It's a Dog's World

Don’t worry about the world ending today. It is already tomorrow in Australia.--Snoopy

Nathan Hess, my favorite philosopher, began at five to collect his thoughts. He read, and continues to study, the work of Charles Schulz, that calligraphic line of broken smiles and tousled hair, that dog wisdom and bird joy and 5-cent psychiatric help we know as Peanuts. I suspect others I’ve never met have in their homes a room called the “Snoopy Room,” filled with books and original cartoon cels and stuffed versions of all the children, dogs, birds that inhabit Schulz’s vision, but I’ve seen only the one in my friend’s home in Austin, Texas.

Because I know and love the man, I took my friend’s passion for the cartoon thoughts of Schulz and his creations as richly meaningful, and I could see the depth he saw in them out of the corner of my eye. In Austin for visits, I slept in the Snoopy Room amidst the crowd and the shelves of books, Snoopy Monopoly, clocks, statuettes, models and drawings--the various memorabilia collected over long years. It was sweet sleep.

This weekend my friend and I and his whimsical, grounded, always surprising wife Lisa visited the Charles Schulz Museum, gift shop, ice rink, and Warm Puppy Café in Santa Rosa. My friend had visited many times, avoiding the museum—or maybe saving it, always, for the future. How wonderful to find there what he has found in Schulz’s work—the moral compass, the What-Life-Is-All-About guidance, the human creativity and frailties as seen through dog, blanket, the music of Beethoven, curly hair, a cluster of birds, a typewriter perched on a doghouse roof, a snatched football, a night view of the universe while counting stars.

No problem is so big or so complicated that it can't be run away from!— Linus

Even the wood in its construction—chosen from among the trees that grow in Minnesota, where Schulz was a child—brings to this museum the warmth and care of its founders and docents. My friend was at home in the understanding and expression of Schulz’s philosophy, and he was by turns the five-year-old reading the early collections of strips and the man who has used what he saw in those panels to make sense of his own adult world.

My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I'm happy. I can't figure it out. What am I doing right? –Snoopy

We stood in the replicated studio with drawing board and library, family photographs, the artist’s “tools,” and watched a video of Schulz at work, commenting on each character as he sketched, how they came to be on the page, who they were and what they represented in the Peanuts legendry. The few lines, and those that were not drawn, to keep things simple. The few brushes, pens, with Schulz commenting that he’d never had much of a write-off for supplies. The books that supported the world he created—texts on the planes of WWI and the French Legion; Shakespeare; several copies of Gatsby, a book he loved. Nature studies. A biography of Georgia O’Keeffe. The collected cartoons he admired—from Thurber’s New Yorker half-blind scribbles to George Herriman’s Krazy Kat to Bill Mauldin's front-line WWII epic panels. History books and art collections, fiction that enlivens the era Schulz represents, memoirs and biography of the witty, the Warren Commission’s report on the Kennedy assassination, and much more. Reading that library, including the leather-bound collections of the Peanuts strips, would leave one wise.

Dear IRS, Please remove me from your mailing list.—Snoopy

One wall holds the work of Christo—plans for the wrapped doghouse where Snoopy lives (mostly on the roof) and works on his novel, starting over again many times with that indelible first line, “It was a dark and stormy night….” The doghouse is where he entertains (or perhaps at times tolerates) Woodstock (yes, named for the Event) and the flock, where Charlie Brown faithfully delivers Snoopy’s food bowl to his delight or complaint.

The finished Christo work, a gift of Christo and Jean-Claude, juts out over the first floor gallery, whose end wall holds a floor-to-ceiling work by Japanese artist Yoshiteru Otani. The ceramic tile mural is made of 3588 Peanuts panels, mostly daylight scenes. The few dark, starry nights form the image of Lucy holding the you-know-what for Charlie Brown just before she annually you-know-whats it as the NFL season opens. Another wall holds Otani’s Morphing Snoopy, a wood sculpture revealing the changing image from dog dog to the joyous dancer of our time.

In another gallery a wall of comics that inspired Schulz begins with the cover of a book about how to draw a cartoon that was a gift to him at age 11. One area offers an interactive children’s nature-study area filled with strips that focus on the environment. Near the research library, an entire room for children brings the study to the child who explores its wonders.

Try not to have a good time . . . This is supposed to be educational.--Lucy

I’ve visited only one other museum that brings so vividly to life, with such respect and understanding, the subject it celebrates. In Memphis, the National Civil Rights Museum, which I had never heard of before being handed a free pass along with my ticket to Graceland, occupies what remains of the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King was assassinated, with the balcony, his room, the car in which he arrived parked below, all intact. Beyond that wall lies King’s history and the history of a movement. A lunch counter scene with a TV above the sit-in setting plays live footage from the occupation. Rosa Parks’ bus allows one entrance; taking a seat activates the conversation between the bus driver and Parks as she is asked to move to the back and says no. The Birmingham jail cell from which King wrote one of his most famous letters is wholly replicated.

I've developed a new philosophy . . . I only dread one day at a time.-- Charlie Brown

As with the Schulz Museum, we see below the surface of a historical moment into the sources and manifestations of a philosophical unity that sustains that moment for us. As I watched my friend shift from child to man and back again, observed the artist at his drawing board, read the quotes that lined the walls--both Schulz’s and those who honored his work--I’m glad I was there. I’m glad that most newspapers are repeating the entire oeuvre of Schulz day by day, and that what his artistry has to teach us is as fresh and enlightening as it was before the ink was dry.

Photograph of Nathan Hess and friend by Lisa Hess. Snoopy’s image, drawn by Charles Schulz, comes from free clip art on the Internet.