Growing up, my mom would save me the newspaper before she recycled it so I could look at Kim Casali’s “Love Is…” comic, and when I moved to college she’d cut them out and mail them to me.
There would be a new comic each week of the same cartoon girl and boy. One scene shows them holding a mended heart with the phrase, “Love Is… patching things up”. And in another, they are huddled together on a bench in the cold with the phrase, “Love Is… knowing you will always keep me warm”.
These originated in the late 1960s, when Kim would draw pictures and leave them as love letters for a man named Roberto, whom she’d eventually marry.
Her comics were syndicated in the ’70s and have been kept alive in the decades after her death by her son, Sefano Casali, and artist Bill Asprey.
These cartoons simplified what it means to love, and how it feels to be seen.
When I chose “abundance” as my theme for July’s photos, I had visions of vacuum-sealed fillets and overflowing ice cream cones. But my July was different and I didn’t feel abundance.
Worried that my photos wouldn’t show the theme, I forced myself to simplify what abundance meant to me. And in that simplification, I again started to see Anchorage — and my life — through different eyes.
This month, abundance looked like extra phone calls with mom, only a little bit of mold on my fruit, rhubarb and forget-me-nots.
Abundance Is (from your fellow Anchoragites)…
“Treating friends and family to a good meal or life experience”
“Signs of life”
“Sleep and a well-groomed yard with the right amount of natural clutter”
Thanks to Stewart’s Photo Shop for local film supplies and Young Kim with The Stoop PRC for film developing and scanning.
