Back in the Studio After Holidays and Snow Storms...

I have been away and out of touch, but returned to the studio today to find a lot of great posts. Thanks to Txgirl and Patricia and others for their comments.

Txgirl asked a question about the last names of my characters... Val and Joan have the same last name, Stone. Val is a widow and Joan is divorced and remarried, so how did this happen?

Val and Joan are both "Lucy Stoners". Lucy Stone was a feminist from the 1800s, and she and her husband attempted to challenge the marriage laws of the day. Their two main issues were inheritance (women didn't get any) and maiden names. Lucy Stone believed that a woman should be able to keep her maiden name in marriage.

This practice was again promoted by Jane Grant, a co-founder of the New Yorker magazine. She created the "Lucy Stone Society" in New York in the 1920s, an organization to encourage women to keep their maiden names in marriage, as a way of asserting their independence. A woman who kept her maiden name was dubbed a "Lucy Stoner".

So, the family name is "Stone" in Stone Soup, and both women have kept it. When Joan had a baby last year, I finally had the opportunity to include the name Lucy Stone in my strip by naming her daughter "Luci Stone Weinstein".

Which brings me to another point, Wally Weinstein (Joan's husband) and the Hanukkah strip. Every year when I do a Hanukkah cartoon I receive mail about some incorrectness... different spellings of the word, numbers of candles, etc. Thanks for the details, I'll probably get it exactly to everyone's liking in 10 or 20 years. I can't always guarantee that the number of candles will be right on the given day of publication... and I have to spell it "Hanukkah", because that is the "AP approved spelling". But the spirit of it is to honor Hanukkah in the middle of all the Christmas celebrations, since I have readers in both faiths. I am, however, not Jewish, and rely on research and Jewish friends to affirm the cartoon's contents.

Don't get me wrong, I love hearing from readers about the small details. It means you are reading my work... and paying attention... and for that I am very, very grateful.

Happy New Year.

Comments

[Bart Lidofsky]

Have you found out why the (C)han(n)uk(k)a(h) Stone Soup strip was censored by Yahoo?

[Jan Eliot]

I've asked around at UPS and they are looking into it. It may be as simple as a glitch in the electronic delivery that day. I'll post if I get a definitive answer.

Cheers,
Jan