My Very Favorite Mark Addison Kershaw Cartoons

“I nag Mark Addison Kershaw. Every month. I nag all of Hubris’s Contributors, but I single Mark out for special attention. Because he makes me smile, always, and, many times, he makes me laugh. An aeon ago (in 2007, back when our daily demons seemed less numerous and toothsome), Stephen Colbert wrote: ‘Not living in fear is a great gift, because certainly these days we do it so much. And do you know what I like about comedy? You can’t laugh and be afraid at the same time—of anything. If you’re laughing, I defy you to be afraid.’ Which is why I nag Mark, and why I am so happy, so wreathed with smiles, when his cartoons land (eventually, late) on my virtual desk.”—Elizabeth Boleman-Herring

Hapax Legomenon

By Elizabeth Boleman-Herring

“I’m struck by how laughter connects you with people. It’s almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you’re just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy.”—John Cleese, The Human Face, BBC Television (2001)

PENDLETON South Carolina—(Hubris)—February 2024—I nag Mark Addison Kershaw. Every month. I nag all of Hubris’s Contributors, but I single Mark out for special attention. Because he makes me smile, always, and, many times, he makes me laugh. An aeon ago (in 2007, back when our daily demons seemed less numerous or toothsome), Stephen Colbert wrote: “Not living in fear is a great gift, because certainly these days we do it so much. And do you know what I like about comedy? You can’t laugh and be afraid at the same time—of anything. If you’re laughing, I defy you to be afraid.” Which is why I nag Mark, and why I am so happy, so wreathed with smiles, when his cartoons land (eventually, late) on my virtual desk. In a time of such horror and anxiety, Mark brings me a lady on a park bench with a sack of peanuts she has brought along to feed . . . the birds. Thing is, an elephant has materialized before her, not pigeons. This surprise turns up the corners of my lips. I look at each cartoon Mark sends me carefully. I study it. And then, I smile, or I chuckle. For the duration, I am not afraid. 

This month, the second in our brand new year, I have made a selection of Mark’s cartoons, picked from the bouquet he’s been sending me (though not often enough) since December of 2018. Each and every one of Mark’s cartoons is, for me, a hapax legomenon (which, discerning readers may have noticed) is the name of my column here on Hubris. 

As per Wikipedia: “In corpus linguistics, a hapax legomenon . . .  is a word or an expression that occurs only once within a context: either in the written record of an entire language, in the works of an author, or in a single text. The term is sometimes incorrectly used to describe a word that occurs in just one of an author’s works but more than once in that particular work. Hapax legomenon is a transliteration of Greek ἅπαξ λεγόμενον, meaning ‘being said once.’”

A hapax is utterly unique, as is each and every one of Mark’s cartoons. As is Mark, himself. A one-off, as it were. So, this February, Hubris opens with a sampling of some of my favorite Addisonian cartoons and goes on to reprise six other monthly cartoon portfolios from months and years past. So, scroll on, Beloved Readers, and fear not, for the duration.

 

 

 

 

To order Elizabeth Boleman-Herring’s memoir and/or her erotic novel, click on the book covers below: