Charles M. Schulz Museum! Snoopy, Charlie Brown and the gang!

Snowflakes in the air, everywhere, and ancient rhymes of love and dreams to share. I'm so excited, we're in Santa Rosa, California, and I'm at the Charles M. Schultz Museum, and I'm with Museum Director Gina Huntsinger. And Gina, this place is incredible! This is definitely the mecca for cartooning. Now, explain to our audience a little bit about Charles M. Schultz. Well, Charles Schultz started the comic strip in October 2nd of 1950, and he drew for 50 years. And he drew over... Pretty much non-stop, I mean... It was his favorite thing to do. He didn't want anybody else to do any of it, because he was the creator of it. It was his work. He never hired other outside people, which is pretty unusual. He lettered it, he did all of the drawing, he came up with all of the jokes. You couldn't give him a joke. It all came from inside of himself. So he did almost 18,000 strips in his lifetime, which makes most cartoonists pass out when I tell them that. Because really, it's 50 years of hard work. It's like writing a little sitcom every day. Every day. Every day! And he was so good at it. He hit those universal themes that we all feel, and he could make it funny. The psychiatric booth, the security blanket... I know Snoopy's kind of one of the big assets in terms of people's favorites. People love Snoopy because he can do anything. He started out in the 1950s as a dog. He really acted like a dog and walked like a dog. And in the 60s, Charles Schultz ended up putting him on top of his dog house, which no dog can really do. And at that point, Snoopy just became that star. He could think of anything and be anything. A vulture, the flying ace, he was an astronaut. But really, the joke is that Snoopy was stuck in the backyard as a dog. It was his imagination that was doing all those things. Charles Schultz obviously had an incredible imagination. And I know a little bit about his background, that he also was part of the Can you draw so-and-so on the matchbox correspondence school. He learned to draw from the art instruction school before he went off to World War II to serve. And then he came back and he got to work there. Very fastidious and very conscientious about it is what I recall. Oh very much. If he did anything or used anything that was like a piano note, it had to actually be the notes that you would hear coming out of the piano. So he was, oh yes, he was very passionate. And he called himself a fanatic about it. He was so interested. And that's why it's amazing, because he poured his entire self into it. Incredible creativity. So the museum itself, just tell me a little bit about what people should come and expect here and what they should see. Well, if they love Peanuts or if they want to introduce somebody to Peanuts, it's that place to go. It talks all about Charles Schultz and his life and his art. So we show his original comic strips. We always have something on display, at least 70 strips, where people can see not just the newspaper size, it's tiny, but they're much, much larger, and you can see his line and the exact of what he was trying to convey with just so simple, simple lines. We always have our great hall, which has wonderful pieces in it that you'll see. We have an outside courtyard. We have a Snoopy labyrinth. Rumor has it you have the kite eating tree up there. We do. So if you go into our courtyard, you have to look around. And there is a very, you know, very tough kite eating tree, and it's eating its kite at the time. Right now it is eating a kite, so yeah. What else? I see a psychiatric booth. Well, we have different things that come and go. We have three different exhibitions that change, and you'll always see something new. We have a studio that we brought here from his studio. So we go deeper and richer about, you know, the art and the comic, and that's what we do here. So you'll have the fun of Peanuts, but you'll also have sort of the academia and the rigor of, like, what was behind some of that, which is really interesting. What would you say his biggest legacy is? Well, I feel like he's changed the 20th and 21st century because popular culture, we use, you know, Lucy with trying to have Charlie Brown kick that football. Kind of a therapist. He has so many human conditions, like you're explaining. And actually the strip is still in the newspapers today because it's still real. People can still relate to it. It's universal. He hit on stuff that doesn't change over time. We can relate to. We feel like they connect with us. So many times people come in here and they say, oh, Lucy's my favorite character because she has power, or oh, I love Linus because he's so philosophical. I mean, and many of us love Snoopy. I mean, how can you not, right? He got to do all the fun things. And was Schultz Charlie Brown, was that kind of it? Well, he said he would give it to Charlie Brown when he had a hard day. So Charlie Brown was really when Charles Schultz had something sort of hard happen. And he was kind of, we all, he always got back up. He's every man that we sort of all are. And he would always get back up and go back at it. But actually Sparky Charles Schultz, which he was named Sparky, he said he was all of the characters. That totally makes sense. It was like all the emotions. Yeah, all the things. So. Well, when in Santa Rosa, you got to check out the Charles Schultz Museum. I'm here with Gina Huntsinger. Thanks, Gina. Oh, it's a pleasure. Please come. We love to share this with people.