At the moment, the header for this blog is this picture. I stitched it together from a couple of scanned images. It was inspired by a poem that Monte Schulz wrote, that was published in Happy Birthday, Charlie Brown, in 1979, as ‘Peanuts’ headed into its 30th year.
I salute you,
Speaker to the world
Through little boxes.I applaud the four little squares
A world watches and laughs with, mornings.
And I share the fortune
You grant us,
Allowing a peek through four little windows
Into your world each day.I cherish the wisdom lessons
and the story telling.
And always I treasure
The laughter,
Greeting every new morning.Speaker to the world
Through little boxes:
I salute you.— Monte Schulz
Yes, indeed, we were all young once, as I like to remind my son! I got the poem out of the “Happy Birthday, Charlie Brown” book, written by Lee Mendelson “in association with Charles Schulz.” It’s dedicated to Debbie and Jeannie, and I’m assuming Debbie is Mendelson’s wife.
Wow, where did you find that? I wrote it in December of 1976 as one of a series of poems I composed for family and a couple of friends. It got read on TV by Loni Anderson, I believe, and reprinted in a book about Dad some years ago. That Christmas on ’76, I printed it out on vellum and gave it to Dad as a gift. He kept it on a wall in his studio until his death and I think it hangs now in the Charles M. Schulz Museum. Thanks for showing it here. Thirty-one years ago, wow. We were young once, too.
What an epitaph. Just beautiful. And we salute your dad, too, Monte, forever more.