Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for April 14, 2013

That’s just so poignant.

I thought of George’s song, too. Amazing how simple a picture (photo or drawn) can say so much. SS Sandy really did a number on so many people, yet if we’re not from that area, we need reminding from time to time. Good one, Jimmy.

Arlo builds: Janis plants.

I don’t know…if those splashes of color in the last panel are supposed to be flowers it reflects what I’ve seen dozens of times. That the simple flowers planted by people often outlast those same people AND their works. One sees the flowers growing among the ruined and fallen buildings of what used to be a home and you cannot help but wonder about the people who lived there and the lives they had.A sad strip, but one that makes us aware of the fleeting nature of our own lives.

I was goin’ there.

I’m not so sure this represents a disaster. It looks to me like it is simply the ravages of time. A natural progression of life we all must face.

Yeah, the passage of time. Nothing lasts forever. All good things (and bad things) come to an end…Very introspective!

The Mississippi Gulf Coast, where Mr. Johnson (and Gene and Mary Lou and Gus) live, has a good many empty lots like that shown in the last panel. Hurricanes Camille (1960’s) and Katrina (2005) are largely responsible.

So sad.

In State and National parks throughout the Midwest, you will occasionally find a row of daffodils, separated by about 3 feet. Settlers to the area would plant these by the door as the flowers bloom early, thus providing some color. The separation shows where the door stoop was, and they’re all that’s left of that cabin. I see this strip as a wonderful tribute to those who went before us.

A lovely reminder that if we take the time to plant roots, they will be here as our calling cards when we are long gone.

I live in southern Alabama and have seen that staging before. A few empty steps or a couple of pillars leading up a dirt road to where a an old fireplace stands.No house. It is long gone. There you will see azalea bushes and honeysuckle and magnolias planted by some long-ago housewife. It is her continued gift to the world. A lovely strip today and one that will stay with me.

Yeah, nice strip. Thanks, JJ…..

Not tornado, just the passage of time.

We live n rural Minnesota. There are many of these old farms here, with just foundations or falling apart houses on them. I’ve always looked at them and feel a little sadness…for what used to be, and wish I knew their stories.

A bit like today’s For Better or For Worse…

A better example of today’s For Better Or For Worse

whatever it is. sure makes people FEEL and that in itself is the value of this comic strip.

Well, that’s certainly profound. I love this strip.

I was wondering abou the significance. I generally get comics via e-mail, but wondered if anyone had or would comment on it. I find it sad.

sic transit gloria mundi

Well done, Jimmy. When we see the flowers where an old house stood, see them as markers not of death, but of life. I’ve learned to replaced sadness with thoughts of what joys and challenges they experienced as they lived their span. I wonder if Jimmy sees it this way too. Their simple daily chores and doings, quiet meals together, were rich if they saw them that way. Live while you are alive, love breathing, seeing, touching, learning.

This one completely confuses me!!!!

Then again, it could be a metaphor for what’s left after the IRS is thru with you!

I always was a long view optimist so I still plant fruit trees.

There are a lot of instances of these where bad farming land has been re-naturalized into government forest. Always poignant.

A bittersweet reminder that we should remember those who have gone before us, and leave something positive for those who come after.

“Where have all the graveyards gone? Gone to flowers everyone”………………………….

Detroit?

I only suspect, but I’m sorry for your loss.

A True Memorial!

Everyone so un-enlightened, blinders on that you can’t see the true problem. People build their own FARM, and with the megafarming like Con-Agra that form of existence is disappearing. All of the true American dream is GONE !

History is repeating itself. In ancient Rome the smallfarmers were displaced by the massive, slave- manned latifundia while the manual trades were taken over by more slaves which left the plebians no option but to join the legions.

Made me think of the farm home on Ohio that was in my family since the late 1800’s. Last year when I visited, all the outbuildings are gone and the house is a trash heap. Very sad. Both my father and my grandfather were born in that house and my grandfather lived his whole life there. I feel like my family legacy there is completely gone. I hope that the inspiration for today’s comic was not something similar in the artist’s life.

When my mother (born during the Depression) was a girl she said there was a house on every quarter in Kansas. Now there isn’t a house on every section, and I have relatives farming over 2000 acres alone.

Where has everything but the flowers gone?

A sing of a comic strip can be art, storytelling, joke telling or making a point..Thanks JJ, you made me tear up. (Don’t do it again… Unless you have to.)

me too

sad. I often see ruins and think, “This was someone’s dream, now it is just this.”

Just blown away by today’s poignant strip. And that is NOT meant as a metaphor…or anything else. Truly touching! We are ALL going to simply not BE here some day!

I’m only 70, yet I’ve seen so much of these things. So sad…

I am 61 and I too have seen this way to much. It is all shopping centers and housing tracks. We will become dependant on other nations someday for our food.

Depressing, but true. We are only here for a short time.

I wonder how much the comments above represent the age of the commenter..

Bittersweet, JJ. But I see it all the time in old towns, little towns. Pass by and see irises and roses blooming, and nothing but the foundation.

I wish my grandparents could’ve lived in a place that nice. They lived in shacks in hard-scrabble, dust bowl Oklahoma where no flowers (or food crops) would grow. Many homes were lost when kerosene lamps got knocked over. All of the Grapes of Wrath experiences ended up with me being born in California, though, and I’m grateful for that.

I would say it is either a commemorative of comeone who has passed, or the strip is going to change.

Seeing your comments, I think of my granny’s house where Mom and her eight siblings spent most of their formative years. I visited it and lived there three months once. It’s burned down now

Reminds me of a comic when Arlo comments that the flowers they planted will continue to come back every year long after they’re dead. Janis mistakes it for a morbid idea. Lovely. :)

I wonder if Jimmy J. is trying to tell us something. I hope not. :’/

Is Janis burying Arlo’s ashes under the tree?

This is beautiful! There are still daffodils, janquils, narcissus and tulips coming up that were here when we bought the place in 1976. And daffodils still appear in the edges of fields where years ago there was a farm.

Gladys Taber always commented that you could tell old New England farmsteads by the lilac bushes that were now growing wild. Upon further inspection you might find remains of foundations, or even a cellar, but that’s how you knew where a farm had been, from the lilacs.

gone to flowers everyone….maybe there is an age component to our feelings about the strip. Gives me warm feelings and a beautiful way to remember what has gone before us. (I’m retired, if you are trying to figure ages)

I think the first and second panels should have been reversed. Looking at the land and then in the second panel the house is built. I think I would have gotten it right away then, but either way, good strip. Now I understand. Thank you all. And yes, it is sad and poignant. I am 59. Days get shorter on this end of the hill now. :-(

Beautiful, beautiful, so very human strip. …A few months ago I planted some bare-root fruit trees on our little suburban lot: mere sticks plunked in the ground. I was asked, not quite outright, why I wanted to put them in when I might not get to see them produce? (I’m not old but I am ill.) Because others will whether I do or not, and who doesn’t love a supremely-ripe perfect peach in the summer sun straight off the tree with the juice running down your arms? Such a rare and such a memorable thing. These are my gift to the future.

Wonderful strip today…

Thank God for those “Invaders” or else most of us would not even be here.

My Grandmother had this hand stitched sampler in her kitchen: Who plants a seed Beneath the sod And waits to see Believes in God.

Lots of those kinds of areas around where my grandparents used to live in Texas. Many of those small farms became larger farms and the kids moved to other parts of the country with better jobs. Wasn’t all a bad thing, hoeing and stripping cotton was hard work with small reward at times. Whenever I see an old farmstead like that, I always wonder about the people who lived there and the kids who grew up there.

Hmmm…

I didn’t see this as sad, or out of order…I thought my take was quite literal….but now I see that each person seems to have drawn something different from it…

In the ongoing strip, Janis is doing her Spring planting…

I saw this as an affirmation from JJ….

Panel 1, we see what looks like a nice house, years ago, when it was new….Panels 2 and 3… Standing there beside his ladder and tools,to show us that he built it himself, a man proudly shows it to his new bride..who is thrilled, then proud and grateful…So in panel 4, she puts in a garden…which to some may look like a small gesture…yet in the end, when the people have moved on, Nature takes over, and the house is eventually gone…. but the flowers remain.

So the woman’s contribution was not small….in fact she probably also bore children…whose generations live on..The seeds she nourished . outlasted the things of man.

So many of those old farm houses have disappeared in the last 20, 30 years. In the area where I grew up, where there had been several homes on every mile of road, many looking like this one here, you can now drive for miles and not see a one. The one I grew up in is still there, but looking its age. Very nice today, a little sad.

You can tell several stories by rearranging the panels. I like having what’s now the last one as the first. Now go counter clockwise. The reclaiming has begun, the house is framed, and the house is finished on the next panel. The couple is happy and has hope and start planting for the future.

Win lose or draw, it is sad and a downer—when you are days away from your 74th, and famous and not famous people are dropping like flies…….

I did not need this.

Is today’s date significant to this strip? A memorial to something?

Looks like Detroit.

This is very good. I’d really like Mr. Johnson to give us some insight on what made him draw it.

Here in eastern Oregon, it was a pair of cottonwood trees planted on either side of the front porch. You can often locate the site of old farmhouses and homestead cabins between the rotting remains of a pair of matching cottonwood trees.

I see nothing sad about it, just a reflection on a generation, a family come and gone and as all have or will. Life, pure and simple and beautiful.

A not uncommon sight in the rural midwest.

I kind of expect to see a bouquet of deflated baloons in the overgrown yard too…and a stout scout leader showing the site to his son and other scouts.

Up north it’s lilacs and apple trees for the yard, bachelor buttons and daffodils by the door…and the hops plants out by the woods.

I keep coming back to look at this one and see something more every time. Like in panel 3, the missus is thanking the Lord for this wonderful home. It’s why the farmer has his hat over his heart. And in panel 4, the little bag likely contains bulbs that friends have shared. Reminds me of the song, “If nothing ever lasts forever, what’s forever for?”

My Gram used to take me driving in the hills of Western Pennsylvania and point out rose vines blooming in the woods where there once were settlements.

I also think all that is being depicted here is the passage of time, but nonetheless many of the still-vacant lots since the Joplin tornado have lovely spring flowers in evidence right now.