Cartoon exhibit catalogue is at the printer!

Whew. Boy was THIS job a lot of work. But it's a really nifty book. The opening for Cartoon North should be a blast. Jamie managed to get a bunch of really great historical cartoons, and while most of the artists represented are from the Tanana Valley, there are still a ton from elsewhere in the state: Anchorage, Soldotna, Juneau, Chickaloon, Palmer, Copper Center, Barrow.

I'm VERY excited.

The old editorial cartoons are pretty interesting. Statehood, it turns out, was something people here had been agitating for back in the twenties; I hadn't realized that there'd been previous pushes for statehood. I also was reminded (by the later cartoons) of the partisan issues that came up during the statehood fuss: Hawaii was Republican, and Alaska Democratic, and that caused problems in accepting one or the other as a state by itself. The fact that both states came in so closely together is probably due to the partisan issue: it would affect the composition of the Senate and the House in terms of party. Funny how partisan politics gets in the way of governance and representation of the public.

So this show has already achieved the goal of educating the public (at least this member of the public)--and it's not even opened yet!