ever thank her enough, but I don’t have to because she’s my wife, so I get to thank her every day by being a good husband to her. And I have a wonderful family to be part of. As much as I love art, if I had to make a choice between art and Patsy, the choice would be simple. It’s Patsy. She is the art. She’s the finest painting I’ve ever been involved with, and I couldn’t thank her more for this chance to be alive. I feel totally alive when I see my grandbaby running towards me and she wants to play with G-pa. To wake up every morning next to the most beautiful woman in the world, to make her coffee and get her breakfast, prepare her lunch and say goodbye for the day, and then I can make her dinner and massage her feet while we watch a movie. And then to be able to create art in the middle, when our whole life is art? How wonderful. And you can see all of that reflected in the art now. My wife teaches art at Orangewood High School now. For eleven years she commuted from L.A. to Upland, and now she has a fiveminute commute. In L.A. we had to pay a hundred dollars a year for permit parking, and I would go out five minutes before she got home, find her a spot and wave her in. When we moved to Redlands I told my L.A. friends we were going to have a parking party. ‘Yeah, just come out and park! You can park, sit in your car for a while, move across the street and park there, too.’ I’m also a part-time tutor in the literacy program at the Smiley Library. I work with adults who need some help with reading and comprehension. So that’s another thing that Redlands has brought out of me. In L.A. it was every man for himself; in Redlands, everybody helps. So I was walking back from the library and I hear someone call out, ‘Hey, Michael Cano!’ I’m thinking, ‘I just got here. How could anybody know me?’ It was a guy named Tony, one of my Facebook friends. We’re talking in front of this salon, A Cut Above, and the guy who owns it comes out to see what’s taking his friend so long. My friend introduces us, ‘This is my Facebook friend, Michael Cano.’ The salon guy says, ‘Oh, Michael Cano? You’re married

to Patsy Faragher! I know her and her brothers really well.’ So right there I made two friends, and I’ve been in town for six days. I asked about the gallery next door (Threshold), and he said, ‘Yeah, a young guy took it over. He’s really cool; you should go meet him.’ So I went in and introduced myself to Aeron Brown and made a connection there, too. Over the last year we were trying to find a way for me to get into the gallery, and we finally did. There was an opening this month, I took it, and I’ll be in there for three months, each month with a different set of paintings.” The birds of suburbia have become a primary muse for Cano now. “In L.A. we had bird feeders outside the window, but everything is so congested that we only ever got a few birds. Here in Redlands I have a hummingbird feeder just outside the window at the desk where I work,

and we’ve got another one in the back, plus we spread seed and peanuts out for the blue jays. They’ve come to expect it, and if I’m not out there by a certain time that blue jay is yelling at me. And we actually have a hummingbird who greets us! We were sitting out on the patio the other day, and this hummingbird buzzes over and looks at me, then buzzes over and looks at Patsy, and goes back to the feeder. We have these regular hummingbirds that come to the feeder out front, and they look at me when they eat. They almost nod in thanks when they’re done. And then we have two cats, Fayla and Frida. They really are our children. They’re wonderful creatures that really help me recognize beauty in my life. They wait at the door when we come home, and they’re excited to see us. Everything I do now is inspired by beauty.”

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 45, #108 2018

Editorial continued from page 3.

and the other is of the giant redwoods in Northern California. When I look at these pictures my mind immediately takes me to a time and place when I was there.

Gumby, Pokey and The Clokeys with Phil Yeh, Photo courtesy of Chris Ng

I was living in Long Beach in 1976. We had changed the name of Uncle Jam which we started at Cal State University Long Beach in 1973. My partners thought we should change the name of the paper to reflect the arts and our art gallery which we opened in 1976. Greg would occasionally stop by and visit me at the Cobblestone Gallery. We had been friends in Los Alamitos High School where I graduated in 1972; Greg was a year behind me. We both hung out in the art rooms, Greg in the pottery room and me in the illustration and film side of creativity. I remember inviting Greg to the Griffin interview. Tom Luth went along as the photographer. We didn’t see each often over the decades but I remember Greg calling me with an idea for a new art magazine that he was starting with the painter Robert Williams. That magazine was called Juxtapoz and it became the best-selling art magazine in the world. I visited him in his Copro/ Nason Gallery and we saw each other at a Van’s signing in Los Angeles with Robert Williams a few years ago. What I always remembered about Greg was his enthusiasm. Sheer joy. Greg brought so many young people into the arts. His spirit definitely will go on. In our Summer 2015 #105 edition of Uncle Jam, we had a cover story on the

fascinating career of watercolorist Joanna Mersereau (1928-2017). We had come to know her and her work at the annual Art for Heaven’s Sake show in Redland’s United Church of Christ. We sat down for an extensive talk about her work. Joanna’s watercolors reflected her unique way of

seeing from landscapes around the world to portraits of people. We own a small original seascape and two giclée prints. One is a print of La Purisma Mission in Lompoc, where I lived for many years

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 45, #108 2018

I was in shock when Joe Clokey’s (19612018) wife Joan emailed me with the news of her husband’s sudden death. In that same edition of Uncle Jam #105, my friend Bob Burden wrote a nice introduction to Art Clokey and Gumby. Bob had arranged for us to share our booth with Art’s son Joe Clokey that year in San Diego for the big comic con. We had interviewed Art, the creator of Gumby, back in 1986. It was one of the most memorable interviews that we have ever done. Art passed away in 2010 and Bob explained that Joe and his wife Joan were going to pump some new life into this timeless character. We ran a new introduction by Bob and then reran the 1986 interview with Art. I was delighted when I met Joe and Joan and Joe’s kids at San Diego Comic Con 2015. They introduced themselves to fans of all ages and you could see why Joe always said he was Gumby’s little brother. Joe was so excited about meeting fans and was especially grateful when I introduced him to a number of my artist friends. They of course knew Gumby. I asked Joan what I should say about her husband and she referred me to the brand new book Gumby Imagined which tells the entire story of the creation of Gumby. And there is a lot more than meets the eye. Gumby had a very spiritual beginning and I think that reading this book will tell you much more about the reasons why. You will also learn about Joe’s love of the environment and his work on that subject. But most importantly, you will learn about the true essence of Gumby. Love is what Art was creating when he created Gumby and that has translated into the work that his son Joe was all about. I know his spirit continues. Barbara Bush (1925-2018) was the second noted person to endorse our Cartoonists Across America Tour in 1985. Debra Roberts had sent out a number of letters asking for endorsements of this crazy idea that I created after interviewing Wally “Famous” Amos in 1985. I believed that cartoonists could create more awareness to the critical issue of reading. The first person to call our office and speak to

Debra was Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts and one of the most famous cartoonists on this planet. A few days later, we received a nice letter from the Vice-President’s office of Mrs. Bush. She thought the idea of a tour promoting literacy using cartoons was a fine idea. And once her husband was elected President, she arranged for our Cartoonists Across America band to paint a mural on foam core in the Library of Congress. Mary Beth Roberts handled the details of this event with only a few weeks’ notice. When Barbara Bush passed away, there was a lot of news coverage. Several people pointed out that they used footage from our event in a montage about her life. My life was changed significantly from knowing Barbara Bush. Before we even did our first event on our national tour in the spring of 1986, we got a call from Mrs. Bush’s office asking if I would please fill in for her in delivering a speech in Columbus, Ohio. So as the guys were off in a van driving to Denver (cartoonists RC Williams, Leigh Rubin and Wally Richard Dinges, Phil Yeh, Barbara Bush, Davis), I flew to M. B. Roberts, and Louise King Ohio. As I recall, the key question before my speech was if my father was coming too. I was so young in those days and judging from the audience of seniors, they expected someone older. But the speech went over great and we were booked to speak at the Adult Continuing Education National Convention in Miami. Barbara Bush would write three introductions to my books. I am a lifelong Democrat but literacy is not a partisan issue. She totally agreed with me when I joked about us sharing different party loyalties but that it didn’t matter. Another time, when she honored us in The White House for our work promoting literacy let’s just say it wasn’t my best dressed day but after the reception, they asked me upstairs to her private office. They had my Reading Dinosaurs poster in a frame and were removing it so that I could sign it. Barbara Bush was the real deal. She really believed in the power of reading.

“Cattle Drive” by Reynold Brown

Capturing Your Vision An accurate reproduction of your original work of art is my top priority. Whether your goal is an online portfolio, press-ready files, or fine art printing, I understand the unique challenges of fine art copy work and strive for the highest quality.

gene sasse photography 1334 north benson avenue, suite d, upland, ca 91786 909-941-3993 | gene@genesasse.com www.genesasse.com | www.sassebooks.com “Electric Cowboys” by Greg Gilbert

This may be the last issue of Uncle Jam for a while. My wife Linda pretty much sells the ads and keeps the copy coming in. My youngest son told me that print was dead in 2009. We started Uncle Jam again as a quarterly in 2010 after a couple decades off. We called our old friend Ray Bradbury for the first interview. Ray had written us back in 1975 to see if we would run his poetry! Now, Ray is gone, too. But his words and his ideas are still very much alive and I believe that there will always be a need for the printed page. You can find back issues of Uncle Jam online at issuu.com or order hard copies at wingedtiger.com ~ Phil Yeh Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 45, #108 2018

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Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 45, #108 2018

Printmaking in Florence continued from page 11.

purchase leather bags and jackets, and grab some pasta and gelato along the way; all in the same afternoon. I can’t tell you how many people have told me that they’ve visited Florence, for a day! Visiting the city as an artist one must seek out the quiet pockets and the places in between the noisy crowds. And that is very possible if you take the time and slow yourself down, to proceed with clear intention. If you ask, Florence will reveal herself to you. There’s too much to share in one brief article. My intention here is to give you a taste of how Florence has affected and deepened my art-making and the way I experience the world. This might be a first course with a continuation of the meal served in subsequent articles. It seems appropriate to use the metaphor of food as eating is certainly a popular pastime in Italy. Food is fresh and delicious and another art in itself. Every aspect of life here is art of one form or another. One cannot spend time here and not be changed in some way. I came back from my first visit to Florence changed in ways I was not aware of. I am bolder. I find myself dressing differently. I’ve been experimenting with sculpture and using paper and other materials in ways that never occurred to me previously. I’ve been studying the Italian language and memorizing Dante’s Inferno in its original form. I feel more alive and authentic than ever before, and I have no explanation for this except that Florence has somehow changed me. It’s so much more than a place. It’s an intense creative energy. Having said this, I firmly believe that everything that we do and every place we visit changes us, if we allow it. We can discover greater depth of being in unexpected circumstances. We must pay attention and be consciously aware in order to realize this benefit. This is our task in life: to truly experience our moments wherever we are and allow the world to form as well as inform us. ~ www.vanornumworks.com

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 45, #1082018 2018 Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 45, #108

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San Pedro Unframed 12” x 16” giclee print. Limited Edition of 200 Signed and numbered by the artist, $200 each. Shipped flat. Phil Yeh’s watercolors and prints are on display at Phil Yeh Fine Art inside the Original McDonald’s Museum 1398 N E St, San Bernardino, CA 92405 Order online from www.philyehfineart.com or philyeh@mac.com

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 45, #108 2018

Dream City Dream City (San Diego), Unframed 12” x 16” giclee print. Limited Edition of 200 Signed and numbered by the artist, $200 each. Shipped flat. Phil Yeh’s watercolors and prints are on display at Phil Yeh Fine Art inside the Original McDonald’s Museum 1398 N E St, San Bernardino, CA 92405 Order online from www.philyehfineart.com or philyeh@mac.com Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 45, #108 2018

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