January 4, 2017 (Tosh's Diary)

January 4, 2017

I haven’t been sleeping that well, I think due to the tension of trying to raise funds for the Trump statue.  My purpose is to bring people together, but it seems that the road is way too large to bring both sides to the middle of the road.  I will not give up.  But the latest news on my front is that I can’t find the 8mm footage of “Greed” in my storage shack.  I’m now worried that someone may have taken it, or perhaps I just misplaced the damn film.  I have to imagine that it will show up.  I have lost things before, thinking that history has it in its closet in some different time zone or dimension, but then one day I would walk into a room, and there it is all of sudden.  Sort of the Borrowers system of little demons that lives in one’s house that takes away the other sock from the washer. It is often a frustrating experience, but once found, happiness comes back to Toshville.

Last night, feeling restless, I went to Counterpoint Books on Franklin just to window shop and look for ideas.  I came upon a book behind the counter that caught my eye.  It’s what they all a “Better Little Book.”   From 1935 to 1939, the Better Little Book published narrations from comic strips of the time, with illustrations.  It was very much a Depression era of book publishing at the time that attracted young readers.  A lot of the Walt Disney characters, for instance, Mickey Mouse/Donald Duck were part of this phenomena.   What I found at the store was a beat-up copy of “Mandrake the Magician and the Midnight Monster” by Lee Falk and Phil Davis.  Falk did the daily comic strip of Mandrake as well The Phantom.   Davis, I have to presume, wrote the narration to this book, and Falk supplied the story line as well as its illustrations.   It’s a beautiful adventure of a professional magician who travels around with a Black African by the name of Lothar.   How these two became friends or worked together is a total mystery to me.  What they do is solve crime by fighting various criminals throughout the world.   Mandrake had the ability to make others see visions of his choosing.   Quite a talent!

I then went home to work on my memoir called “Everything I Know,” which so far is about 150 long.  At the moment I’m writing this memoir by hand.  I use a ballpoint pen as well as a notebook from Muji, which specializes in designed objects of all sorts.  I tend to work late at night.  It is just usually an owl that sits on my window pane and me.  Hoot Hoot.