All the comic strips, from the greatest to the least, eye the weather for material. Try staring out the window for hours, straining to think of something to scribble about, without the weather coming to mind. You can’t do it. Indeed, comic treatment of the elements is as seasonal and as anticipated as the colors of autumn and the tender green buds of spring. Which is kind of strange when you think about it. In anything but a locally distributed cartoon, the weather being experienced by readers at a given moment is going to vary wildly. It doesn’t matter. There is a universality to our interest in the weather that goes back farther than we’ve been human. That’s what cartoonists hope, at any rate.
You may have noticed I left the maintenance page up longer than planned yesterday. Yesterday turned out to be a “classroom day,” when I learned some things and learned there are some things I have not yet learned.