[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 31 (Tuesday, February 25, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1039-S1040]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          TRIBUTE TO ED KOREN

  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, late this week, Vermont will recognize 
the noteworthy legacy of Ed Koren, who

[[Page S1040]]

was recently named Vermont's second Cartoonist Laureate. A resident of 
Brookfield, VT, Mr. Koren is best known nationally for his distinctive 
creature cartoons that appear in the New Yorker. His work has also been 
featured in many other publications.
  Mr. Koren grew up in Mount Vernon, NY, and attended Columbia 
University, where he first began sketching cartoons for the 
university's magazine. Encouraged by a favorable review of one of his 
earliest works, Mr. Koren then dedicated himself to drawing 
investigative and satirical cartoons. His hard work, quick wit, and 
unique social commentary are evidenced in his work. In true Vermont 
tradition, he has also found the time to volunteer as a firefighter in 
his small community for the past 26 years.
  I am proud to recognize Ed Koren's achievement as Vermont's Cartoon 
Laureate. The Vermont Digger recently published a profile of this 
accomplished man who has adopted Vermont as his home that captures all 
that is so unique about his character and creativity. I ask that the 
article, ``Cartoonist Ed Koren earns a Vermont laurel, but don't expect 
him to rest on it,'' be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the Vermont Digger, Feb. 16, 2014]

   This State: Cartoonist Ed Koren Earns A Vermont Laurel, But Don't 
                        Expect Him To Rest on it

                          (By Andrew Nemethy)

       From his rambling 1840s farmhouse in Brookfield in central 
     Vermont, Ed Koren looks out on Sunset Lake and a 
     quintessential Vermont village whose famed floating bridge is 
     an icon of the state. But as a cartoonist, Koren's off-beat, 
     pinballing mind is focused on a different view, as he scans 
     the strange landscape of human foibles, fads, social mores 
     and culture. It's a scene that has sustained him for more 
     than five decades.
       ``There's something always new, or quirky or nutty or 
     outrageous,'' he says, describing the lode of material that 
     keeps inspiring his cartoons. ``To me, it never ends, and 
     it's great for that.''
       By a cranial alchemy that even he is hard-pressed to 
     explain, what he sees out in the world gets distilled into 
     cartoons populated by fuzzy big-beaked creatures and captions 
     that capture the essence of whatever tickled his perceptive 
     fancy. What emerges in his cartoons is at once universal but 
     also artisanal and localvore because of the settings, which 
     reflect the terroir of his adopted state. Take a recent New 
     Yorker cartoon whose locale was instantly recognizable to any 
     patron of the Three Penny Taproom in Montpelier, from the 
     layout to the bartender to the list of beers, which included 
     ``Curtis India Pale Ale'' (his wife's name is Curtis) ``Onion 
     River Saison'' and ``Camel's Hump Imperial Stout.''
       ``I kind of bring it home,'' he says simply. ``It's like a 
     tribute to friends. It's capturing what I like about living 
     here.''
       It's entirely fitting, then, that on Feb. 27, Koren will be 
     recognized as Vermont's Cartoonist Laureate at the 
     Statehouse, and will give a talk at the Center for Cartoon 
     Studies in White River Junction, which nominated him for the 
     award. (Burlington's James Kolchalka was the first.)
       Koren is honored and, typically, quick to riff humorously 
     about the nomination, quipping that he may have to wear a 
     neck brace. ``It's a weighty thing,'' he says of the honor 
     and a potential swelled head. He then dredges up a quote from 
     his literary mind, attributed to politician and UN ambassador 
     Adlai Stevenson: ``Flattery is all right so long as you don't 
     inhale.''
       Truth is, there's little danger of flattery going to his 
     head. Koren lives a well-grounded rural life in Brookfield: 
     For 26 years he has served in the volunteer fire department, 
     a job he loves, though he admits at 78, hauling hoses and 
     pouring water on house fires, the ``real grunt work,'' is 
     beyond his capacity today.
       ``I'm getting to be too old,'' he says.
       When it comes to cartoons, few artists have a style as 
     distinctive and easily recognizable as Koren's squiggly 
     creatures, which have appeared all over Vermont, his donation 
     to nonprofits and other organizations he deems worthy. Koren 
     himself is small-beaked and not very large, with a bushy gray 
     mustache, a frequent twinkle in his eye and a sprightly gait 
     that reflects his exercise pursuits, which range seasonally 
     from cross-country skiing to biking and paddling. He's famed 
     for exercising daily, which he says refreshes his mind and 
     his sense of the beauty in the world.
       Imagine a lean, fit fatherly elf with a curmudgeonly tinge, 
     and you're not far off (though it's more grandfatherly these 
     days, thanks to grandkids from his first marriage). He now 
     lives with his wife Curtis and an elderly Siamese feline 
     named Catmandu.
       Koren, who was raised in Mount Vernon, N.Y., was doing a 
     teaching gig in graphic arts at Brown University when Vermont 
     beckoned and he moved here permanently.
       ``I fell into this house in Brookfield from a year-old copy 
     of Country Journal,'' he explains. He saw an ad for the house 
     in the magazine, checked it out, fell in love with its 
     village location, and, while living in New York City, bought 
     the place in 1978 as a second home.
       His ties to the Green Mountains go much further back, 
     however, to his teens when he attended a summer theater camp 
     in Waitsfield. The lush landscape and way of life was 
     beguiling. ``Like a lot of kids, it stays with you,'' he 
     says.
       While Vermont offers fodder and settings for his cartoons, 
     he admits to living a yin and yang existence. ``I've always 
     been a New Yorker because I've spent so much of my life 
     there. I'm at a heart a city guy, but I'm at heart a country 
     guy,'' he says. And like many a Vermont country guy, he's 
     now, in mid-February, admitting to being weary of winter as 
     he lugs in firewood from the shed to keep his Vermont 
     Castings stove going and his house warm.
       Koren was drawn to the arts early. As a kid, he was 
     inspired to draw by Al Capp's Li'l Abner, especially the 
     simple lovable cartoon characters known as ``Shmoos.'' He 
     began drawing cartoons in the mid-1950s at Columbia 
     University for the college humor magazine, ``Jester,'' and 
     then went on to study graphic arts in Paris and to receive an 
     MFA from Pratt Institute. He was feeling tugged in several 
     career directions--city planning, architecture, and graphic 
     arts--when a ``kindly response'' from The New Yorker about 
     looking at his cartoons put his future on course.
       Koren landed in the magazine's pages in its literary heyday 
     when the legendary William Shawn was editor. His 
     illustrations and cartoons began appearing in The New York 
     Times, Time and Newsweek magazines, as well as in ads for 
     financial publications and Fortune 500 companies, and in a 
     wide range of books. Always a freelance artist, for a number 
     of years in the late 1990s he fell out of favor at the New 
     Yorker (it was ``an unreliable family member'') but now seems 
     to be back in the magazine's cartoon graces.
       Koren is vague in describing how he came up with the 
     creatures in his cartoons, which he roughs out and then 
     refines in a lengthy process using pen and ink on large 
     pieces of art paper measuring about two feet on each side. 
     Those squiggly lined creatures of his just sort of happened, 
     he says, explaining his style had a ``lax way of evolving'' 
     and that he ``wasn't trying to do any of what I achieved.''
       Koren draws in a spacious and cluttered studio at one end 
     of his house, with two tables, stacks of books and walls 
     pinned with illustrations, hand-written quotes and mementoes. 
     Underneath one table is a bank of 40 drawers that hold 
     decades of his life in pen and ink.
       ``I save everything. I'm a pack rat. I hate to throw things 
     away,'' he admits.
       As for his captions, which often nail smug and self-
     important people and modern life in general, he says he keeps 
     his ears open ``like two giant antennas,'' especially when he 
     is visiting New York City. At home he reads a lot and listens 
     to radio (WDEV, VPR and NHPR.)
       Does he ever think of retiring? ``Never!'' he says, 
     recoiling at the idea. Besides, humanity is constantly 
     providing inflated egos to puncture and trends to lampoon.
       ``It's part of my life. If I didn't do that, what would I 
     do?'' he asks.

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