Almost Wordless Wednesday: Plains, Georgia

 Photographer Gary Firstenberg is on the road again. Photos from Plains, Georgia, home town of one of America's best known peanut farmers.

They're nuts about their peanuts here.

All photos courtesy Gary Firstenberg, pictured here with 

our former president, who is 97 this year.

To see more of Gary's work, visit: 
www.firstinphoto.smugmug.com

Buon compleanno Charlie Brown

Today, Charlie Brown is sixty years old. And it is remarkable how widespread his influence has been these past six decades. I had no idea when I was reading Peanuts comics in the late fifties that he was only two years older than me. As kids it seemed like he had been around forever. And by the time he was fifteen there were books being written about his philosophy on life, like "The Gospel According to Peanuts" and even television appearances.

Last Christmas while visiting our kids in Santa Rosa I located the Charles Schulz Museum, which honors the creator of this famed collection of characters. I knew he'd lived in California, but did not know his roots were in Minnesota. After visiting California during Christmas, I fully understand why someone who has a choice might choose that over this. We had several feet of snow that weekend. Santa Rosa skies were without spot or blemish.

Schulz's international reach can be seen in this article, Buon compleanno Charlie Brown, sent to me this week from Italy.

In the article the author observes how for our generation Charlie Brown and friends existed side by side with characters like Holden Caulfield. She points out that a poster of Charlie Brown is no less out of place hanging above an intellectual's desk next to the Bauhaus Manifesto as well as on a teenager's wall flanked by WWF wrestlers. "The true mystery of Peanuts," Michelle Serra writes, "...is their prodigious elasticity."

I would also suggest the longevity of this family of Peanuts characters is equally amazing, though not surprising. Each character has in him- or herself a semi-transcendent universality that we can all relate to, from the lovable Woodstock to Joe Cool to the Little Red-Haired Girl.

Charlie Brown is sixty today.... and nary a gray hair. That's something impressive, too.

The Little Red-Haired Girl

Due to dense cloud cover I had trouble with my satellite internet connection this a.m. Is this what they mean by "cloud computing"? I doubt it.

Few there are who've never read the comics in a Sunday newspaper. And fewer still who have never seen the Charles Schultz classic Peanuts. For some it is a "fix" and for others a habit.

Schultz created more than 18,000 strips and Charlie Brown even made it to television.

Most of us know the main characters, with Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus and Snoopy being the head of that pack. What's interesting is that we not only know all these characters -- and some really are characters -- but that we've even gotten to know those characters who are not ever seen in the strip. A short list of these would have to include the Great Pumpkin, Red Baron and the Little Red-Haired Girl.

Over the years much has been made about who these characters are. That is, what are the meanings these characters symbolize. Whole books have been written about this, though like other great art, maybe all this defining goes far beyond what Charles Schultz envisioned. But art allows for this. The non-specificity lets readers take it into their own spheres.

Is the Great Pumpkin a myth like Santa Claus? A benevolent hope founded on wishful thinking? Or can it be a reference to something more, something senses beyond the senses?

The Little Red-Haired Girl whom we never see is... well, we all know who she is. Like the other symbols, she may have a different name, but we remember her. How could we forget that unrequited longing? Who hasn't been in Charlie Brown's shoes, noticing her but not knowing what to say. The moment comes, it goes, is gone. Anything touched by her, or remotely associated with her, becomes sacred. On one occasion he finds her pencil dropped in the hall. The little teeth marks are a reminder that this is no ordinary pencil.

According to Wikipedia, she first appeared in 1961 in a lunch room scene. We never saw her, but we know she was special because Charlie Brown said, "I'd give anything in the world if that little girl with the red hair would come over and sit with me." We've probably all been there at one time or another.

I guess the Little Red-Haired Girl came mind because of convergence of sorts. When I read Eric Clapton's autobiography a couple weeks ago I learned that his album Derek & the Dominoes was written entirely as an ode to Patty Boyd, George Harrison's wife. He invited her over to hear the album before its release. She rejected his overtures, but the album is a great one, conveying much of Charlie Brown's unreserved, tragicomic stoicism.

Layla was one of the great songs on the album. This link takes you to the lyrics of Bell Bottom Blues, Clapton's Ode to Patty Boyd. To her credit, she remained with George. He wasn't ready for a mature relationship yet.

More Than a Peanut Farmer

Yesterday I finished reading (listening to) a truly inspirational audio book by Tony Dungee called Quiet Strength. At the outset he explains that this book is not about football. It is about the meaning of life, faith, God, truth, and all the lessons of his lifetime, both on and off the field. Dungee was an athlete who became a coach, and the first NFL coach to lead his team to the Super Bowl.

I would say more about this book, but his numerous George Washington Carver quotes, from whom he’d clearly found inspiration, led me to make Carver -- whose image graces this page -- the topic of today’s blog entry.

I’d read a Scholastic Book Club book about this remarkable man when I was young. I remember it making an impact on me at the time. George Washington Carver, though born a slave, grew up to be a prestigious scientist who made significant contributions to agriculture in the South. He learned about crop rotation and how to restore the nutrients which had been depleted from the soil during decades of growing cotton.

What he’s possibly most remember for is his creativity with regards to the peanut. He had purportedly discovered over 300 uses for the peanut. The story I most vividly recall from the book was the banquet he served on one occasion, all dishes being some kind of peanut variation. You might say he was nuts about peanuts. It wasn’t just foodstuffs that he made from nuts, however. Adhesives, fuel briquettes, ink, linoleum, shaving cream, talcum powder and wood stain were just a few of the kinds of innovative uses he developed.

His Christian faith was also central to his personal life. Perhaps it was this, as much as the fact that Carver was an influential black man and role model, that led Tony Dungee to find such encouragement and inspiration from Carver’s life and work.

Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia. “Dr. Carver's faith was foundational in how he approached life. He viewed faith in Jesus as a means to destroying both barriers of racial disharmony and social stratification. For Dr. Carver, faith was an agent of change. It increased knowledge rather than competing against it. The greater his faith increased, the more he desired to learn. The more he learned, the greater his faith became.”

Many chapters in Dungee’s book began with a quote from one source or another. A few of these were from Dr. Carver. I share several here. For more check this website.

"Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom."

"How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these."

"I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in."

"Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses."

"No individual has any right to come into the world and go out of it without leaving something behind."

"There is no short cut to achievement. Life requires thorough preparation - veneer isn't worth anything."

"Where there is no vision, there is no hope."

And last, but not least, the one most frequently cite in Quiet Strength: "When you can do the common things of life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world."