The book I wrote with Peanuts fan extraordinaire Nat Gertler has been nominated for a Will Eisner Award by the people who bring you Comic-Con International in San Diego each year! Voting has closed for the comics publishing industry award, but it’s been a thrill just to be nominated. I’ve never won an award and tended to roll my eyes at the idea of being grateful for a nomination, but I get it now. This is a recognition of the hard work of *so many* people. I’m so proud and grateful to my team at the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center, our publishers Weldon-Owen, and all the fans of Charles M. Schulz, who have supported the museum and all do a part in preserving and sharing the legacy of Charles Schulz and Peanuts.
Of course, the book is still available everywhere that good books are sold, and proceeds support the Schulz Museum. You can also buy the book directly from the Schulz Museum, which is a way to support the museum doubly. You can even leave a note when you purchase to request that I sign it, and I’m happy to do that.
About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.
It’s hard to believe, but I had a book come out on November 1st! You can get it anywhere good books are sold, but if you buy it from the Charles M. Schulz Museum, it will be signed by none other than Jean Schulz!
Working with Jeannie on the book was a very special experience. I get to work with her quite a bit developing exhibitions for the Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California, and for Snoopy Museum Tokyo, and she’s always happy to pitch in with research — connecting me to contacts, making ID’s in photos, and sharing memories. But this was different. We got to reflect on Sparky as an entire person together and dig into various parts of his life and personality we’ve not done a lot about at the museum for whatever reasons.
The book is almost like a visit to the Schulz Museum — 100 Objects from the museum’s collections are featured in gorgeous detailed photos, and a bit of history is shared about each, often with other supporting images of other objects that help tell the story. We also asked 50 contributors, from cartoonists, celebrities, politicians, friends, and members of the Schulz family, to share their own stories and remembrances related to these objects.
Interior spread from 100 Objects
All of us are very proud of the book, and I hope you will like it, too. It’s out just in time for the holiday gift-giving season, so if you know someone who loves Peanuts (and who doesn’t?), this is something a little different and totally new they will love. If you do buy a copy, be sure to rate and review it wherever you bought it, as it helps other fans find the book. Thank you!
About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.
Friday, July 22 — 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM in Room 24ABC Celebrating 100 Years of Charles Schulz Moderator Damian Holbrook (TV Guide) and panelists Robb Armstrong (JumpStart), Benjamin L. Clark (curator, Charles M. Schulz Museum), Melissa Menta (Peanuts Worldwide), Alexis J. Fajardo (Schulz Creative Associates), and Hailey Cartwright and Promise Robinson (Armstrong Project scholarship recipients) discuss the centennial and legacy of the Peanuts creator; the publication of a new book Charles M. Schulz: The Art and Life of the Peanuts Creator in 100 Objects; and Peanuts’ inspiring Armstrong Project (named for Franklin Armstrong, Peanuts’ first Black character): two $100,000 endowments to Howard and Hampton Universities to support the work of up-and-coming Black animators.
Saturday, July 23 —4:30 PM – 5:30 PM in Room 26AB It’s a Filmstrip, Charlie Brown In the 1980s, kids got career advice from Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and pals (including a new Latina friend) in educational filmstrips produced by the Peanuts animation team. Benjamin L. Clark (curator, Charles M. Schulz Museum) and Nat Gertler (The Aaugh Blog) discuss and present some of these filmstrips, with one live-cast voice performance by cartoonist Gladys Ochoa (Ribbons of Thought), Allison Gertler (Invisible Zeppelin), and more., and more.
The Kincade Fire had been burning for a couple of days and the National Weather Service alerted us that 70 mph winds were on the way. I live in Santa Rosa, California, and my home was becoming surrounded by mandatory evacuation zones. Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) announced they were cutting power in more areas, too. Homes and businesses were starting to burn. As my wife and I talked about evacuation, I started thinking about my books.
My book collection as it stands today is … I like to think of it as a carefully curated distillation of the mighty thing it once was. As a museum curator, my career has taken me on big moves a few times, to the point that today I own maybe a modest few hundred books as opposed to the several thousand I’ve owned over the course of my entire life. But even a few hundred books is a lot of books. My wife’s collection is about the same size, likely giving us around a thousand books or so between us. Though we’ve been together for about five years now, we only just started shelving our books commingled together recently. These things take time, right?
The yellow circle is where we live.
The fire was about 15 miles away but was growing and growing, expected to become larger than the devastating Tubbs Fire of 2017 that burned thousands of homes in our city and though we weren’t here for it, everyone we know was. The whole city gets anxious when there’s smoke in the air. At our house, when our power goes out, we lose cell service, mobile data, pretty much everything but the battery-powered radio. So, instead of sitting at home and listening to the wind rattle our house, smelling smoke and wondering if it was getting closer and waiting for the police sirens to tell us to evacuate immediately … we took off ahead of being told to.
But what to take? We packed light, a few days worth of clothes and both of our handwritten journals (many years worth for both of us) and a couple of boxes of photographs. We each grabbed a couple of books, mostly to read while we were away, fairly confident we’d be home soon. I took a few quick videos on my phone of our bookshelves, just in case, and we left.
In fact, though we were under no direct threat from the fire after we arrived at our hotel a couple of hours away, it was funny what did grab after we took stock. I only took two shirts. The one I was wearing and another, which apparently had some gum in the pocket when it went through the laundry and now sported a big ugly blotch on the chest, which I hadn’t noticed grabbing it out of the dryer. I also brought no other shoes than what I had on. We also brought enough LEGOs to rebuild a temporary home should the need arise.
While we were away I couldn’t help thinking about the books I left behind. Not merely particular titles, but *my* copies. My copies of Walden — the copy that turned me into a bibliophile, my second edition, my collection of the Sherlock Holmes stories, P. G. Wodehouse, the Saga of Hugh Glass my grandfather gave me to prove he was right and I was wrong, gifts from my wife. What about the pieces of wonderful ephemera that I’m sure I own the sole copies? I couldn’t think about it too much without getting a terrible feeling. I had other things I needed to be thinking about.
Coming Home
After five days of being almost constantly on the move, a neighbor said the power was coming back on. We decided to head for home. Fortunately (?) we’d have two previous multi-day power outages, so we didn’t have a lot of food on hand to spoil in the refrigerator or deep-freeze. We had buttoned up the house pretty tight, so there wasn’t much smoke or ash to deal with either, though I think next time I’m going to tape the gaps in the back doors, which I should have thought of. Due to the winds, we did lose a couple of our sad patio chair cushions. All-in-all, we got off extremely easy compared to some of our neighbors.
Bouillabaisse for Bibliophiles
We unloaded the car and I went straight to my shelves, thankful. What did I read when I came home? I leaped at my copies of William Targ’s Bouillabaisse for Bibliophiles and Unpacking my Library by Leah Price. I had only recently rediscovered my copy of Targ’s Bouillabaisse after it had been in storage for a while, and I had reluctantly assumed I’d given it away. It’s exactly what you’d expect. A hearty stew of choice morsels simmered together to what really amounts to bookworm comfort food. My copy is special to me. It’s not special in any intrinsic way. I’ve had it for many years (and moves) now, buying it at the public library used book sale while I was in grad school in Texas. I remember reading it then and how wonderful it was as a balm to my bibliophilic soul at a time when my reading was guided by coursework. It’s an anthology of all kinds of book-related stories. Stories from writers, the great collectors, librarians, publishers, just about anyone associated with books (up to the late 1940s when it was published).
Unpacking My Library: Writers and their books
Leah Price’s Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books isn’t so much a special copy, but one that I knew would be a comfort. Stories from writers who range from ardent bibliophiles to others who just understand that books are useful tools without getting too sentimental about them. Several of them shared stories I found comforting. Stories of loss and starting over, and renewal, but also the power of books.
In the End, It’s Just Stuff
Going through the evacuation did not help me decide what I should take should there be a next time. Do I take the precious stuff? The sentimental stuff? The unique stuff? The valuable stuff? It’s hard to say.
Don’t get me wrong, I would be *devastated* to lose my home library. But what do you grab in a fire? I’m still not sure which books I should take with me when we evacuate for a wildfire, but I do know this: I would drop it all for my kid’s favorite hat, the family portrait drawn by a caricaturist, or anything else to bring my loved ones comfort as we sit and wait in terrible anticipation.
About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.
Discovering what you want out of life, navigating self-doubt, and standing on the threshold of adulthood is tough no matter who you are. Luckily there are friends along the way who can help us. For some, those friends happen to be made out of a splash of ink and a pound of paper. Quiet Girl in a Noisy World: An Introvert’s Story by Debbie Tung is one of those books.
When it arrived, Debbie Tung’s graphic novel looked familiar to me and no doubt why – I had been following her work on Instagram, which can be found @wheresmybubble. Her work has appeared in print and online in several places. I was glad to get my hands on this book.
This autobiographical graphic novel of Tung’s young life and entry into adulthood is told in single-page sets of drawings which makes it easy to dip in and out, or do as did and read it all in one sitting. She makes her way through graduate school, writing her dissertation, reflecting on her childhood and getting into a relationship with an extrovert — all with observational, self-deprecating humor and charm.
Tung’s book had a very similar effect on me as when I read Susan Cain’s Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking a few years ago. It opened my eyes to my own introversion and I found a kinship. I knew I was an introvert long before reading it, but there were parts of my personality that didn’t make sense to me, like my ambition, like my ability to be outgoing in specific situations. Cain’s book explores introversion in a deep dive and gave me a lot of helpful insight. Tung’s book is anecdotal, and more like a quiet cup of tea with a good friend, you can communicate with entirely by passive telepathy.
Tung also opened my eyes to differences in experience. Experiences I imagine that would be more common for young women who are introverts as well, navigating sexist behavior on top of their introversion. I’ve already pressed my copy into the hands of my favorite introvert to see what she thinks.
I’d recommend Quiet Girl in a Noisy World to introverts who are figuring things out and the people that love them.
What I love about working in museums is that there’s actually a lot of variety in the work. So, what can a ‘typical’ week as a museum curator look like? Meetings, duh, but let’s skip them. Lots of research as well this week. We get a few research requests every day. Some are easy, some are not so easy, and some we need to use a lot of creativity to get an answer. I also did some fun stuff, of course.
Back Into the Recording Studio
I read and recorded scripts for more history videos since our last ones have been a big hit. If you’d like to check those out, they are now live on Vimeo:
A replica medieval Irish reliquary was given to my organization’s founder during his visit to his native Ireland in 1947: https://vimeo.com/181851600
Poking around the dark corners of our recording studio, I found this gem. If your sound engineer is good enough to have worked at Opryland, they’re good enough for me:
More filming
The videos have been a big hit among administration, so we’re doing more! Here, one of our staff photographers is getting the goods on a crowd favorite artifact.
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Anything but typical.
These are just a couple things I did this week that wasn’t looking through folders filled with papers and staring at my scanner waiting for it to decide to cooperate. And I wouldn’t trade it for just about anything.
About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes historical mysteries and works as a history museum curator.
The Devil’s Feast by M. J. Carter Out of the Frying Pan…
The third installment of Blake & Avery has arrived (with another gorgeous cover!). I really enjoyed The Strangler Vine, the first book of this very early Victorian amateur sleuth series. The Strangler Vine is set in India at the dawn of the Victorian era and is a true adventure wrapped around a mystery. The following book, The Infidel Stain, took our British duo to London a few years later but didn’t quite enthrall me in the same way. For Feast, we remain in London, in the lanes and squares but also into the finest kitchens and private clubs of the age, where gentlemen are being poisoned. French celebrity chef and inventor Alexis Soyer, known perhaps only to food historians today, but quite real, plays a starring role in this newest book.
It comes as no surprise the history and details come across so richly from the pen of author M. J. Carter. Carter has previously written and published non-fiction history as Miranda Carter and her work is well regarded. Her research is thorough and it shows, but I know that’s not every novel reader’s favorite part of a good mystery.
… and into the fire.
I was very glad to see a new installment of the Blake & Avery series and hope for more. The second book didn’t quite capture me the way the first did, but this third book was better than the previous, but still not quite as captivating as Vine. One distinct criticism I have in this adventure is that we see far too little of Jeremiah Blake in this book. He has a couple very brief cameos before finally coming forward for the final third. It was in this final third as a reader I sat up and paid attention.
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RECOMMEND
If you love food history, the early Victorians, or just a good British mystery, get The Devil’s Feast and the earlier Blake & Avery books. I received an advanced reader copy of this ebook via NetGalley in exchange for my review.
About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes historical mysteries and works as a history museum curator.
Thinking of migrating from WordPress.com to WordPress.org?
Are you crazy?
I’m the age that we learned typing on electric typewriters. We certainly had computer classes as well, just not so many computers in the building we could just learn to type on them willy-nilly.
Number Munchers on an Apple IIE.
They were for serious stuff like Number Munchers and, be still my heart, Oregon Trail. I went on from my public school education to not become an IT whiz, though I’m sometimes mistaken for one, being a big white nerd who wears glasses. And knowing “things.” I, however, am not good with technology. So, when I wanted a new site for myself and my writing, I found a good free solution: WordPress.com. It was basically free. But then I found out it had a lot of limitations, like not being able to do Google Analytics, and mailing list integration and other boring stuff I’m learning about and wanting to do.
How I migrated from WordPress.com to WordPress.org
So, I found out I’d need to buy new hosting. I went to BlueHost and with a coupon or two managed to get 3 years of hosting for not much money. They’re one of the good ones specifically for the WordPress.org platform. I followed their tutorial and at least one other on youtube to get things going and got stuck. Big time stuck. Everything seemed to be in limbo except my homepage image. I tried a couple things to get my content back and … nothing. I could tell I was making it worse. So, I got some help. Lucky for me, my city has a public tech lab where there are volunteer mentors. The thing is, they’re busy, so to schedule time with a mentor, I’d need to wait a couple weeks.
I followed their tutorial and at least one other on youtube to get things going and got stuck. Big time stuck. Everything seemed to be in limbo except my homepage image. I tried a couple things to get my content back and … nothing. I could tell I was making it worse. So, I got some help. Lucky for me, my city has a public tech lab where there are volunteer mentors. The thing is, they’re busy, so to schedule time with a mentor, I’d need to wait a couple weeks.
A couple weeks of toe-tapping and VOILA, my mentor from Do Space in Omaha gets me back on the straight and narrow in about 5 minutes and shows me where I strayed and fixed me up. Then he showed me a few more cool things I can now do with my improved platform. “This looks way more professional,” he said.
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DIY Website Migration: Not So Bad
Thank you to the couple people who noticed things went wrong and missed me (it was very encouraging), and thank you to anyone who comes back. Remember: ASK FOR HELP when you’ve no idea what you’re doing. But don’t be afraid to dive in and try. I got 97% there with only the confidence to give it a shot and knowing the University of Youtube could be all the education I needed. It was close.
About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes historical mysteries and works as a history museum curator.
I subscribe to more than my share of email newsletters. I read many of them every week, but one I genuinely look forward to getting is Austin Kleon‘s. Austin is a writer/artist/creative who cheers for us all in our creative efforts (you’ve probably seen his Steal Like An Artist), and he puts out a great weekly newsletter.
So, who is George Brown Goode?
In this week’s newsletter, Austin talks about starting his new notebooks by selecting a “guardian spirit” for it. I love this idea. I always have two notebooks. I keep a notebook for personal stuff, fiction, whatever — *my* stuff. I also keep one for work, officially my Curator’s Log. Now, in personal notebooks I’ll add a “guardian spirit”, but it requires a bit of thought.
For my Curator’s Log, there’s only one choice: George Brown Goode. Wikipedia has a good, though brief, article on him. I found him during my studies in Museum Science back when I was a curator larva. Goode was way ahead of his time on museum theory and understanding, believing that museums were really a place for everyone and not only that museums have a duty to the public. It will likely shock some, but these can be revolutionary ideas even today in many institutions. GBG also basically worked himself to death by the age of 45 — basically by ignoring what we now call ‘self-care,’ something that people who are deeply passionate about their work also need to remember.
So, I made this and pasted it into my Curator’s Log this morning, featuring GBG with one of my favorite quotes from him:
“The Future of Museums” by George Brown Goode, 1901.
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With you while you curate…
So, thank you Austin Kleon for the great idea and George Brown Goode for the inspiration. Do you keep a notebook? Do you have a Spirit Guardians for your passions? I’d love to learn about them! Leave a comment!
About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes historical mysteries and works as a history museum curator.
I haven’t read all the nominated books this year, not even close, and I’ve reviewed even fewer — However, there are two especially I’d like to draw your attention to.
Come Twilight by Tyler Dilts is up for best paperback original (I read it as an ebook without harm). You can read my full review of Come Twilight by Tyler Dilts, the latest installment in his contemporary mystery-thriller series featuring Long Beach, California police detective Danny Beckett. Sorry for the dark cover, but it’s a screenshot on my darkened phone while reading in bed. Yes, it’s that good.
Earlier this year, I also read, loved, and reviewed Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye. If you haven’t already heard of this book, it’s a wonderful, edgy exploration of Jane Eyer’s story. You won’t be sorry you picked up this one, or frankly any other book by Lyndsay Faye. It also happens to have one of the most beautiful and interesting covers of the year as well.
Congrats to all the wonderful mystery writers on this list, and congratulations to us fans of mystery novels — we’re spoiled for choice!
About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes historical mysteries and works as a history museum curator.
