Of Huskies, Owls and Family Feuds
Last Fall Ana Mari Cauce, our Provost and a friend, asked me to remove our dog because someone had complained that the dog and W made this site look like a official UW site. I explained that TA’s dog was drawn (by me) to look like one I saw at the University of Connecticut, but she still asked me as a favor. I did that favor.. we will have new puppy soon.
I was curious who would confuse THE-Ave.US with an official Husky site? Some Regent upset with Roger Rabbit’s writing about the actions of UW lawyers? A coach or Husky fan upset about Anthony’s stories of racism in the Husky Athletics Department?
Turned out it was my brother, Hugh Schwartz. Hugh not only complained that THE Ave’s puppy might damage the UW’s chances of going to the Rose Bowl (actually he could care less, he graduated from Brandeis a school without football), he asserted that the UW needed to do something about my mental health since he seems to think my campaign here to save my father’s WWII heritage is some form of mental illness. We learned all this from a 281 page Freedom of Information Request that will be posted here in TA once I have time to delete the emails of folks who he tied in by using their addresses.
A more serious issue perhaps, was Hugh’s charge that I had plagiarized the dawg! I explained to him (and to Provost Cauce) that the dawg was based on a UCONN Husky but Hugh just got more insistent that I was a plagiarist and asserted that he had looked and my puppy did not resemble the UCONN dog at all.
I decided to tease him by saying I had based the dawg on Brandeis’ mascot. Now Hugh was really upset:
If it wasn’t so sad, what you said may be funny. But it just adds to your stack of lies. The Brandeis teams are the Judges. Their mascot is an Owl. You need help! Please get it!
You would not know what the truth is if it slapped you in the face.
Actually, I know that Brandeis uses the owl …. I think they chose the bird with some odd sense of humor that confuses a symbol of wisdom with a bird of prey.
Of course owls, at least in cartoons, are also stodgy. Maybe Brandeis was trying to play on the stodgy image of Yale’s mascot, Old Dan the Bulldog. Aren’t folks with Brit accents all wise? Funny thing when I was at Harvard, I thought Old Dan was a weird choice because I remembered how much my Mom used to try to find a way to change our bulldog Mac’s diet diet so his farts would not smell so bad! I wonder if they still sell the chlorophyll she used?
Harvard’s mascot, the John, is even worse. Imagine the fun folks could have with Go Johns!
Of course, if Seattle had a mascot it would be the golden banana slug rampant on a trail of snot!
By the way, I told my brother that he is way behind art tech when he imagines how the dawg was drawn. Often when I want to draw something, even a husky, I 
start with a similar drawing from the web and use Corel to trace and transform the shapes into something I can use as vector objects. This began for me about 40 years ago when I read Bill Hohm’s amazing book on lineforms in coastal art. When I learned to use Corel, I realized that Holm’s idea of lineforms was ideal for vector based drawing objects. Since then I have used that concept to design many things including the burgee at my yacht club, Puget Sound Yacht Club. The design came directly from Hiroshige’s wave!
start with a similar drawing from the web and use Corel to trace and transform the shapes into something I can use as vector objects. This began for me about 40 years ago when I read Bill Hohm’s amazing book on lineforms in coastal art. When I learned to use Corel, I realized that Holm’s idea of lineforms was ideal for vector based drawing objects. Since then I have used that concept to design many things including the burgee at my yacht club, Puget Sound Yacht Club. The design came directly from Hiroshige’s wave!HUGH: Thus was the dawg that irked you so much born!
Now I suppose Hugh is going to write nasty letters to my yacht club because I plagiarized Hiroshige?
Well, Hiroshegi won’t complain, because he’s dead. His descendants might sue you, though.
Actually …how do you know he is dead?
I gather all that has happened to him is that he has added a roman numeral to his name.
There were five generations in total, who named Hiroshige. Hiroshiges II and III were from students of the first Hiroshige, and Hiroshiges IV and V were from his relatives.