You’ve read their antics on the comics page of your local newspaper. They’ve celebrated life’s milestones with you in greeting cards. And they’ve made appearances just about everywhere, from your TV to toy stores.

Charles Schulz’s Peanuts gang

Charles Schulz’s Peanuts gang celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2025. The imaginative, adventurous Snoopy, with his owner Charlie Brown – ever the lonely underdog and figurative punching bag – and all of their friends have endured as pop culture icons since the Baby Boomer Generation. But did you know that Kansas City plays a crucial role in
their legacy?

Jean Schulz, widow of Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz, maintains a blog for The Charles M. Schulz Museum, whose home is in California. On her blog, Jean offers visitors a peek into the inner workings of her late husband’s storied career, as well as the museum itself. In a 2018 post, she tells the story of the Peanuts gang’s connection to Kansas City – and a little greeting card company called Hallmark.

The Kansas City Star began running Peanuts comic strips in 1959; around that time, a Hallmark employee named Arnold Shapiro, a longtime fan of the strip, approached Hallmark executives with a proposal, believing that the life philosophies espoused by the Peanuts characters were ideal to be portrayed in the company’s greeting cards.

The bigwigs at Hallmark

The bigwigs at Hallmark seemed to agree, and the company teamed with United Media to produce prototypes of these greeting cards, which would be test sold in stores throughout the Kansas City metro area.

The cards were an instant hit. Shapiro traveled to Chicago to meet with Charles Schulz (fondly referred to by his wife as ‘Sparky,’ a lifelong nickname), and Shapiro said the two felt instantly connected. The plan moving forward was that Hallmark copywriters would draft ‘sentiments’ for each card and send them along to Schulz, including suggestions for which characters to include in the card. Schulz would personally draw the art for each card until the 1970s, when Hallmark artists became tasked with the duty. Hallmark’s offerings, of course, would eventually branch out to include toys, party goods, wrapping paper, and more.

Holiday Films

The holiday season is big business for the film industry, and even though many former moviegoers prefer to stay home and stream their favorite movies these days, there are still some of us who continue to flock to movie theaters to watch the latest flicks on the big screen.

Price, of course, can be assumed to be the primary deterrent keeping butts out of movie theater seats – the other, of course, being convenience.

Nearly a century ago, the industry faced much of the same problem. The economic disaster wrought by the Great Depression rendered going to the movies impossible for families struggling to survive; for many, the moviegoing experience was a luxury simply out of reach.

Movie palaces tried to incentivize those same folks who had dropped regular moviegoing from their routine by giving away inexpensive glassware and dishes. Those theaters partnered with marketing firms to create a “Dish Night,” a weekly giveaway to housewives who brought their family to the movies. Each woman would receive one dish per person each week, and after as few weeks, she was able to amass full dinner sets.

Inexpensive dishware

“Inexpensive dishware, purchased by the railroad car-full, cost perhaps five cents per piece. Successful Dish Night programs could attract 250 women, who usually brought their husbands or family along with them to the show,” according to the International Museum of Dishware Design, which hosted a related exhibit, “Dish Night at the Movies,” early last year.

Today, complete collections of that Dish Night dishware sell online for anywhere from a few bucks up to $100.

One of the most prominent companies to partner with movie theaters on these campaigns was the Salem China Co. of Salem, Ohio. Since the 1920s, the company had “promoted bulk dishware sales to furniture stores and banks to offer as free bonus gifts when a family purchased a dining room set or opened a savings account. Salem was among the quick-thinking potteries and distribution companies that now sought to spread the appeal of “something for nothing” to struggling movie theater managers,” according to the museum.

Still, despite the fact that these dish sets were relatively common, they can be difficult for collectors to identify.
“There is no easy way to identify for certain if particular plates, glassware or kitchenware came from a “China Night” giveaway.

Until the mid-1960s

Until the mid-1960s, the act of smoking was an everyday part of our daily lives.

Whether at work, mowing the lawn, preparing dinner in the kitchen, or driving the kids to school, it seemed like everywhere you looked, you saw an adult puffing away on a cigarette. For decades, the mass media’s effort to craft generations of smokers was aggressive and ever-present. Magazine advertisements quoted doctors who convinced us that smoking was actually beneficial for your health. Entire radio and television programs were sponsored by brands such as Lucky Strike. At the movies, film stars like Cary Grant and Joan Crawford made smoking look sophisticated and fashionable. Cigarettes and their influence were synonymous with the routines of our daily lives. We were, as one company so aptly exclaimed, a society “alive with pleasure!”

All of that changed in 1966, when the first warning labels about smoking’s risks were slapped onto packs of cigarettes; the following year, the first tobacco control media campaigns hit the airwaves. A group called Action on Smoking and Health filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission, arguing under the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine that TV and radio stations had to allow just as much airtime for anti-smoking messages as they did for their tobacco advertisers.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

A few years later, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that each state earmark money to specifically educate the public on the dangers of smoking (the first statewide anti-tobacco campaign was launched in 1982 in Minnesota). It would prove difficult to take on Big Tobacco, whose pockets seemingly had no bottom, thanks to the influence of political lobbyists at higher levels of government.

Even more difficult is the emergence of characters like Joe Camel, the brainchild of RJ Reynolds Tobacco Co., invented in 1984 for their cigarette brand Camel. Designed to appeal to children, a 1991 study found that Joe Camel was just as familiar to children as the Walt Disney Channel’s logo.

For adults, the Marlboro Man came along in the mid-20th century, following decades of Marlboro cigarettes being marketed to women as slim and flavorful. The image of the rugged cowboy appealed to a man’s masculine nature, and the character became the face of the company for the next several decades.

Pumpkin-carving season

Autumn is upon us, and with it comes pumpkin-carving season. Maybe you’re planning to load the family up into the car and head out to your local pumpkin patch to pick out the perfect decorative squash to adorn your front porch. I remember pumpkin carving with my dad and brother when I was a kid – Dad would roast the pumpkin seeds in the oven, and we’d enjoy the salty treat for days after.

I’m reminded, too, of one of the oldest and most beloved Halloween tales that even the youngest among us recognize to this day – “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” starring that most bone-chilling of villains, the Headless Horseman. The jack-o’-lantern features prominently in this story, which has spooked Halloween revelers for more than two centuries.

“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” was originally published as a short story in 1820 by Washington Irving. Set in 1790 in a Dutch settlement in New York, it tells the story of Ichabod Crane, a lanky schoolteacher who also is highly superstitious. Ichabod plans to win the heart of a young woman named Katrina Von Tassel, the daughter of a local wealthy farmer, and secure the family’s riches for himself.

The Von Tassel family invites Ichabod to a harvest party, where he competes to win Katrina’s affections alongside Abraham Van Brunt, the town bully (think Gaston from “Beauty and the Beast”).

Headless Horseman

At the party, Abraham regales the crowd with the story of the Headless Horseman, which legend says is the ghost of a soldier decapitated by a cannonball during the Revolutionary War. The horseman is buried, he says, in a churchyard nearby, rising every night to look for his missing head. The horseman is only unable to cross a bridge that stretches across a stream along the way, barred by otherworldly forces.

Ichabod leaves the party on horseback later that evening after being rejected by Katrina; on his way home, he encounters a mysterious cloaked rider, who chases Ichabod and his horse. Ichabod crosses the bridge, while the horseman, unable to cross, hurls his severed head at the terrified schoolteacher and his horse.

The following morning, Ichabod’s horse is found, but Ichabod himself is nowhere to be seen. The story implies that the horseman was actually Abraham, Ichabod’s romantic rival, who flung a jack-o’-lantern at Ichabod as a false head – a smashed pumpkin was found close to the bridge.

September is National Library Card Sign-Up Month

September is National Library Card Sign-Up Month, and if you’re a lifelong reader like me, you know there’s no better feeling than getting settled down and started on a new story to inspire your imagination.

I was that kid who, every week in elementary school, would accompany his class to the school library and browse the stacks for a new book or two in which to lose myself. And when those Scholastic Book Fairs rolled into town? Hoo, boy, I was in hog heaven, taking my allowance to school and coming home with a book or two in hand.

As I got older, I enjoyed venturing out to our local library. I felt like such a “big kid” when I finally got my library card. It felt like a pass to magic and adventure. I loved walking into the library, soaking in the silence (except for the sound of the librarian pushing her cart of books across the floor). The smell of all of those old books was a comforting one, the feeling matched in intensity only by the feeling of excitement when I found a new tale to enjoy – or even an old tale, tried and true, that I had read dozens of times (hello, “Charlotte’s Web”!).

Libraries take on even greater importance

Today, libraries take on even greater importance when we view them as bastions for free thought and places where the battle against censorship rages every day. In recent years, they’ve been caught in the crosshairs of social and political upheaval. Read any news article or watch any news program these days, and you’re sure to come across at least one story about a book being pulled from shelves for one reason or another.

And yet, in spite of our changing social and political landscapes, libraries exist with the same missions as they always have.

“Across party lines and across the political spectrum,” writes Emily Drabinski, president of the American Library Association, in the ALA’s 2024 ‘State of America’s Libraries,’ “the vast majority of people love their libraries for the ordinary and extraordinary work we do each day: connecting people to reading and resources, building businesses and communities, expanding literacy across the lifespan, and making great Saturday afternoons.”