I was born in 1955, so I was a child when PEANUTS first began its ascent to national and then international popularity, and I was an avid fan of the strip. Later, as I grew older, I maintained my habit of reading the comic strips, and PEANUTS was one I continued to read, even as fewer and fewer strips continued to be published that merited even the few seconds it might take to read them. However, I noticed a change in the strip, I guess THE change referenced in this article...the strip seemed less focused, more diffuse, with new ancillary characters brought in that never really worked, (Woodstock and Snoopy's cousin Spike, for example, although I did like Marcie, Peppermint Pattie's friend), and, more to its detriment, the strip was only sporadically amusing, rarely outright funny, and never compelling, as it had been in its 60s heyday.

In the very last years of the strip, I thought it was often incoherent, or at least inscrutable; perhaps Schulz was expressing something that was meaningful (and comprehensible) only to him. But I noticed a more troubling change: Charlie Brown, who had always elicited our sympathy as the abused underdog, the lovelorn sad sack, seemed himself to have become hardened, unconcerned with and indifferent to the trials of his fellow PEANUTS denizens. This, more than anything, really damaged the strip for me, and I couldn't figure it out. However, after reading this article--and after reading it I want to read the book which is its subject--I realize that Schulz, the detached, self-absorbed, sometimes mean depressive was simply no longer sweetening Charlie Brown's character, but was (perhaps inadvertently) simply allowing his own personality to be reflected unalloyed in his primary character. In the end, we were no longer viewing Schulz through the scrim of Charlie Brown, but were witness to Charles Schulz naked on the page.

"That is why I no longer pray. I learned through many experiments as a child that it doesn't do a damn bit of good.

If it did, I would still be praying for stuff."

I am an atheist, but I'll respond to this by asking: what do you--we--mean by "praying?" When I see the tv evangelists reciting "prayers," their faces scrunched as if the spiritual effort to get their message through to god requires the same determination as doing just one more rep of that weight that one can only just manage, I notice that they are merely pleading for very specific material results to very narrow desires: help us prevail in our (specific effort); cure (named person or persons) of (specific ailments); provide material riches to (named person or persons) to relieve them of their material hardships; etc.

And I think this is how most praying people pray, as if asking the boss for a raise or a friend for a favor.

I'm no theologian, but I wonder if we have--acquisitive capitalists that we are--debased the notion of what "praying" might be. In my view, if one is to pray at all, it should be as a form of meditation, or as a sort of focused thinking about that which troubles us in our lives or in the world. In other words, it is a reflective attempt at problem solving. "I'm in a crisis in my life...how should I cope with it? How can I resolve the crisis?"

Studies and anecdotal accounts of the creative process invariably refer to the procedure of active thinking about a particular problem, followed by the arrival of an answer later, often as if from nowhere, in a context removed from the original moment. It's not that the answer to the creative problem truly appeared magically; after hard conscious thinking about the problem, the unconscious mind continues to work on the problem even as one's consciousness has gone on to deciding what to have for lunch, or when one is enjoying a relaxing pursuit, or even when one is sleeping. The mental calculations continue on a deep level and when an answer is developed, one's conscious mind becomes aware of it.

"Praying" in a less egotistical sense--"please cure my ailment"--can be and, if one wants real results, should be more along the lines of "how can I go on knowing I have this illness?" or "how can I manage this difficulty facing me?"

It's not about asking for some "other" force to satisfy a specific desire, but delving deeply into oneself to find the resources to manage one's life.

After reading the "conversation" between Shalaigh Murray and her readers that you linked to, I'm startled and dismayed...that such a contemptuous "I'm smarter than thou" nitwit seems to enjoy readers who engage with her as if they think her participation in their "conversation" is in good faith.

Consider her snarky non-answers; why do the readers not call her out on this? She responds semi-seriously to questions that do not challenge right wing orthodoxy, but her responses to questions that are critical of the decisions or actions of this administration are either derisive or are simply evasive and nonresponsive.

"There are straw men on both sides of this debate -- and they more or less have to exist, to create boundaries and keep the pressure on."

What?!

"I'm surprised at how much steam this impeachment movement seems to be gaining."

Really? Are you really surprised, Shalaigh?

Why her readers can't perceive the scorn for them that leaps from her responses is unfathomable.