A time we can welcome diversions

I look forward to reading the Sunday edition of the Kitsap Sun. I also like the comic strips. The changes in those strips noted in the September 24 edition highlighted at least one of the historical impacts prompted by comic strips.

While I was a frequent reader of Peanuts during my youth in the 1950s, I either missed those particular Peanuts strips, or was unaware of the significance of creator Charles Schulz having a black character, Franklin, meeting at a beach and going to a movie theatre with white Charlie Brown. It happened at a time when both venues were often segregated. Peanuts was then and remains now a welcome diversion for me, along with strips such as Pickles and Dennis the Menace, both evoking timeless verities.

Pickles hits home for me. My wife and I are in our seventies, have been married nearly 55 years and are servants of two cats. With the exception that Earl and Opal only have one cat, and we have more grandchildren, we nearly match their comic strip demographic. Like Earl, I offer advice to our grandchildren that is often both well intended and absolutely wrong. Also like Earl, I do my best to drive my wife crazy, but like the comic strip couple, we are still star crossed and enjoy holding hands.

In addition to reminding me of the years-ago antics of our children, at least in one instance a Dennis the Menace strip strangely seemed to predict a possible future. I cite a single panel strip that ran many years ago, where Dennis has done something wrong and his friend remonstrates him by saying something like, “Be careful Dennis, if you continue doing these things you will end up either in jail or as President.”

Moving on from comic strips, another recent diversion was my trying to understand the phenomena of Taylor Swift. As I haven’t recognized a singer with wide-spectrum appeal since perhaps Michael Jackson, I was confused, and wondered if Swift might be heralding something new in music and culture. Our eight-year-old granddaughter knows all the Swift albums and introduced me to several of her songs.

Recently, I have enjoyed some cooking partnerships with our grandchildren. The same granddaughter who is a Taylor Swift fan also likes to make cakes and brownies. So far when we make brownies together, I don’t mix in a bit of politics like I used to do years ago, when I made what I called “Irish Border Brownies,” with nuts on both sides of the pan and a strip without nuts in the middle.

Just before his seven-year-old sister called me when she got her first pair of glasses, our eighteen-year-old grandson called the other day. While he is in his first year at the University of Washington studying computer science, perhaps he also wanted to divert himself a bit. He wanted to know how I make my cheesy eggs. Nothing political, nothing technical — just about eggs. He later sent me a picture. He did well. They looked delicious.

However, a few days before that he called me to ask what I knew about protests in China after the recent death of ex-premier Li Keqiang. I immediately congratulated him on keeping up with the news and not being diverted from keeping his eye on what China was doing, amid all our focus on domestic politics and the wars in Israel and Ukraine. Then I rushed to the internet to try to find out more about all of that myself. Luckily for my ego, he didn’t pull a generational one-upmanship by searching the internet and getting an answer while we were still talking.

Indirectly, our grandson was raising an important point. In the spirit of the old expression about chewing gum and walking at the same time, we need to be aware to some degree of what is happening in the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East and in Ukraine, all at the same time. In my estimation we cannot leave the awareness of those challenges solely to our leaders. Otherwise, we risk turning in on ourselves, somewhat like we nearly did a hundred years ago.

I look forward to a discussion with some of my older grandchildren about what we gained and lost in the recent summit with China. However, I am also curious about their thoughts on the recent incident at a Senate hearing involving a nearly physical altercation between a union boss and a Senator. One party was verbally goading another, who in turn offered to take the dispute to a more physical level.  The incident has all the ingredients necessary for an age-old teaching moment — which often involves all parties learning something new.

Healthy diversions, such as making eggs and reading comic strips, are recommended. Fisticuffs at your own risk!

Contact Larry Little at larrylittle46@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: A time we can welcome diversions