A Menagerie Of Beasties

I’d been living in Anza for about two years when my friend Dani wrote and asked me if I’d do some illustrations of creatures for the rpg gaming system she was putting together.

This is where the “coloring book” style I’d developed came in handy, because I could send her copies of pen-and-ink sketches until we’d hammered out exactly what a particular beast was supposed to look like…

…and then do the same with color copies (from Kinkos; a color copier in every home was still a distant dream back then) until we reached a final product:

That project kept us busy until Dani discovered the sweet addiction of BBSing (computer Bulletin Board Systems, for the youngsters in the audience: basically it was the social networking forerunner of the World Wide Web). She moved to Memphis, and I saved up my pennies for a year and flew out to visit her there, where I was quickly assimilated into the BBS collective as well. When I returned home she sent me one of her old computers so that I could keep up with the groups, and it was like a drug to me. I lived for the discussions and debates in those forums. My little 2400-baud modem connected me to people I could have actual conversations with (albeit slow ones; I would log on in the evenings and 30 to 45 minutes later I would have a complete download of everyone’s latest contributions to the discussion forums), and it was pure heaven.

You know, relatively speaking.

New Days, Old Truths

“The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit. Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men. Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.”

— Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1933