I have been watching with horror the scenes of unimaginable destruction coming out of the mountains of North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Florida, and parts of Georgia and Virginia.

Eight years ago, in 2016, on our wedding anniversary, it was my county that was struck by a flash flood from a rainstorm so heavy that creeks became raging torrents that tore up bridges and swept away houses.

But that was nothing compared with what Hurricane Helene wrought.

When Greenbrier and Monroe Counties were flooded, we put boots, rakes, and shovels in donation boxes, along with cases of bottled water and other necessary items, to be sent down to help our neighbors in need.

Today, I feel so helpless. The level of devastation seems far beyond the ability of mere humans to undo. Buildings--towns--are not damaged, they're GONE. People there have nothing left but the clothes they were wearing when they fled through floodwaters that rose feet in a matter of minutes. Some are still stranded in their once-bucolic hollers, while others wander the streets filled with the debris of the towns from upstream, with no place to go because even the shelters were destroyed. Some folks have not had food or clean water in days. And over 200 people are dead.

It is heartbreaking.

But mountain people watch over each other. Convoys of relief supplies, organized by volunteers, are flowing into the area. People who get their power back run extension cords out to little kiosks on their lawns as free charging stations for cell phones. Folks on horseback and with teams of mules are searching along impassible roads for survivors, and bringing food and water in where they can. Restaurant owners cooked up food that would have gone bad and handed it out free to all comers.

Today I was set up at the farmer's market next to a couple of bakers who have kin in North Carolina. I overheard them discussing making a run down there with their church group and a truckload of supplies. At last, I could do something to help. I knew them, and I know the church they belong to--it's the one we can hear on Sundays from the Ranch, because they have an outdoor service rain or shine, and their soloist has quite a set of pipes. It's a mile and a half away through the woods.

I gave them a check for $100 to help buy supplies. Not that we could spare it, not after the summer we've had, but it was something I had to do. I can't go down and help, I have nothing to offer except a cash donation. A hundred bucks won't get much, especially if you have nothing at all, but every little bit helps.

They're going down Tuesday and will drop off their load and return Thursday. She said she might bake some things to take, too. They're concentrating on toiletries, gloves, flashlights, food that can be popped open, and other stuff like that.

I still feel useless to help, but at least I'm slightly less useless tonight.

Well, the aggravating hijacking of Fur Affinity aside, I won't be able to post my comics pages on Wednesdays for a while, as I've had to drop back to publishing just one cartoon an update day due to a series of overwhelming real-life events.

It's been a tough two months. The heat was brutal here, exacerbating the drought we're enduring. We did get two inches of rain a couple of weeks ago, which encouraged the grass in the pasture to start growing, but it's not enough to feed the sheep, and now it's drying up again.

My tractor, which was born the same year I was, needed new spindle bearings in its front right wheel, which had fallen over into the spindle column so that it could not move. Without a tractor I could not put out rolls of hay for the sheep, which meant I had to buy square bales, which was vastly more expensive--almost $300 to feed them for just ten days. We did finally coordinate with the mechanic to get the tractor repaired, and that cost us $940, plus a towing bill of $125.

Prior to this, my husband blew a tire on his car, and we then had to replace all four tires because they were worn. Another $350. Plus $90 for the emergency tire change on a dark road in the wee hours of the morning when he was heading in to work.

Then our freezer died. I didn't realize it at first because I still heard the motor running and the light came on, but the compressor had literally flamed out. It's a lucky thing the garage did not catch fire. Although I had smelled smoke that morning, I only realized what had happened when I got a popsicle out and it bent over.

So we had to find and buy a new freezer, for another $1000, and get the old one hauled off. Luckily my husband got one the next day, so we didn't lose anything in the old freezer (which we kept closed.)

And during these two months, in the heat wave, we lost five sheep. Out oldest ewe, Fawn, fell over dead, and I had to take her to be cremated ($90). Two sheep could not stand up, so we called the vet. Eventually the older ewe, Romana, was able to walk again, but the younger ewe, Bonnie, never got up, and we had her euthanized. We lost one young lamb to a bizarre accident where he got a foot stuck in an old set of steel bedsprings next to the fence, and pitched forward, pinning his neck under his body and suffocating himself. A second lamb wasn't looking so good, so we took him to the vet's (an emergency call on a Sunday afternoon) and despite much effort, it was clear by the next day he was not going to make it, so we took him back and had him euthanized, and autopsied, as well as had his head sent in for rabies testing (it was negative, thank God.)

The third lamb--ironically, the twin brother of the one that died on the bed springs--was found a few days later next to the water trough, dead. I had his fecal sample tested for worms. He had barberpole worms, but I think he died due to enterotoxemia, even though I'd just vaccinated the lambs for it a few days earlier. He probably was already succumbing to it when I vaccinated him.

So the bill for all the vet work came to $1700.

And I had to get our new Pyrenees pup her second set of vaccinations. At $275.

When I sent the eight late spring lambs I'd held back to market, they only brought $900 because the market was down due to the drought, and so many 4H fair lambs hitting the market now, flooding it. I was hoping to get around $1500 for them.

That much unexpected expense has really hit our finances hard. I had to swallow my pride and ask my Patreon supporters for help. Some increased their monthly pledges, others purchased commissions from me, and I am very grateful to them for their support.

And then on Saturday, I was changing the water filter in the crawlspace under our house, and the filter cup was on so tight, that in struggling to get it undone, I managed to crack one of the elbow joints upstairs in the pump closet because I was shaking the plastic pipe. Which required an emergency call to a plumber for repair, at $440. At least he was able to come out within two hours and get our water running again.

On a parallel note, I had to extract honey from my beehives in order to give them drawn, open comb to use to put brood and more honey into, and that process took a bit longer than I had anticipated. I had to stop in the middle of the extraction to wash and sterilize jars because my honey pail was full, and then filter and bottle up that honey so I could continue.

I'm telling you this because I've been under a lot of stress, which has affected my ability to work on the comic. I've had trouble figuring out which of the many plot threads I should follow next, and how I need to weave all the plot threads together to make a coherent story. That caused me to delay working on the strip until I was down to a single comic in my buffer, and without any time to work on refilling it.

So instead of going into another hiatus, I decided to cut back on the number of strips I publish in a week. And I'm still struggling to get my story sorted out and scripted, along with completing the commissions. I've actually gotten most of those completed and out the door. :)

Anyway, with everything that's been going on, on top of my regular chores (and watering the outdoor plants for an elderly neighbor who had a stroke a few weeks ago), I feel like I'm drowning.

I know you guys will say "It's OK, real life comes first, you take all the time you need" and I'm grateful for that support.

I just felt like I owed you all an explanation. And I needed to do a little more venting, after Saturday's plumbing mishap. That one felt like someone tossed me an anchor, just as I started to swim to shore.

Never mind the cheesy title--if you aren't watching this series, you should be!

My husband's brother Jim--who was a keen animation enthusiast, who collected cell art--used to enjoy this series, so when my husband saw that it was available on Tubi, we started watching it. (It's also available on YouTube)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcJCJ-MtpF8&list=PL2WSRXiO50er1j1CaIQqxof-9vEsjgsJR

The animation is excellent, the character designs are imaginative, the scriptwriting is top notch, the music is wonderful, the voice acting is spot on, and the puns are multitudinous, fast, and dreadfully funny. If you're any kind of sci-fi nerd, you will be splitting your sides at all the in-jokes and references.

This is a series that keeps getting better. I can't think of a bad episode, and we're halfway through the season. That may be the one bad thing about the show--it has only 26 episodes.

The basic plot is that a NASA test chimp in a space capsule went off course, and was frozen into suspended animation due to an internal accident. A long time later, the chimp was rescued by hyperintelligent beings who uplifted him and charged him with protecting the universe from a half-human, half-black-hole megalomaniac named Nebula, and Nebula's cybernetic henchman, Rhesus 2. To aid Charlie Simian in his mission, four other monkeys were wormholed in from Earth and uplifted--clever Spydor the spider monkey, hulking Gor the gorilla (who didn't get a full dose of the uplift process because he broke the device in a rage), wise Shao Lin the Chinese Golden Monkey (yes, a Shaolin Monk...ey), and schitzophrenic but brilliant orangutan, Dr. Splitzy, who shifts between being a calm genius and a redneck grease monkey. (This shifting is the one thing that bugs me.)

They also have an Orbitron supercomputer, but because it got damaged, it rarely makes sense, and sounds like John Cleese.

The show incorporates a lot of real monkey behavior. They use all four of their hands, they run on all fours, swing from the piping in their ship, and crave the difficult-to-obtain bananas.

The writing team includes DC Fontana and Nick Sagan (Carl Sagan's son.) It was developed by Gordon Bressack and directed most of the time by Bradley Rader. The voice cast includes Jerry Doyle, Maurice Lamarche, James Avery, Michael Dorn, Malcolm McDowell, Frank Welker, Karen Maruyama, Dom Irrera, and Jeff Bennett, who does amazing impressions of celebrities as the voices of the red-shirt Holoboons.

This is anthro animation at its finest and most intelligent incarnation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capta....._Space_Monkeys

I have a question for you guys, and I'm dead serious, and I'd like honest answers--

Did I go too far with this most recent storyline?

I was going to leave Kathy and Fred stranded on top of the Ferris wheel. Everyone would assume they "did it," but they'd insist they didn't. I was even trying to figure out ways to make sure that there was no question that they had not had sex in the gondola.

But as they say, "one thing led to another..."

I realized that leaving them there together all night--or even for several hours--would not be believable. So I had Jinjur come to get them down. I had every intention of having Jinjur actually drag Kathy off to practice for the big game in the morning.

Then--due to a combination of factors I'd prefer not to get into right now--I thought, "What if they blow her off and go have their wedding night?"

Fred had spilled the beans to her about Songween actually marrying them. That wasn't supposed to happen. Kathy was supposed to remain ignorant of that until much later in the story, again, for spoiler-y reasons I don' want to get into right now.

So seeing that they were actually married, and she had been crowned Heir, there was really no more Contractual reasons for them not to make love.

But...I still didn't want to go quite as far as I did.

As I worked on the script, though, I realized that I had been hinting at how difficult it is for spotted hyenas to mate, but never actually spelled it out. I couldn't get too graphic (even though Webtoons pulled the strips for being in violation of their policies on nudity and sexuality) but at the same time, I felt that I'd been teasing this relationship for so long that, well--in a way, I owed it to the readers to go as far as I could with it.

Which brings me back to me question: did I go too far?

I fear I may have upset some people. I've also gotten comments across my different platforms ranging from "Fred should throw her down and show her what he's made of!" to "Is Fred a rapist?"

The truth of the matter is, their relationship is complicated, by design. They were two strangers who had to get married. They don't have much in common. They are driven by a sense of duty. They have learned to appreciate each other and have developed an attraction for each other. Fred has psychological issues which he has spent twenty years bottling up and hiding from everyone, even himself, and they're starting to leak out now. His emotional side wants her. His logical side is still operating under the conditioning he received from his mother. He's like a starving dog who is too afraid of being beaten to snatch the meat that's been placed on his nose.

I get the feeling that I haven't really explained things enough, or at least, well enough. Fred is a sensitive, intelligent, but damaged soul hiding behind a stiff mask of duty and propriety. He hates to be the center of attention. He hates to not be in control. Kathy is as much of a whirlwind as her great-grandmother Songween is, and he's horrified that he will spend the rest of his life cleaning up after her. He is attracted to her, he sees potential in her, but he's a little repelled, too, because once he is her husband, he will have no power over her--he will, by Crocutan custom, have to do whatever she tells him to do. He does not want to lose the power he has as Head of the Household.

Of course I know all this stuff in my head, and I've talked about it here, and I hope I got enough of it out in the strip for his behavior to make sense, but I don't think I really did, considering the amount of confusion in some of the commentary recently.

The Crocutan culture is very different from our present Western human one. I based it on the mores of Victorian England, where women were essentially the property of their fathers until they married, then of their husbands. An heiress had to turn her possessions over to her husband to be managed. That's why Victorian fiction often featured an heiress whose father or stepfather refused to let her marry (and thus lose control of her money,) and of adventurers who tried to marry heiresses for their cash (and thus gain control of the money.) I of course just flipped it so it was the males who were the property of the females.

Well, that's the background of why Fred was vacillating about going to bed with Kathy. I also felt weird about making Kathy the sexual aggressor in this, because I felt it made her "not a nice girl," but when I looked back through the story, she was always the one chasing him around the room. Undressing for him? Well, they are married now, right?

But that got some other people concerned about consent. Of course if it were Fred trying to force Kathy to submit, many people would be upset about that. Kathy trying to get Fred to submit, and him resisting her? "Where's your balls, boy?"

I think that what it boils down to, is so many people wanted to see this go a certain way...which was different for each person reading it. And I don't feel I made anybody really happy.

So, did I go to far? Should I have simply left them on top of the Ferris Wheel...cut to the curtains...just gone off to play polo...or what?

Congratulations to all the winners!

https://ursamajorawards.org/index.htm

From the Ursa Major Awards web page:

"Voting concluded as of March 24. The winners will be announced in a special presentation at Golden State Fur Con on Sunday April 7 at 11:30am PST."

I'm surprised it's so soon--usually it takes months for the winners to be announced--but there it is.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to vote!

I want to thank everyone who helped nominate my comic strip Carry On for an Ursa Major Award!

I know I've won this category several times, but I'm still happy to know folks think that highly of my work!

I hope y'all will take a few moments to vote in the next couple of weeks. There's a lot of good stuff on the ballot.

Well, it's that time of the year again--the Ursa Major Awards nomination period is now open, and will run until February 17.

I'm sure y'all can think of some artwork, writing, or performance that deserves to be recognized by the premier award of the furry arts and literature community.

There's an extensive list of recommended works on the web site. A work does not have to be on the recommended list to be nominated.

https://ursamajorawards.org/index.htm

https://ursamajorawards.org/ReadList.htm

And while you're there, consider dropping a few coins into the ALAA's hat, they say they're skint.

I've read two articles today whining about the lack of snow this December in the continental US. They were written like not having a couple of feet of the stuff on the ground in time for Christmas is a massive tragedy.

Being a farmer, I work outdoors. You can keep your freakin' snow. I hate the stuff. Despise it.

I understand that a snowpack is vital to recharge the ground water, blah-blah-blah. But think about all the flights that won't be cancelled or diverted due to a snowstorm. Think of all the road wrecks that won't happen. Think of the black outs that won't occur when snow-laden trees fall on power lines. Think of the homeless people who won't be freezing in the snow. Think of the animals who won't starve.

Those people mourning their lost ski vacations ought to be ashamed of themselves!

The Snow Queen is a horrible, horrible person, La Belle Dame Sans Merci. I think the news and the weather channel are just sad they can't NAME WINTER STORMS!!! and DISCUSS THE SNOWPOCALYPSE!!! A brown-ground winter is dull. Pictures of drifts taller than the plows cutting through them--now THAT'S newsworthy!

I could smack Irving Berlin upside the head for putting the notion of the necessity of a White Christmas into people's heads. He wrote the song in hot and sunny California. It was recorded in May of 1942 and released in July of that same year. July! And Berlin was Jewish! What's he know about Christmas, anyway?!

No, I'm happy it's warm and snowless. So are my baby lambs, who don't have to tunnel through cold, wet snow to get food.

Mele Kalikimaka!

I know the subject of AI-generated artwork is a sore one, especially among artists, so I hesitate to bring it up here.

But recently I was experimenting with the Bing image generator, just to see how it works. I'd used it earlier in the year and wasn't impressed with the results I got.

But I learned that the more precise one is with one's description, the more likely one is to get it to cough out something close to what one wants.

And even when I was precise--like specifying "dark brown fur" or "with a white muzzle"--it still defaulted to a sandy tan for the fur on the hyena characters I was creating, with dark brown muzzles.

That said, I did get some very impressive results. So impressive, in fact, that I thought, "Well, that's that, I'm out a job..." because the algorithm could draw stuff better than I ever could.

However, I also noticed some really weird things, like two claws on a thumb, or four fingers and no thumb on a hand...and one of the characters was envisioned as a sort of taur, with four legs and one arm, holding a spear.

The AI made the tails too long on a number of the images, or used leopard-like spots instead of solid hyena spots. The eyes all look similar, although the art styles do vary.

It was an interesting experiment, but I feel I get better results creating the 3D models with Hero Forge, because the AI generator is random and largely unrepeatable.

I also tried plugging in "The Palace of the Lost City of the Sun in Pilanesburg, SA, drawn in ink and watercolor" and got back something that had a vaguely similar appearance, but was not really even close to the real hotel that I use for my setting in the comic strip.

You can see some of the images in the discussion thread at the CrossTime Cafe:

https://www.crosstimecafe.com/viewt.....ic.php?t=25549

I think it hit gold with the portrait of Jinjur Maiham. I'd almost believe the AI was a fan of hers!

https://www.crosstimecafe.com/viewt.....794548#p794548

I did a double-take when I saw the Halloween-themed masthead on FA.

Good news everyone!

My buffer's recovered (despite getting stung by a bee on my drawing finger!) and I'll be returning to posting six strips per week!

I'm going to have to drop back to one comic per update for the next few weeks, which means only one page on Fridays here. Due to a series of time-consuming events, I've been unable to keep my comic buffer adequately filled; and to add to the problem, I'm going into a sub-arc with a lot of crowd scenes, which take more time to draw than just two talking heads would.

Once I get some breathing room established, I'll start doing two strips per update again. It's either reduce the number of strips per week, or go into hiatus, and I hate taking a hiatus because I'd lose narrative momentum.

Thanks for your patience.

Well, we made it to Anthrocon on Saturday with time to spare, despite numerous road closures--yeah, Pittsburgh, have an ant farm, fill it with 10,000 furries, then close four of the roads around Ground Zero.

Other than that, everyone was cheerful, friendly, pleasant, and the staff were super-helpful getting us registered before Registration officially opened so we could set up for our panel.

You can cause quite a stir walking through the convention center with a real live dead hyena on wheels. Many people took pictures of Spots as we walked him from the parking garage up to the conference room and back. Yet many more people didn't even blink. I guess we weren't the weirdest thing they saw that weekend.

There had been an error in the printed schedules. I was told the panel was going to be at 10.30 AM. The printed schedules said 11.30. So we waited til 11 to allow people to drift in. I added about 26 new slides to the program, got a lot of laughs from the audience, and bullshitted my way through an hour and a half talking about hyenas.

I raffled off about a dozen signed prints. Oddly the last one chosen was a copy of "The Mistress Jade Trophy" photo, of a nude young Mistress Jade. Only a few minutes ago did I realize I should have called it "the booby prize."

I also raffled off a rubber hyena mask I'd bought, then found out I was claustrophobic in. The young man who won it seemed very pleased.

We joined some friends for lunch, did a tour around the Dealer's Den, then hightailed it for home because our house dog really, REALLY needed to go outside. We didn't get lost leaving Pittsburgh this time, but out GPS misdirected us off 219 south onto the smaller, twistier, and steeper 160. I hate our GPS. It wants to kill us.

We arrived home 13 hours after we left, had to clean up a rather large puddle on the floor (under the wee-wee pads, don't ask me how she managed that!) and unloaded the car, then spent today decompressing and recapping.

I hope any of you who attended the convention had a great time!

Addendum:

To the guy who sat up front, and showed me the picture of the lion sitting in a wheelbarrow--I apologize for my mystifying comments about "your comic strip characters," I mistook you for somebody else whom you resembled!

I'll be presenting a talk on "Hyenas Real and Imaginary" at 10.30 AM-noon on Saturday, July 1st, in room 315 of the David Lawrence Convention Center. If you caught my program last year, I'm adding a few new things.

The program won't be recorded this year. I have too many things I'm trying to get done in time to worry about that. It'll allow me more freedom to concentrate on the presentation.

If you want to meet me or just have nothing better to do Saturday morning, stop on by!

The 2022 Ursa Major Awards have been posted!

"The Whiteboard" by DocN. has won for "Best Comic Strip," and our collaboration "The Whiteboard: A Sherlock Holmes Story" has also won for Best Graphic Story!

Thank you to everyone who voted!

You can view the results here: https://ursamajorawards.org/index.htm

There's a link to the presentation video.

My Anthrocon panel on "Hyenas, Real And Imaginary" is scheduled for 10.30 AM on Saturday, July 1. I'm debating asking for a slightly later time slot.

If you attended my panel last year, I'm adding a few new slides and bringing my latest acquisition, a full-mount hyena. I'll also be talking about new observations from recent hyena research in the field.

We had a nice crowd last year and I expect to be a little more professional this year. :) I hope you'll drop by!

In my comic strip, I use different fonts to indicate how I think the characters' voices should sound. Jinjur's voice is arrogant and dry, so I use Papyrus. Madam Jade speaks with a Middle Eastern accent, so I use the more calligraphic "Matura." Songween has a quavering voice, so I use the wobbly "Blank Eye. " Murphy's "Jerry's Game" looks like the scrawl of a child. And so on.

I started off hand lettering the comic but was told my writing was nearly illegible, so I picked a font--"Beetle"--that looked like it was drawn by hand. This was my default font for the first several years of the comic. Occasionally I used different fonts to set certain voices apart, like "Wasser" when Kathy was diving underwater to speak to Morrie the eel, or the crisp and mechanical-looking "Copperplate" for Penthesilia's Darth Vader-esque voice.

When I added Fred, though, I wanted to indicate that he had an English accent. So I used Times New Roman, but eventually changed over to Book Antiqua because it took up less space. The use of lower-case letters makes the words look "softer" to match his dignified and somewhat smoky tone of voice.

Maybe I have some kind of synesthesia, where I can hear written words, but the system works for me. I used "Porky's" for Vyschuss, which is difficult to read, to make people slow down to the laborious speed at which she talks. I use "Andy" for small and cute characters, and "Digital Strip" for the loud and staccato way the Rackenroon hyenas talk.

Recently I've received some criticism about how unprofessional using several different fonts looks, and how difficult the fonts are to read. Now, usually, I try to pick legible fonts (with the exception of Vyschuss and possibly Songween) because it's the story people come for. But I feel that, if every character used the same font, readers would not be cued as to which ones have different accents. And in my large cast, there are a lot of accents.

It's no longer politically correct to write dialectical dialog, like Mark Twain used in his stories to brilliant effect. When I made panda lady Kuchiku Sosumi speak with transposed Rs and Ls, I was copying the way a Taiwanese friend of mine spoke, but I got chastised for it by several readers.

So what do you folks think? Does the use of fonts to indicate accents work, or not?

Full disclosure: I'm not going to change to a single font, because multiple fonts are now part of the look of my comic strip. I'm just curious as to your opinions as readers.

I was checking the Ursa Majors web site this morning to see when the awards will be announced, and it appears that they're still working on the video, so it will be next month (June.)

https://ursamajorawards.org/index.htm

The update notice also said that they had a much larger turn-out this year, and asked for donations to help support the production and mailing of the trophy plaques.

I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who voted in the 2022 Ursa Major Awards. I appreciate the support, and I also hope that you took the opportunity to check out the other nominees in the different categories, because there's some really fine work on display there.

While it's an award for anthro art and literature, the Ursas need the support and participation of viewers like you (to steal a tag line from PBS). Being a People's Choice Award, the more folks who cast their votes, the more "valid" the results will be.

It's also a medium for drawing attention to the hard-working artists who produce the stuff that keeps much of the furry fandom going. For those who win, it's a big deal.

The voting is now closed, and the results will be announced in about a month, so...stay tuned!

Thank you to everyone who helped nominate my comic strip, Carry On, for a 2022 Ursa Major Award! And thanks as well to everyone who nominated Doc Nickel's The Whiteboard!

The voting period is now open, and runs until March 31. Please drop in and cast your votes for your favorites! We can use all the help we can get!

https://ursamajorawards.org/index.htm

--I also just realized that our collaboration, "The Whiteboard: Sherlock Holmes" also got nominated in the "Graphic Story" category!

http://www.the-whiteboard.com/index.html

The nomination period for the 2022 Ursa Major awards will be closing on this Saturday, February 11th. If you have a favorite piece of anthropomorphic art, better hurry over to the Ursa Majors web site and nominate it!

https://ursamajorawards.org/nominations/

I'd like to recommend "The Whiteboard" by Doc Nickel. In my opinion it's one of the best comics out there. It's well-drawn and relatable, it updates regularly five times a week, and even the filler strips are funny! Mad science and paintball in the Alaskan wilderness, what's not to love?

http://the-whiteboard.com/

My panel "Hyenas Real and Imaginary" has been accepted for this year's Anthrocon. :)

When I get the schedule I'll let you know where and when I'll be presenting it. Since I have already done all the work for this last year, this should be a lot more relaxed. And hopefully I'll have a full-body hyena mount to use as a prop!

(Imagines myself putting casters on the bottom of the base and wheeling it through the convention center on a leash...)

I expect to add a few new slides to the program, and talk a little more on real hyena research, since it's an ever-evolving field. I also hope to have a few pieces of original art to raffle off.

The program was pretty well-received last year, and I hope I get a similar room and time slot, because it all worked out very well for us.

In the past three weeks, I've had 31 lambs born, which may not sound like all that much, but they tended to come in several ewes at the same time, each with multiple births. I'd no sooner finish drying off one lot than another ewe would go down in labor. One day I got only two hours' sleep. Another day I got up at 5 to check on a ewe and she didn't lamb until nearly eight AM, although she was in labor the whole time. I had to assist that one because she's got bad arthritis (she's a rescue) and I was afraid she wouldn't be able to get up to clean off the lamb. As it was, the lamb had its head bent down to the side, which I only discovered after I had pulled its forelegs out as far at the shoulders and no head came out; I had to push him back in, find the head, bring it around into position, then deliver him. His brother came shortly afterwards, but has a neurological problem and is unable to stand up. I think it's congenital, but it may be due to getting his umbilical cord pinched when I shoved his brother back into his face. In any case, I've been having to care for a crippled lamb on top of all the new babies and the usual farm chores.

This means I haven't had much time to draw. I'm down to the last three comics in my buffer, so I decided to drop back to one strip per update.

This means I won't be able to post a page here until Friday.

I hope that I can get some time to draw now that almost all the sheep have lambed. I have three I'm bottle-feeding because they are part of a set of either triplets or quadruplets. This has been the year for triplets--we have three sets--and the quads were like pulling clowns from a clown car. I had to help the mother deliver them, and each time I reached in, I felt another face. The weird thing is that she wasn't all that huge. The ewe that I thought was pregnant with triplets due to her size ended up having only one, a small one, that got stuck in the birth canal. She couldn't stand up, either, once I'd delivered her, and she died two days later. :( That mother had been a precarious baby herself--when she was born, she was very weak, and even went blind for a while, but she recovered. However, she lost her first pregnancy, had a healthy lamb in her second pregnancy, and now lost a third lamb. I may need to rehome her. Her pelvic opening was incredibly small. I really shouldn't breed her again.

Anyway, the rush is over, so I hope to have a little more time for my second job of cartooning. And maybe for my third job, housekeeping.

A few days ago, I was checking through the Ursa Major Awards Recommended List, and happened across an entry in the Nonfiction Section titled,
Ursas Major Issue Confident Self-promotion vs Humble Passionate Skill and Voting Systems https://www.flayrah.com/8645/ursas-.....voting-systems , written by one of the editors of the furry magazine Flayrah. I clicked on it and my heart sank when I saw that the writer was taking issue with my hat-trick of winning three Ursa Major Awards categories in the 2021 contest. He made it sound like I had done something underhanded by aggressively promoting my works and subsequently winning by rather impressive margins.

In the opinion of the OP, the Ursas are inherently flawed due to their voting system, in which a person awards three points to their first choice, two points to their second choice, and one point to their third choice. Some people only vote for a first choice, and "burn" their remaining points by not voting with them. The OP went on to show with charts and graphs how my works actually had fewer votes than the other contestants if all the points were combined...I honestly am not good at math, so this argument confused me. The suggestion was then made that there ought to be a run-off system instead, which would--somehow--make things more equitable. But what if the voter is only familiar with the one they're coming to support? Should they be required to throw the other votes to works they have no opinion of?

It did not seem to bother the writer when Rick Griffin's "Housepets!" won eight or nine years in a row, because he has a huge fan base. My fan base is considerably smaller, and I'm not on Facebook or Twitter or any other instant social media sites. If "Foxes In Love" had mentioned they were up for this award, I'm sure they would have won running away, because they are on Twitter.

Somehow, though, my efforts to get out the vote and get, firstly, nominated, and secondly, to encourage people to go back and vote for my works, stuck in this guy's craw. Isn't that how you win things? By actively trying to win?

The real irony is that I've been trying for years to think of ways to increase the readership of my strip, without having to go on social media. And my numbers have been steadily decreasing. According to my analytics, I have between 1000-2000 regular readers scattered around the world. Hardly a dominating presence in the furry art world.

Maybe my cartoon isn't the best artwork, or the funniest or most engaging story, but I work hard at it and I'm proud of it. Maybe the other candidates in the Short Subject and Illustration categories were much better--and I myself was shocked to win in the Illustration category--but did their creators even know they had been nominated? Had they mobilized their fan base, they probably would have won. After all, the Ursas state that they're a fan-based popularity contest, not a juried art show.

The Ursa Major awards do suffer from a lack of visibility. The organization is run by volunteers and they have a shoestring budget. I have no beef at all with them, they've always been pleasant and helpful when I've contacted them with inquiries. I'd like to help them raise their profile in the furry community. Many people are totally unaware of the Ursas, even folks who have been in the fandom for years. Some question the relevance of an award for furry art.

The relevance is, it's important to the artists to get some recognition. True, having a large number of Patreon supporters enabling an artist to make a living by what they do is the ideal. But I know several people, myself included, who have been thrilled to win an Ursa. It would be nice if it were more competitive, where the same few people don't dominate the categories each year. It would be nice to win with more than a handful of votes. It would also be nice to have separate categories for the Professionals, like Disney, and the Amateurs, so that name recognition alone won't guarantee an automatic win for a corporation that is oblivious to the contest.

The Ursa Major Awards are in danger of dying off due to lack of interest. I'd like to help promote them. If they could arrange programs or meet-n-greets featuring past winners at big conventions, to talk up the awards, and then to have a way for con-goers to vote on the slate of nominees, they would engage the public right where it gathers. Have pictures and clips of the nominees available, and a link to the web site.

The writer said that furries have an aversion to self-promotion (Oh? Is that why they dress as candy-colored dogs and run around with squeakers in their paws?) But here's the plain fact: No one gets anywhere in life without active self-promotion. Sitting in your web waiting for flies to come along is a good way to starve. As my father used to say, "He who whispers down a well about the things he has to sell will never reap the golden dollars like he who runs around and hollers."