Happy Labor Day!

Uh, with labor union membership in steady precipitous decline since 1995, the recent fracturing of the major union into two, the dirty secret of major agricultural markets subsidized by impoverished migrant and immigrant work forces laboring in the limbo of feudal black market conditions, the crap pay and work conditions adopted by monstrous corporate entities (like Walmart), and the horrific unemployment rate (literally countless numbers have dropped off the official charts and never recovered), tell me -- what are we celebrating again?

Anyway, Happy -- Labor Day.

A few announcements today:

* The grand opening of the Center for Cartoon Studies is Saturday Sept. 10 from 2-4pm. There will be a ribbon-cutting ceremony, students and faculty will be doing sketches for the public; there will also be a table selling graphic novels, comics, and books (the Vermont cartoonist table). This is the big day for Director and founder James Sturm and everyone at The Center for Cartoon Studies!
C'mon up, down, or over to White River Junction, VT; for more info, phone 802-295-3319, fax 802-295-3399, or pop on over to

the CCS site.

* My daughter Maia Rose has an exhibition of her photography at Mocha Joe's in downtown Brattleboro, VT. No web link I can post, sorry, but if you're in the area, stop in for a cup of java and a look at Maia's latest body of creative work. Lovely, evocative stuff, if I may say so myself!

* Speaking of Vermont artists with works on display, check out VT cartoonist Ethan Slayton's work, now up and waiting for eyeballs in Burlington, VT. Some of Ethan's current comic work is hanging at Speeder and Earls Coffee house on Church Street in Burlington for the month of September. The Burlington Art Hop is happening this coming weekend, September 9th and 10th, which only sweetens the view. If you won't be anywhere near Burlington this month, well, hop on over to

Ethan's site.

* Looking for info and interviews on horror comics? Check out Richard Arndt's expansive and ever-growing site on horror and independent comics. Richard has posted exhaustive bibliographies and related in-depth interviews (including a couple with yours truly) for "The Early Independents," Warren's seminal genre mags (Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella,, etc.), Marvel's competing 1970s explosion of horror black-and-white zines, as well as Mike Friedrich's Star*Reach, the ribald Skywald horrors, SpiderBaby Grafix's Taboo, the influential UK anthology Warrior (from which sprang V for Vendetta, Marvelman aka Miracleman, The Bojeffries Saga, and more), the short-lived Web of Horror, and more. It's just a click away --

Horror Comics!

* Is Katrina one shock too many for the US economy? I'll spare you the details here, but highly recommend you give Reuters' Economics correspondent Mike Dolan's Sept. 1 article a read at

this site.

In short, the Administration whose best advice to all of us after 9/11 was to keep on shopping is ill-prepared, to say the least: As Dolan succinctly puts it, "U.S. economic health is so dependent on keeping its increasingly indebted households shopping that another drain on their already-stretched budgets could batter the economy." This Labor Day weekend in southern VT saw a plunge in the usual traffic and business, as gas prices inflated to record levels hereabouts ($3.25 a gallon and much higher). Locals are dreading the heating costs for the coming winter; coming on the heels of sky-rocketing property tax bills and fuel costs, many are already wondering what essentials they'll go without to make it to spring. As I said late last week, this is only the beginning...