One of you mentioned you can't stand how Calvin and Hobbes' dad

[conuly]

drags the entire family camping every year even though neither his wife nor kid enjoy it.

Well, here's Baby Blues. Enjoy it! (Also, a bonus Sheldon comic.)

*********************************************

Why the scientific finding that trees “sleep” at night is beautiful

The evolution of the ribbon-cutting ceremony, as seen through the sharp blades of a huge pair of ceremonial scissors.

Human Milk May Solve Ice Age Evolutionary Mystery

How ‘Ennobling’ Helped Italian Aristocrats Solve the Problem of Garlic

Why Airline Credit Cards Have an Enduring Appeal

Why legal marijuana is abandoning weed’s old slang

Concrete is a disaster for our planet: can the building industry break its addiction?

Scientists Figure Out Why Roses Don't Smell as Good as They Used To

Peppa Pig wins street cred, attracts censors in China

Democrats lose ground with millennials - Reuters/Ipsos poll

Financial stress is rising for low- and middle-income U.S. households

How US abortion debate got to this point

Facebook and Emotional Labor

Creepy or Not? Your Privacy Concerns Probably Reflect Your Politics

How Puerto Rico's Debt Created A Perfect Storm Before The Storm

Trump Just Blew Past Two Deadlines for Reporting How Many Civilians The US Kills

Almost Everybody is Breathing Toxic Air, but 90% of Air Pollution Deaths Occur In Developing Countries

The Hard-to-Trace Ingredient Behind Skyrocketing Cocaine Deaths

A fractured peace – violent rivals rush into FARC void in Colombia

Federal Agencies Lost Track of Nearly 1,500 Migrant Children Placed With Sponsors

Comments

[greghousesgf]

is Ted Calvin's dad? we never did know what his name was

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

I ADORE Calvin's Dad, for so many reasons, and really feel sorry for him that his family hates camping so much.

Did you ever read The Egg And I? An excerpt:

Mother and Daddy fished incessantly and we had Rainbow trout, which we children loathed, three times a day. Sometimes Gammy came camping with us but only when we had cabins and didn't spend our days "traipsing" through the mountains. Gammy stayed with us while Mother and Daddy took trips and fished and although they were considerate and always asked if we cared to come along, we always refused because Mother and Daddy loved danger and were always walking logs over deep terrible ravines; walking into black dangerous mine tunnels; wading into swift turbulent streams and doing other scary things. Gammy, on the other hand, carefully avoided danger and was constantly on the alert for it.

Summer days with Gammy were spent in her cabin with the doors and windows shut tight against the dangers of mountain air. We would all crouch around her rocking chair while she read to us out of Pilgrim's Progress and fed us licorice drops out of her black bag. This routine was varied occasionally by a thunderstorm, whose first clap of thunder sent us hurtling under the bed clutching feather pillows and praying, or by very short walks during which Gammy called us all to a halt every few feet to listen for rattlesnakes. She had us whipped into a state where the rattle of a leaf would turn us white and sweaty and send us scurrying home to the safety of the cabin. Gammy impressed us with all of the dangers of outdoor living. She warned us against eagles, hawks, bees, flies—horseflies which bit—mosquitoes and gnats which might attack from the air; ticks, snakes, leeches, and bugs which might spring snarling from the ground; and she had us convinced that the trees along the edge of the clearing where our cabins were, were like the bars of the cages at the zoo and just behind them prowled hundreds of timber wolves, grizzly bears and mountain lions fighting for a chance to eat us.

From the summers we spent with Mother and Daddy camping in tents, we returned to town brown and healthy, but from the summers spent with Gammy, we came back as jumpy as fleas and pale and scraggly from the hours of lying on feather pillows under the beds praying during the thunderstorms and the days crowded in the close cabins out of the reach of groping fangs. We, of course, never told brave, fearless Mother and Daddy about Gammy and the dangers of outdoor life, and they probably wondered why they, so strong and daring, should have produced this group of high-tensioned rabbits.

Mikhail and I are somewhat bemused to have produced this urban, urbane, formidable flower of Civilization, after all the wilderness and counter-culture she was brought up in. Her opinion of camping is much the same as Calvin's. I hope I have at least one grand-child who longs for the woods and waters wild as much as I did in my suburban youth.

[conuly]

No, I never have read it!

Meanwhile, I'm dubious about the benefits of the outdoors, and yet Eva is itching to drag us all camping by hook or by crook.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Camping is one of the supreme joys of life! But see, I'm one of those people like Calvin's Dad. As for the benefits of the outdoors: I'm 60, and fitter than most people half my age.

Sitting indoors staring at a flickering screen rots the body and the brain; it's like keeping an animal locked in a little cage. So YES, by all means go camping!