I scanned this old Sunday this morning, just for you. I drew a lot bigger back then! It took two passes on my 11X17 flat-bed scanner to get it all. That is the very reason I began drawing smaller, shortly after this cartoon appeared in 1995. It was about that time I started scanning the daily cartoons and digitally transmitting them to my editors in New York. I started drawing smaller so I could scan a cartoon in one pass of the scanner. It was sometime later before I began transmitting the Sunday cartoons, because they simply were too big to transmit by dial-up modem. As it was, I remember it would take 12 to 15 minutes to transmit six daily cartoons. Now, it takes about three seconds.
Forward to the Past
By Jimmy Johnson
Recent Posts
Ghost of Christmas Past
This holiday Arlo & Janis comic strip from 2022 is similar in concept to the new strip that ran yesterday. I thought the latter ...
Spearhead
I have produced a number of comic strips related to Veteran’s Day. Especially in latter years, I have tried to emphasize the universal experience ...
Dark Passage
Remember: it’s that weekend. The return to standard time can be a bit of a shock in the late afternoon, but I rather enjoy ...
What’s old is old, again
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to build a web site, but there are similarities. Everything needs to be just right, or ...
Back to the ol’ drawing board
I don’t have a lot of time this morning. I wasn’t going to post anything, but I’m tired of looking at that old photograph ...
Thursday’s Child
On Sunday, I teased you with the suggestion there are more changes coming here. There are. They will appear soon, and I think you’ll ...
314 responses to “Forward to the Past”
Ghost, I have been worrying about you but had hoped it was something much better, like a girl friend to visit. Woman, not girl, anyway romance and relaxation.
You are a wonderful son to your mom and a good family member to all I suspect. They are blessed to have you.
I miss your wonderful writing. I have decided I write better than I speak but I think you are equally proficient with proper language.
Hate glass doors of all kinds, they are a hazard to all forms of life.
Take care of you, which is what everyone keeps telling me and I ignore mostly! Are you and brother-in-law all that remain to help out? My daughter (the younger) has been a Godsend for which she has been rewarded, so perhaps your mom knows how fortunate she is to have you.
Love, Jackie Monies
Lily dearest, I do actually worry about you and the drinking to excess. Right now I am employing a lady gardener who is an alcoholic and a felon who could not of course get work. She is sober and clean so far as I know now, works like a proverbial dog and takes pride in her work.
I have immediate family members who died of alcoholism, friends, acquaintances, business and customers, so I am hardly sheltered nor have ever been.
The younger daughter I am so proud of is a rehabilitated anorexic who once weighed less than you, exercised as much as you and ate like you (but not the drinking). She got a degree in psychology as appreciation to the psychologist who got her eating disorder under control and saved her from starving herself.
I understand totally why you do what you do, that is not the issue, but rather that I am afraid you are going to do some serious damage to your body and won’t be repairable.
Off to bed, I feel like heck myself!
Love, Jackie Monies
I finally got myself fed and watered (Did I have lunch today? No matter.), and caught up on the past day and a half of the goings-on in the Village, which is for me a longer than usual span.
Debbe 🙂 Glad to see you’ve bounced back, hon, as I knew you would. As I’ve said before, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger…even if it does often piss you off while doing it.
Thank you, Charlotte. My sister would have enjoyed knowing you (you remind me of a favorite aunt of ours), and you would have liked her. Everyone did.
Jean dear, I don’t need the “boob tube”…remember, I have a pulchritudinous hair stylist. She was last seen (by me, the other day) wearing what I would still declare and swear to be a pair of men’s boxer shorts and a low-cut, filmy top of some sort. Fortunately, she has both the wheels and headlights to carry off that look.
Jackie, I once ate at a faux-French bistro on the Gulf Coast (said eatery itself having since been eaten by Hurricane Katrina) wherein I was served a green salad which included what I was given to understand were nasturtium petals. My first and last encounter with such…quite peppery tasting as I recall, and apparently all the rage amongst yuppie diners at that time.
And this may say something about your daughter’s POE…
http://www.gocomics.com/twaggies/2014/06/19
Matthew McConaughey took off his shirt in a movie? Wow, who could have seen that coming?
Hi, Denise. Good to see you posting again. Thanks, Lady Mindy. Thanks, Gal. Thanks, Munchkin. Thanks, Jackie. (And “Aw, shucks, ma’am, you make me blush.”) Yep, my Mom, BIL and I are it in this area now.
Got about 3.5 hours of sleep last night, a problem I will remedy tonight, hopefully after having made it to the end of the Braves/Rangers game.
Missed you guys.
And Munchkin, always remember…if we didn’t love you, we wouldn’t worry about you.
Ghost and Jackie, I appreciate you worrying about me, but when I consider the alternative of living as long as y’all seem to want me to, and drinking…well, I’ll have another margarita. Y’all remember, I have no intention or expectation of living a long life. 😛
Lily:
Me too. I am close to someone who has been sober > a decade, and later smoke-free too [and says quitting cigarettes was harder than booze], and am both relieved and proud. He was, pardon my frankness, as brash as you are about it, before he got arrested for DUI and sentenced to time but parole instead and AA [5 yr., I think]. No matter where he goes, he seeks out the local AA chapter, and sets an example for many. BTW, he has been enjoying life past 50 for > 8 yr. You should try it.
Love and peace, emb
Lily: That was written while you were posting. I would not change a word. emb
“Some for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet’s Paradise to come;
Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,
Nor heed the rumble of the distant Drum!” – Omar Khayyam
Dear Ghost, wondered what had become of you, yesterday, but couldn’t have imagined the upsets that kept you away. Your mother must be someone who everybody likes and cares about — good that she can be so good-natured about the treatment. You are good-natured too, and as Jackie points out, a fine writer and thinker. Much sympathy to your brother-in-law for the awful accident, and hoping he will get back to normal okay. I think tile floors are dangerous and would never want one. As for the glass shower door — shudders — I plan to tell my family what happened, and point out the safety issue. We just have a plastic shower curtain, myself.
We are born to well-wishers who beckon us and stand ready to take us in their arms when we reach the light at the end of the tunnel. It has been reported by some that this is what they saw before they returned from that twilight zone of dying. It strikes me that this may be more than coincidence.
You may ruminate (a lovely word) on this from more than one point of observation, and I hope that you do.
“Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend;
Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie,
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and – sans End!
…
For “Is” and “Is-Not” though with Rule and Line
And “Up-and-Down” by Logic I define,
Of all that one should care to fathom, I
Was never deep in anything but – Wine.”
emb, I have studied the Twelve Step Programs. I have never attended an AA meeting because they are for people who want to stop drinking. And that is not me! Besides, I would rather be a drunk than a SmoKer.
“Work like you don’t need the money, love like you’ve never been hurt, and dance like no one is watching.” – Randall G Leighton
Personally, I have trouble with only one of those three.
Now, “To sleep, perchance to dream”
And if there is any justice, Natalie Portman will be in my dream when I arrive. 😉
(I usually look for Mila Kunis, but at last report she was still très enceinte et très amoureuse.
Dear Lily, I too have often sighed over the magical, wonderful poetry of Omar Khayyam. Maybe you are right to use his verses to help you along the path of life. Now that I’m thinking of it, they are lots more appealing than some creeds, and may have influenced my philosophy more than I’ve given them credit for.
Ghost, I wondered why you hadn’t made your usual snarky remark about my sally, and I’m sorry your days have been so hectic, but I am glad that things are turning out alright. I’m sure that by the time I read your post you were safely in the embrace of Morpheus, so I hope you slept well and had good dreams!
zzzzzz…it is Natalie…zzzzz
Munchkin, your hors d’oeuvres story reminded me of a time during my high school days when my date and I, along with another couple, were seated at a table in a nightclub and got up to leave. To this day, I’ve never come up with a plausible theory to explain it, but somehow the table cloth attached itself to me, and when I stood, the cloth followed me, dumping glasses, ash trays, candle holders and other miscellany onto the floor. Joe Cool, I wasn’t. Plus, my date and I were both on the wrong side of the legal drinking age, so the last thing I wanted to do was call untoward attention to us.
Fortunately, the nightclub was in a resort area, and I assume the wait staff had some degree of experience in dealing with such minor disasters. A waiter and waitress appeared from nowhere, made a few magical gestures, and the wreckage disappeared–poof–just like that. Callow youth that I was, I still knew enough to palm a five-spot and slip it to our waiter (thereby restoring a measure of my Joe Coolness) and to keep on walking.
Ghost out.
Okay, I am being put to bed. Nighty night ZZZZZZ
Good morning, Debbe, I figure you are up soon or already with the chickens. Or is it going to bed with them that is joke?
Ghost, et al, if you “et some nasturtiums” it would have been better or as good to have eaten the leaves in salad. They are peppery, like strong watercress. Calendulas , violas are also edible and salad ingredients. Squash blossoms are fantastic if stuffed a little, dipped in batter and fried.
OK, who is guilty of being a foodie here? Not me!
Hope the crashing noise that woke me up was a cat, possum or other critter outside and not someone falling/searching through the pile of deck furniture, etc. out behind my end of the house where we left it to clean up. it sounded like a possum falling on the roof of my bedroom!
Lily, Lily, you remind me of myself fifty years ago or so. I named my cat Khalil (loved that cat so much). Named my dog for Baryshnikov. Even your reading materials seem to duplicate my teenage and college days, along with your expectations of life! And here I am fifty years later and still alive? Who’d have thought it?
Not me. There is a reason I am alive even if I may not know it and I live my life that way, so should that purpose present itself I won’t miss it. A good friend who I respected as a Christian example told me I didn’t have to go to Africa to be a missionary, that I lived everyday right here serving as one.
Think about that. I was about 40 at the time and almost daily for the last 30 years I remind myself of her words. I am no saint, just a flawed human but who knows the lives we may touch?
Love, Jackie Monies
About margaritas, I love them and never, never drink one. I buy sugar free snow cones once and awhile and have them sprinkle them with salt and fresh lime juice, delicious and no alcohol. I assume this is the sugar free mix you mentioned? The alcohol will add calories on its’ own.
The last and only time I made huge quantities of margaritas was back in my “socially acceptable” days when I was in charge of the women’s club big annual event in the late 1970’s or early 80’s and Mike was in liquor/wine business. They ended up drunk and even pushed the mariachi band into our yacht club pool, along with all the women’s club members.
Then there was the middle aged woman guest at a dinner party who fell into my flower beds and I was banned from inviting her again. Mike said he wasn’t serving Chateau Petrus to drunks!
My sober gardener says she thought blacking out and not remembering what she had done the next day was normal.
Love, Jackie Monies
Good morning Villagers….
Jackie, I usually take a quick nap around 5ish, get up around 7 or 8 and go back to bed around 10…..my internal clock wakes me up anywhere between 2ish or 4ish.
GR 😉 bless your heart. You seem to handle stressful situations rather well, under control, and with love. I’ll keep you and yours in my thoughts and a prayer……………………Amen.
Well my son flunked Laundry 101. I through in the laundry soap, he added the work clothes….and some bleach. I now have a burgundy T that looks as if it has been tied dyed and a pair of LL Bean jeans with bleach spots….his retort: “you know people pay high dollars for that look” Son, I said, come sit beside me……(there’s a song there), but you don’t add bleach to colored clothing. But he thought it would get them cleaner….(think I’m going to build that basement 🙂 )
And again we had to use paper towels to remove the mineral oil and rust off the underside of thr rod conveyor and The Boss was there to help….then I had to pack……eggs are getting bigger. The Corp gentleman arrived towards the end and said they were looking better. The younger hens are at the back of the building, so their eggs are still quite small and have a “smashing” ratio of 2 going through the packer. He made some adjustments and it has eliminated two of the small eggs trying to get through at the same time.
Indy Mindy….little nippy in your neighborhood today, getting settled in I hope. And how is Blacklight enjoying his new surroundings? We’re supposed to get down in the mid 40’s tonight
Yup, been there and done that with sliding glass doors to a patio. Roommate had left the door open all evening as we were running in and out to the patio deck fixing supper. I went back inside to get some veggies and ‘bamb’ ran right into the closed patio door. There I stood holding this large piece of glass in my hands…that was some 30 years ago, I was bullet proof then 🙂
Jean…yes, yes, yes…..watch ‘Mud’…let me know what ya think.
Ya’ll have a Happy Caterday….I’ve got the ‘teens’ today. (Swish….snap goes my whip)
GR 😉 was Natalie dressed as the white swan or the black swan? Inquiring minds want to know 🙂
Just read a ton of reviews and synopsis of “Mud”. Got 98% on Rotten Tomatoes which is unheard of. I think I am going to have to see this one but don’t know if I can handle the falling into a pit of water moccasins, as I am phobic about snakes and dream of them with night terrors. Plot seems pretty right on for Southern genre coming of age movie!
Love, Jackie
OF predicted to blow at 0902 + / – CDT.
http://www.nps.gov/features/yell/webcam/oldFaithfulStreaming.html
Debbe 😉 Dressed? Thanks for the prayers, hon. Like money, you can never have enough…but they’re easier (and better) to come by.
As much as it pains me to say it, the level of discourse over on The Dark Side may have actually improved a bit. (A smidgen?) Perhaps inspired by my occasional presence there? 🙂 Not to say, of course, that there aren’t still those who seem to not actually read (or at best, misread) the cartoons, much less the other comments.
Jackie: Sometimes a snake is just a snake. 🙂