{"id":121,"date":"2007-08-23T06:20:11","date_gmt":"2007-08-23T11:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/blog\/2007\/08\/23\/its-still-summer-lighten-up-2\/"},"modified":"2007-08-23T06:20:11","modified_gmt":"2007-08-23T11:20:11","slug":"its-still-summer-lighten-up-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=121","title":{"rendered":"It’s Still Summer — Lighten up!…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"GRBJ0613.gif\"<\/p>\n

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal<\/em>, August 13, 2007<\/p>\n

A couple of weekends ago, we Auchters were hard at work on various painting and cleaning projects around the house. Nothing major — just the sorts of projects that are ideal for summer. You know, the ones that typically get blown off till the last nice day of November.<\/p>\n

My particular task was to repaint the basketball court. The key word: repaint. No thinking involved. I decided to play some music and grabbed my old boombox. The CD player on it can be dodgy, so I dug out a few old cassette tapes, most of which I haven’t listened to in at least 10 years. The one I played was 10,000 Maniacs, “In My Tribe.”<\/a> Remember that? Late 1980s, Natalie Merchant on vocals? I remembered liking it. In any case, I bought it. Well after listening to one side I clicked stop and decided to store the Maniacs away for a long, long time.<\/p>\n

Oh the music was okay. Jangly. Poppy. But it was the lyrics! C’mon Natalie, lighten up, can’t ya?! Poverty, alcoholism, spouse abuse, despair, heartache, LORDY! Here I was on this cheery summer Sunday afternoon merrily slapping new paint to brighten one of my happy places, and I was gettin’ all bummed out. Where was my “Whistle While You Work”?<\/p>\n

Now I understand the need to address social issues and tell the stories of the downtrodden, but why so relentlessly negative, so soul crushing, so glass-fully-empty, so… so much like an editorial cartoon?…<\/p>\n

Right. Well. I therefore endeavored to find a bright side with my next editorial cartoon, the one you just read. It was more difficult than I had imagined. It turns out negative goes hand-in-hand with irony, sarcasm, parody, sanctimony and all the other tools of the trade. A positive spin arouses suspicion — the acrid fumes of marketing come wafting by. So I guess I cheated a little by taking a swipe at TV journalism, but I did attempt to feature the uniquely American virtues of tenacious optimism and entrepreneurial spirit. What do you think?<\/p>\n

Next week: Back to “it’s all going to hell.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, August 13, 2007 A couple of weekends ago, we Auchters were hard at work on various painting and cleaning projects around the house. Nothing major — just the sorts of projects that are ideal for summer. You know, the ones that typically get blown off till the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grand-rapids-business-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}