Charlie Brown: Why Is Everyone Always Picking on Me?
On Sunday night, a good friend and a new friend (Dave Squared), and I went up to the Midtown Scholar in Harrisburg for a charity concert to raise money for Haiti Earthquake Relief. The band "In Wilderness" was fantastic.
The venue is awesome...kind of a hip urban storefront with an interior bucolic barn-like structure for books and a "Scholars Underground" (beneath the first floor) which makes scholarship seem subversive and clandestine...which it is these days with mass media vapidity and "sound bite" attention appetites. Catacombs, as it were, for the persecuted faithful of the book.
The location of the bookstore changed within the last year from a house to this spot, and it is sweet. Bookstores, if they are to survive as actual bookstores, have to offer more than just books these days. And, bringing in bands and speakers, for a reasonable price, and throwing in some good coffee and healthy snacks, might just prosper the institution through the 21st century. Amazon has no soul...the Midtown does.
Since I have a problem with buying books, like an alcoholic takes to drink, going into a bookstore is dangerous business for me. Like a reforming drunk has to steer his sobriety wagon away from the direction of the town saloon, I should only enter a bookstore under close supervision. Yet, I had received $ 25 from my Aunt for Christmas. Yearly, I decide to freely imbibe with this money to buy a book or two. One or two purchases can't hurt...can it?
I found an audio book on a shelf of the "Schulz and Peanuts", the recent authoritative biography of the comic strip Zeus who ruled the Pantheon of Cartoonist for over 50 years--and still yet rules from the grave. The audio book was $ 11, which comes out to be one dollar per CD. This book is Bible-like in its size, at least the New Testament with the Psalms, Proverbs, and the the Minor Prophets thrown in. The price was a bargain...so I bought it.
I have been feeling like Charlie Brown of sorts these days. Our car got hit and runned on New Years Eve (and the Lancaster Police are making the Keystone Kops look like Elliot Ness...c'mom cops, we gave you a pretty big clue, the license plate of the car that hit us), our plumbing in our house is defective and no one is taking responsibility (our Home Inspector at the time of purchase who should have caught it did not...and is now dead...and all of the entities...the manufacturer of the plumbing, the builder, the plumber, and the real estate agent, disavow any responsibility), and I had a protracted rumble with a truly shady credit card processing company out in Colorado.
Yep, I'm feeling like I should just get one of those zig-zagged yellow and brown Charlie Brown shirts (I wonder if they come in 2XLT? Might have to special order). For the record, generally, I don't see myself primarily as Charlie Brown. I think I am more Linus-like, who always seemed to be the brainiest and most philosophical of the Peanuts bunch, who had some weird hang-ups like thumb-sucking and blanket-toting.
When I was a child, I made an Jacob and Esau-like swap with a fellow neighborhood boy. I swapped some "stew" for a series of "birthright" Peanuts books (original prints, some of them). I got the better deal by far. I used to spend hours as a kid reading and re-reading the strips. I have the fraying collection in my Book Hall of Fame like sacred Toral scrolls. I only unroll them on special and holy days.
When I critiqued modern-day comic strips the other day in a blog, I am comparing these strips to Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes. These two strips were able to combine witty humor with profound pathos...and somehow that paradoxical pairing attracted millions of proselytes. Most strips today are just trying to be funny...the best humor tries to find the funny in the sad, and perhaps the sad in the funny. Modern strips miss the balance.
The book on Schulz and Peanuts major thesis seems to be how Charles Schulz grew up with a profound sense of being a nobody. He took this everyman identity of being a "Nobody" and became a "Somebody" by essentially parlaying this personal sense of "Nobodyness" into national and international acclaim and affection. In other words, Schulz became a Supra- "Somebody" by being an Uber "Nobody."
Spiritual truth is often paradoxical as in the Sermon on the Mount: Matthew 5:4 "Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted." Or, in Charlie Brown's words, "Good Grief." Grief can be good in God, the One who provides succor and comfort to the broken-hearted. Only He is infinitely capable to fill the inestimable depths of hurt in our hearts. True about Haiti, true about me. Grief in others gives us the opportunity to step up and serve. Thanks to the Midtown for having such a great place for this "Haiti Help" to happen. May you live long and prosper!
Charlie Brown, the one picked on became the one we picked. An irony indeed.
The venue is awesome...kind of a hip urban storefront with an interior bucolic barn-like structure for books and a "Scholars Underground" (beneath the first floor) which makes scholarship seem subversive and clandestine...which it is these days with mass media vapidity and "sound bite" attention appetites. Catacombs, as it were, for the persecuted faithful of the book.
The location of the bookstore changed within the last year from a house to this spot, and it is sweet. Bookstores, if they are to survive as actual bookstores, have to offer more than just books these days. And, bringing in bands and speakers, for a reasonable price, and throwing in some good coffee and healthy snacks, might just prosper the institution through the 21st century. Amazon has no soul...the Midtown does.
Since I have a problem with buying books, like an alcoholic takes to drink, going into a bookstore is dangerous business for me. Like a reforming drunk has to steer his sobriety wagon away from the direction of the town saloon, I should only enter a bookstore under close supervision. Yet, I had received $ 25 from my Aunt for Christmas. Yearly, I decide to freely imbibe with this money to buy a book or two. One or two purchases can't hurt...can it?
I found an audio book on a shelf of the "Schulz and Peanuts", the recent authoritative biography of the comic strip Zeus who ruled the Pantheon of Cartoonist for over 50 years--and still yet rules from the grave. The audio book was $ 11, which comes out to be one dollar per CD. This book is Bible-like in its size, at least the New Testament with the Psalms, Proverbs, and the the Minor Prophets thrown in. The price was a bargain...so I bought it.
I have been feeling like Charlie Brown of sorts these days. Our car got hit and runned on New Years Eve (and the Lancaster Police are making the Keystone Kops look like Elliot Ness...c'mom cops, we gave you a pretty big clue, the license plate of the car that hit us), our plumbing in our house is defective and no one is taking responsibility (our Home Inspector at the time of purchase who should have caught it did not...and is now dead...and all of the entities...the manufacturer of the plumbing, the builder, the plumber, and the real estate agent, disavow any responsibility), and I had a protracted rumble with a truly shady credit card processing company out in Colorado.
Yep, I'm feeling like I should just get one of those zig-zagged yellow and brown Charlie Brown shirts (I wonder if they come in 2XLT? Might have to special order). For the record, generally, I don't see myself primarily as Charlie Brown. I think I am more Linus-like, who always seemed to be the brainiest and most philosophical of the Peanuts bunch, who had some weird hang-ups like thumb-sucking and blanket-toting.
When I was a child, I made an Jacob and Esau-like swap with a fellow neighborhood boy. I swapped some "stew" for a series of "birthright" Peanuts books (original prints, some of them). I got the better deal by far. I used to spend hours as a kid reading and re-reading the strips. I have the fraying collection in my Book Hall of Fame like sacred Toral scrolls. I only unroll them on special and holy days.
When I critiqued modern-day comic strips the other day in a blog, I am comparing these strips to Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes. These two strips were able to combine witty humor with profound pathos...and somehow that paradoxical pairing attracted millions of proselytes. Most strips today are just trying to be funny...the best humor tries to find the funny in the sad, and perhaps the sad in the funny. Modern strips miss the balance.
The book on Schulz and Peanuts major thesis seems to be how Charles Schulz grew up with a profound sense of being a nobody. He took this everyman identity of being a "Nobody" and became a "Somebody" by essentially parlaying this personal sense of "Nobodyness" into national and international acclaim and affection. In other words, Schulz became a Supra- "Somebody" by being an Uber "Nobody."
Spiritual truth is often paradoxical as in the Sermon on the Mount: Matthew 5:4 "Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted." Or, in Charlie Brown's words, "Good Grief." Grief can be good in God, the One who provides succor and comfort to the broken-hearted. Only He is infinitely capable to fill the inestimable depths of hurt in our hearts. True about Haiti, true about me. Grief in others gives us the opportunity to step up and serve. Thanks to the Midtown for having such a great place for this "Haiti Help" to happen. May you live long and prosper!
Charlie Brown, the one picked on became the one we picked. An irony indeed.
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