Recently managed to activate the most amazing infodump trap card.
I was driving through Vermont with a friend, and we pulled over at a tiny shop offering Maple Items. We were on the state highway, not the interstate, so "pulling over" meant "squeezing my tiny car into a parking bay the size of a broad highway shoulder."
As we got out of the car, an older woman emerged from behind the building where she had been pruning her roses. She introduced herself as Tammy.
Her shop offered the promised variety of Maple, but also a number of small antiques and a plethora of dog figurines, plaques, and clearly-hand-stitched garden flags.
A huge purple ribbon hung on the wall behind the register, along with many pictures of small dogs. This was no county fair ribbon. It was the size of my torso. The material had the soft sheen of actual silk.
As I placed my purchases on the counter, I asked, "Do you... Breed dogs?"
Yes. She does. She has bred Yorkies for the last 40 years. Her mother bred Yorkies before her. The purple ribbon was from her national championship winning Yorkie.
You may be expecting that the infodump was going to be about Yorkies.
It was not.
It was about 40 years of drama in the Yorkie breeding community. Where – you must understand – the judging at shows is often about who you're in with, not about the dogs. This is especially true when Tammy's opponents win anything.
And Tammy's mother! Well. Phyllis has been on the Yorkie scene since Yorkies were invented. Because of this, many women of equally venerable age hold deep grudges against Phyllis. The sort of grudges that result in episodes of Midsommar Murders.
This led to deep injustices against Phyllis on the part of judges and prevented her dogs from winning so often she retired from the scene. Judging is all about who you're friends with, after all.
After 20 years in hiding, Phyllis – the One True Queen of Yorkie Breeding – hatched a plot. She may have been out of the show circuit, but she was still breeding dogs. She entered an absolutely perfect bitch in the national competition, but sent her with a handler rather than go in person.
None of the usurpers knew who this dog belonged to, and in dog-breeding circles this Does Not Happen. This could have resulted in further injustices, but Phyllis was crafty. She knew this tournament was being judged by a man from the UK, who knew naught of the drama in the US Yorkie Empire.
With these advantages – and being the best dog there – Phyllis's bitch won the highest honor at the show.
Incensed by this insult to their ill-gotten supremacy, the other owners descended on the handler after the show, demanding to know for whom he was working.
"Phyllis," said he.
The name of the overthrown queen evoked horror in the usurpers.
"PHYLLIS!? She's still ALIVE!???"
Yes, Phyllis yet lived, and this bitch – the dog, not the woman – went on to mother Tammy's current dogs. One of whom, Lucy-Fur, is the reincarnation of Tammy's sister (also Lucy). This is certain for two reasons.
Firstly, Sister Lucy absolutely went straight to Hell upon her death, and Lucy-Fur the dog is positively as evil as Sister Lucy was.
Secondly, Sister Lucy always said when she died she wanted to come back as one of Phyllis's dogs because "mom treated the dogs better than us."
Was driving with my grandmother and in broken English she says “no eyes… no nose… no face. Don’t trust.” To which I looked around wildly in search of this omen of ill portend.
It's done! I am so freaking thrilled with how this came out. It was immensely fun taking the old poster and trying to figure out a balance between the old art and a modern take on fire management, as well as how to make it my own while retaining as much of the original style and color as possible. And I'm not normally one to stick my whole logo on my illustrations, but I wanted to match the original poster which as the USFS logo there, so!
Shout out to @vaspider for helping me puzzle out better wording for the bottom chunk of the poster.
You can get prints and shirts with this design in my Printful shop! If there's another product you'd like to see it on, let me know!
Some more thoughts and ramblings about this piece below the cut, including a side-by-side with the original poster.
The Death Rides poster was produced in 1933 by the US Forest Service, but I've sadly never seen the specific artist named anywhere. It reflects the pretty typical attitude of the time that fire=bad, that it leads to death as a negative thing. It's also one of the most popular pre-Smokey Bear fire prevention posters. This thing is EVERYWHERE, especially in wildland fire circles. It's on posters, shirts, even a few logos.
I have never seen a GOOD reproduction of the thing. I feel like there's got to be a good quality one sitting around somewhere, but it sure doesn't seem to have made its way onto the internet. They're all grainy with strange color splotches, but that's never seemed to effect its popularity.
I do really love the concept of the original poster, and the simple phrasing that drives home the clear message. For my redo, I wanted to keep the overall look and feel, and the simple, clear message, but changing it to match modern understandings of fire and its place in the cycle of life in forests. I set out with the following goals:
Show fire as a part of the natural cycle that helps keep landscapes healthy.
Make the horse less distressed looking.
Remove the gendered language from the messaging.
Keep as much of the original posing, composition, and colors as possible.
Showing the renewal cycle was the trickiest part, because the composition really didn't leave a lot of room to show the regrowth portion. I think I came up with a good balance, though, by having the forest very overgrown, dark, and unhealthy, then having the strong dividing diagonal/arrow of fire bringing light into that dark overgrowth, and the open, regrowing portion behind the smoke and flames. I also had the regrowth coming from the horse's hooves so that the horse is more of an active piece of the story, rather than being forced through the whole affair.
The regrowing plants in the background are fire poppies and fireweed, as well as a few distant aspen saplings, all of which are some of the first plants to come back after wildfires move through. Death also got a fire poppy as the clasp of their cloak.
For the phrasing, I came up with "Death Renews the Forest" almost immediately, but I had more trouble with the bottom portion. I wanted the phrase to not be gendered anymore, so switched it to "we." Initially I thought about something like "When we are educated in its use." But I wasn't a big fan of "use." While the poster does feature Death doing an intentional prescribed burn, I also wanted the phrasing to apply to letting naturally lightning caused fires burn. So less "use" and more embracing fire overall. This is especially true given that in the US we have, unfortunately, gone back to a full suppression strategy as of 2026 thanks to an executive order from the orange menace. So, despite decades of research showing how much harm that causes, we've been ordered to start doing it again. Which, to me, just makes this redo of the poster even more relevant right now.
Spider helped me puzzle out some other phrasing ideas, and I really liked this final one. I think it is balanced really well with the top portion of the text, and the overall message of the poster.
So yes! Had a lot of fun with this. I probably will do some more redos of other famous prevention posters at some point, but I'm not sure when or which ones.
free KN95 masks are being given out all over NYC right now.
Masks are available at all NYPD precincts, and public library branches across the five boroughs, including all Brooklyn Public Library and Queens Public Library locations
on.nyc.gov/freemask (shows distribution spots on google maps)
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