Autumn: Browse The Strips

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Lynn's Comments: My dad made us a leaf press and we used it a lot. After we left home, my mom continued to use it for the 4-leaf clovers she found. She would place the dried leaves between two sheets of sticky acetate and laminate them; then she'd put them into cards and letters--sending a bit of luck along with her regards. To this day, I have a box of her 4-leaf clovers. They are too precious now to send.

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Lynn's Comments: My friend Carolyn Sadowska (a professional comedienne who's known for her comic impressions of Her Majesty the Queen) and coincidentally Aaron's Grade 1 Teacher once told me that our monarch ate bacon with her fingers, which would render this approved mealtime etiquette. I wondered, then, how she would tackle a cob of corn. Food for thought.

Sunday, November 9, 2014

Lynn's Comments: Our house in Corbeil was hidden in quite a dense forest, so leaves and clippings could easily be tossed into the woods or piled somewhere for compost. Our house in Dundas, though (on which the Pattersons' house was based), was in a busy, upscale neighbourhood, where leaves had to be piled, pushed into bags, and left for city workers to remove. After a discussion about the waste we made with plastic bags, I decided to take a load of leaves to the dump myself, but in the back of the car, bagless. I only did this once. It was a nuisance, a mess, and created a lot of work!

Saturday, October 10, 2015

Lynn's Comments: We once owned the full set of The Encyclopaedia Britannica. I bought this enormous set of books when we lived in tiny Lynn Lake, Manitoba. It was an arctic community into which you really had to fly. At the time, the population wasn't much more than 1200. There was only one radio station, there was no library, and the newspaper came a day late. Other than folks selling things like Avon, there were no door-to-door salespeople--it was just too far to go! When a young Britannica salesman came to our door, I was surprised. I invited him in. I had been thinking that in this area some encyclopaedias would be a great investment. He started to rattle off his pitch, but I stopped him and said it was OK! I was going to buy the whole set! He looked me in the eye in absolute disbelief. "Lady," he said, "I have flown to just about every small community in northern Manitoba, and you are my very first sale!"

Monday, October 19, 2015

Lynn's Comments: Friends of ours held a pumpkin carving contest every year on the porch of their big North Bay home. There were pumpkins of all colours, shapes and sizes, and the resulting array of faces and pumpkin personalities, which decorated their outdoor staircase, was something we'll always remember.

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Lynn's Comments: This scenario is from a Little Lulu cartoon I read as a kid. Little Lulu had found a potato which looked exactly like her friend Tubby. When he found out, he went crazy and chased her all over town to get it. The story line ended with him eating the raw potato. I thought it was hilarious! Funny--the things you remember.

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Lynn's Comments: I had such an island. I don't know if it was the story of Peter Pan or a project my mom gave us to do, but I had an imaginary island, and it was real.

One rainy North Vancouver day, my mom mixed up a paste using flour and water (and some other things), cut out flat cardboard bases, and helped my brother and me form an island in the middle of each one. We had to make mountains and bays, and when the paste was dry and hard, we coloured our islands with poster paint.

I took this project seriously. The ocean around my island was the deepest blue-green. There was a sandy beach in a rocky horseshoe-shaped bay. There was a forested mountain, and a jungle where I could pick tropical fruit. As I painted my island, I thought about how I got there and what I had to work with. A shipwreck was part of my story, of course, and I built an imaginary shack out of the remnants of a washed-up hull. I had a garden and I made a path to the mountaintop where I could watch for ships. Sometimes, a sailor or a passenger would be washed up on my shore and I would have imaginary adventures with this visitor. The visitors never stayed for long. It was, after all, my private imaginary space.

I daydreamed about this island all the time. When I was being bullied, I went to my island. When I was in trouble (sometimes for being a bully!), I went to my island. If I had a crush on a boy, he might be washed up on the island. Sometimes if a teacher was particularly nice, she might appear there, too. This fantasy went on until I was in high school! Even when I was well beyond childhood, I'd still find myself thinking, "You are allowed on my island." Or, "You are NOT allowed on my island!" It was a refuge. I was safe there. I had supreme control. There were no rainy days. It was a place of peace, and I think it helped me to survive some difficult times.

The island disappeared after many years--but I can still bring it into focus if I try

Sunday October 23, 2016

Lynn's Comments: When you are writing material for a comic strip or for any other dialogue, be it a stage play or even stand-up comedy, you create a situation in which there is sentiment, a reason to question, observe or pontificate. Then you write a possible exchange of views as you see here. Sometimes the exchange is within yourself, but there is always a path to the punch line. In writing with the voice of a child, I wrote a question I thought would be realistic using the right turn of phrase. With luck and a little guidance from the "muse," I got a funny response. On days when the writing goes well, you feel like a genius. On days when the writing goes badly, you feel like a jerk. The roller coaster of this job sure made life interesting!

Monday September 30, 2019

Lynn's Comments: Now that I live on the West Coast, I see these images of an Ontario winter through different lenses. I miss the beauty of the autumn leaves, the warmth and the smell of a wood fire…but I sure don't miss the snow!

Wednesday October 2, 2019

Lynn's Comments: I had a friend in North Bay who would take her zucchini door to door. She had so many growing in her garden that she didn't know what to do with them. It makes me smile now when I go to the grocery store and see tiny, meek little zucchinis for quite a price. I used to get huge ones for free!

Sunday October 13, 2019

Lynn's Comments: We had a small piece of property near our house in North Bay. Friends who were involved with a tree planting program gave us two dozen evergreen seedlings to plant—which we did, hoping to see at least some of them survive. All of the seedlings grew, and today, there is a forest on that land. Hard to believe I have lived long enough to see a forest grow!

Friday November 1, 2019

Lynn's Comments: There were times when I truly wished I was expecting another baby. To make this story real, I had to imagine myself pregnant. Seriously. All of the sentiments, all of the sensations were very real.

Sunday November 6, 2022

Lynn's Comments: A neighbour in Lynn Lake used to take in foster children. She had just accepted a little boy who had been left in a backyard. His mother knew that the people who lived there would feed him. She had left him there before. Charlotte asked me if I wanted to see a truly malnourished baby. This little one had an enlarged tummy and all the features of a starving Third World child. She told me he had to have a cookie in each hand before he could go to sleep, and that he constantly hid food in his clothing, so she always had to check the pockets and cuffs of his pants. He hid food in his bedclothes and around the house. He was like a little squirrel: making sure he would have something to eat, making a cache, preparing for winter. With this in mind, I did this drawing...knowing that my own children were lucky to be safe and cared for and fed and loved.