Legendary cartoonist christens USS Georgia with drawing

Alan NeSmith writes about Jack Davis for the Tribune and Georgian in an article titled Legendary cartoonist christens USS Georgia with drawing.

Hat tip to Journalista!

This Toon is Your Toon

THIS TOON IS YOUR TOON is a handy pocket-sized collection of cartoons that Stephanie Piro and John Nolan edited. You can only get it this week at the 10th Annual Woody Guthrie Festival. The book is a fund raiser for the Oklahoma Chapter of the Huntington's Disease Society of America.

Steph and John are at the festival now, enjoying the event after their long, dusty long cross-country drive from New Hampshire. (Actually, it probably didn't take them too long what with the way John drives.) My friends Patricia Storms and Rod McKie have more information about THIS TOON at their blogs.

I'm not that familiar with Woody Guthrie, and I had to reveal to the aforementioned editors my absolute ignorance. What kind of cartoons are you looking for? "Woody was concerned with social injustice," I was told. Well, I have some of those kinda cartoons.

Since you may not get a chance to get to Oklahoma before the book sells out -- and it's not on the Web or in PDf format or appearing in the Diamond Catalog or on eBay -- below are some of my cartoons that appear in the book:


Above: The first cartoon I sold to a national publication (National Review) way back when.


"Sanders, I just sold your soul. You weren't using it were you?"

This is what Sanders gets for not reading that contract! First published in Prospect Magazine (UK).


"Come in, Thompson. But before you get any time with me, you'll have to watch a short advertisement."

Another evil bald boss. Originally published in Harvard Business Review.


"Ten more minutes of media manipulation and then it's off to bed."

In my mind, I hear my mom's voice in this punchline. First appeared in Wall Street Journal.

"Hopkins deserves to be fired, but we can't touch him since that endangered owl began roosting in his office."

This cartoon was originally in The Ladders.com Web site, and an original of the cartoon was just sold at the Art for Animals auction for Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary.

I want to let everyone know that Steph and John put a ton of work into this great book. They really deserve recognition for their efforts. And the cover is by my friend editorial cartoonist Tom Stiglich, who donated the original cover drawing to be auctioned off at the Festival.

ART FOR ANIMALS Auction Saturday

There's a charity auction to benefit the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary this Saturday, May 19, 2007 in NYC. The auction has over 100 works of art, including some cartoons by Dan Piraro (who helped in the thankless task of organizing the cartoonists' submissions and, knowing Dan, he probably did a lot more), Garry Trudeau, Elwood Smith, Mort and Greg Walker, Carol Lay, Mike Peters, Isabella Bannerman, Margaret Shulock, Ruben Bolling and much more. And me -- Mike Lynch, too! Click here for a preview.

Loans for the Working Poor

Cleansing the cartoon talk palate ....

Nicholas Kristof's "You, too, can be a banker to the poor" in the March 26 NY Times (available online only to Times Select members) details micro-loans to small businesspeople in Samoa, The Ukraine, Ghana, etc. Kristof's blog entry has some links.

What drove my interest was Kristof's column. Too bad it's sitting behind a firewall. I hope that his blog is not.

If you are developing a small business in these parts of the world, you have no access to credit. There are money lenders, but the interest charges are usury (kinda like the credit card companies or payday loan companies here -- but worse). Sites like Kiva.org have been set up so that you can loan a minimum of $25 to someone who has a small business. Kiva's site lets you see each individual's business needs and the loan that they are seeking.

This kind of personal, small scale helping appealed to us, and we wanted to share it here.