Todd Klein's Blog, page 359

Current Projects Update

Image © Monkey Brain, Inc. and Michael Allred

I've just updated the CURRENT PROJECTS page of my website, in case you'd like to see some small image clips and descriptions of what I'm working on.

Looking back, looking forward

We had a quiet New Year's Eve, going out to dinner at a favorite place, then watched a DVD Ellen got for Christmas (Julie & Julia). Went to bed around 10 PM. If any of our neighbors were outside making noise at midnight, I slept through it.

We've had a good year, unlike many, and feel very fortunate. Ellen doesn't love her job, but it's steady and secure. My work schedule was quite full all last year, and in these economic times I'm glad of that. As a freelancer I never know what the future will hold, but at my age (almost 60) I'm happy to still be wanted doing what I like to do.

We enjoyed a fabulous 10 day trip to Wyoming, visiting the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone, and a shorter trip to New Orleans for Neil Gaiman's birthday. I went to the San Diego con for the 18th consecutive year and had fun, as always.

Perhaps nothing has been as entertaining as our adopted cats Tigger and Leo, who kept us laughing and amused all year, even when being mischievious. Our older cat, Katie, also adopted, is hanging in there, she has some health issues, but is still getting by. This morning our local paper had an article saying the local animal shelters are full, and adoptions are down. I can't think of a better wish for everyone out there than to consider bringing an adopted pet into your home and heart. Something to think about.

Looking ahead, I've been asked to attend two comics conventions next year as a guest: SCADCon in Savannah, Georgia May 13-15, and Wizard's Philadelphia Con June 18-19. I'll probably go to San Diego again, too, though haven't committed for sure yet.

Here on the blog I'm going to attempt to produce more entries on lettering and logos if at all possible. I've already written two that will appear soon. All depends on the amount of time I have, but I will try.

In my "spare time" I've started loading music on the new iPod I got for Christmas. So far there are about 10 Christmas albums and the complete Beatles catalogue except for a scant few songs I don't like. I think Donovan will be next.

Hope your New Year is a good one, and as John Lennon said, "without any fear."

Lettering in the news

Okay, not recent news, but I just found THIS site, documenting a calligraphy tour of sorts in Italy last summer. Cool stuff. And about all I have time to blog about this New Year's Eve. Have a safe and fun one, be back here next year!

And Then I Read: ADVENTURE 516 & 517

Images © DC Comics, Inc.

Paul Levitz is writing the Legion in both their own title and this one, with ADVENTURE the home of the Legion's "Early Years." It doesn't work as well for me, partly I suspect because I don't like the art as much, but also because it seems an uneasy hybrid, trying to marry a more youthful and innocent Legion with adult themes and a complex planetary society common in today's superhero comics, but not in the true early years of the Legion, as told when the concept was new in the 1950s and 60s. So, in Legion 516 we have the assassinated founder of the group, R. J. Brande, speaking through a prerecorded message about his own origins as a Durlan shape-shifter, an idea I believe came along much later, and in 517 we have the budding romance between Saturn Girl and Cosmic Boy leading right into the bedroom. Paul knows how to write interesting dialogue, and situations that put his characters through trials both physical and mental, not to mention effective action scenes. If you don't have a long history with the group, it might work fine, but I can't say I'm comfortable with it.

The art by Kevin Sharpe and Marlo Alquiza isn't bad, but it's not as convincing as it might be, with the facial features in particular a bit off here and there, seeming to float around on the ovoid of the head inconsistently, and postures sometimes puppetlike. I know I'm being picky, and this might well have worked fine twenty years ago, but the artistic bar keeps going up, doesn't it? Perhaps just more experience is needed in this case.

Mildly recommended, especially if you've been following the LSH for less than 20 years.

Rereading: THE CHILDREN OF GREEN KNOWE

© The Estate of L. M. Boston.

The holidays are a good time to reread a favorite book, and if it's one with a Christmas theme, that's even better. "The Children of Green Knowe" is one of my absolute favorites, the best of a terrific series, and a remarkable work in many ways. It's not exactly a Christmas story, but that does figure into it.

As the story opens we follow a young boy, Tolly, as he makes his way alone through England to visit a great-grandmother he doesn't know in a very old house he's never seen. He begins on a train splashing through sodden countryside in torrential rain that has everything flooded. Dropped off at a small station, the worried boy is met by a taxi hired to take him to the house, but the taxi can only go so far because of the flooding. All looks bleak until a boat appears rowed by Boggis, the groundskeeper, who brings the boy safely to the front door of the ancient stone house, where his great-grandmother is waiting with a comforting dinner and warm greeting. Mrs. Oldknow is not much larger than Tolly, and they get on famously. She shows him around the manor, which is full of wonders for a young boy, with a music room that looks like a knight's dining hall and a bedroom for him under the roof eaves full of ancient family toys. It certainly seems like a place where interesting things can happen, and when Tolly asks his grandmother if they ever do, she replies, "Oh, yes."

As Tolly will soon find out, the house, which has been in his family for hundreds of years, has other inhabitants. Children that lived there long ago and died of the plague, but whose spirits remain to fill the house and garden with their mischievous presence, their animal pets, and their teasing laughter. These are not ghosts to be afraid of for Tolly, they are playmates he wants desperately to meet and know better. And as Mrs. Oldknow can see them as well, she tells Tolly stories about the children in their own time, while Tolly gradually sees more and more of them in the present.

It's just before Christmas, and throughout the book preparations are being made. Then there's Boggis, the groundskeeper, who has more stories for Tolly, and the many secret features and treasures of the house and garden to explore. But there's a shadow lying over the place, a spell cast by a gypsy ages ago that centers on a huge yew tree once trimmed into the shape of a Green Noah, now shunned and shaggy, but somehow very dangerous, as Tolly will find out.

L.M. Boston's writing is superb, magical itself, as she conjures up one evocative moment after another in this fine book, illustrated by her son Peter Boston. What makes it even more special to me is that the house and garden are real, you can visit them, and Ellen and I did that on our last trip to England in 2001. You can see it HERE. and read more about it on the family's website. It's an amazing experience to walk through the scenes and settings of the Green Knowe books, and the house itself is every bit as historic and haunted as the stories. It's a visit I'll never forget, and a book I can't recommend enough. If you like fantasy with a historical flavor, give it a try. The rest of the Green Knowe series is almost as good, which is to say superb by any measure.

Cats and Snow

We got home yesterday by early evening after a longer than usual drive, but without any dangerous snow incidents, though there were parts of the trip where the roads were not well cleared yet. Tigger and Leo and Katie were all fine and glad to see us. The boys wanted to go out on the porch, where, for the first time they were able to walk in and touch snow. They saw it last winter, but only through windows, and of course they found it odd and fascinating.

Is Tigger licking snow off his foot to taste it, or trying to get his toes warmed up?

Leo, on the other hand, was scooping snow up with his paw and eating. it. "He'll eat anything," Ellen said.

Leo's attempt to jump up onto the snow-covered glass table was not a success, and he departed just as quickly!

How to walk on snow, demonstrated by Leo. How to crouch on snow demonstrated by Tigger (keep the tail up!) Tigger soon wanted to come in, but Leo, the arctic cat, stayed out for a while and played ping-pong ball soccer in the snow.

Last night we'd left my car at the end of our driveway and walked everything in. This morning I shoveled the front walk and a wide path out to the car, and Ellen took it to work.

A few miles away, the town of Dennisville was touted on the Philadelphia news as having the deepest snow: 26 inches. I don't see how that could be, we had no more than a foot, so I don't know who's measuring it or how. It's still too deep to drive through, but rather than shovel the whole driveway, we're going to just keep my car where it is and walk out to it. This week the weather is supposed to get warmer every day, so by next weekend most of the snow should be gone, and my car back in the garage.

Snowed Away

We're still at Ellen's sister's house in northwest New Jersey. A strong storm hit our region yesterday, actually worse where we live than here, so we decided to stay an extra day rather than drive into the worst of it. Today the snow has stopped, but the wind is still very strong, and the snow is blowing and drifting. You can see above that it's blown off much of the grassy lawns…

…but drifted up on the front porch. We're going to try driving home today, about 170 miles. In normal conditions it takes about three and a quarter hours, but we'll go slow, and might get delayed by accidents (hopefully not our own!), so I expect it will take much longer. When we get home, I'll probably have to shovel a space for my car at the end of the driveway to keep it out of the road, and if it's as deep as they report (about 16 inches), will shovel the rest of the driveway tomorrow. Our pet sitter fed the cats Sunday morning, but didn't expect to be able to get back to our house after that, so we need to get home to feed them. And Ellen and I are both anxious to get home anyway. It's been fun, and Christmas was great both here and at my brother's house, but it's time to get back.

Happy Holidays!

We're at Ellen's sister Ann's, where we've helped decorate the Christmas tree and make more Christmas cookies, sung some Christmas carols, listened to Christmas music and watched a Christmas movie. Tomorrow? Oh, actual Christmas. Hope your holidays are fun, and thanks to all of you who are regular readers and commenters on this blog, I appreciate it. Also thanks to those of you who have ordered my signed prints. Hope I can get back to more on-topic posting in the new year, but I'll be here either way.

The Story of Santa Claus (1955 single)

THE STORY OF SANTA CLAUS (Sam Ulano)

This is the B side of a single I wrote about a few years ago, "Santa and the Doodle-li-boop." That track was a cover of the original 1954 recording by Art Carney. On his version, Carney's B side was a synchopated reading of "The Night Before Christmas." Sam Ulano's cover had this second Alan Abel composition, which sounds like a highly-caffeinated improv by Ulano and a drummer (perhaps himself) manically describing Santa's Christmas Eve. Pretty funny, we loved it as kids almost as much as the A side.

This is the fourth in my yearly series of silly Christmas 45rpm records from my childhood collection. The others are:

Santa and the Doodle-li-boop

I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas

Are My Ears On Straight?

This may be the last one I can do, the other Christmas-themed 45s I have are all big name artists, and probably easily available elsewhere.

Christmas Concerts, Rutgers' Kirkpatrick Chapel

I've written here before in THIS post about attending the annual Christmas concerts by the combined choirs of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey from about the years 1969 through 1988. It was a wonderful annual tradition that I still remember fondly, "Christmas in Carol and Song," which combined music for the season that's rarely heard as well as familiar carols with readings from the appropriate parts of the Bible.

One thing that helps me remember it is a cassette tape I made of music from those concerts, the source being a variety of tapes and an old-fashioned LP record borrowed from two friends who were longtime participants in the choirs. I did that in the mid 1980s, and played the cassette annually in my car when Ellen and I were on the way to visit our families for the holidays.

Now cassettes are a dead medium, and when I traded in my 1994 Honda this fall for a new Insight, there went my cassette player. In fact, the sound system had broken earlier in the year anyway. For Christmas I asked Ellen to get me an iPod, as my new Honda has an iPod dock. We exchanged gifts a few days ago, and I've loaded my favorite Christmas music on it, except for that Kirkpatrick tape, which would involve a lot more effort. But, this morning I succeeded in getting it onto my computer, playing it through an old cassette player into Roxio's CD Spin Doctor, setting it up into separate tracks, and importing it into iTunes. The sound quality isn't great, but good enough.

I don't know who owns the rights to this music, I'm sure Rutgers would claim to, and I don't want to infringe on anyone's copyright, but I thought I might get away with placing two small excerpts here. First is the Rutgers Glee Club singing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,", the second is the Reverend Robert Tanksley reading the "Fra Giovanni Letter." This is the same text that I hand-lettered in the previous post linked above. If you don't know it, you might like to. The text recording is from 1978, the song from somewhere between '70 and '78.

I'm glad to have this particular musical holiday tradition back. Hope you have some of your own!