Miraclo Miles

       The comics fan challenge of the past day (based on the posts I've seen) appears to be to post four comics one read (and presumably thought highly of) when you were fourteen. Eleven, twelve or thirteen (age, not number of comics) would have been better for me, as by fourteen there had been some significant financial and creative changes in the wrong direction, but the assignment's the assignment. Around this time the financial struggles for the publisher had led to them quietly dropping the story page count to 18 as they were in a long fight to hold the cover price of a standard monthly comic to 25 cents.       I decided to narrow it to what I was picking up the month I turned 14, so that would have been comics newly-arrived to the spinner racks that April, which would have had July as their cover dates.        Working within this narrow band, I decided to go with: Defenders 25 : "The Serpent Sheds Its Sk...

         I'm hopeful that the folks behind Blogger will fix whatever is suddenly vexing me today, where it won't allow me to directly post images (I have to sneak in links to images on the web) nor allow me to embed video, forcing me to just have to link to them. Whatever this problem is, it wasn't there yesterday.       My most direct recourse seems to be sending feedback through their system, which I did earlier today. It's in the hands of the gods now, and I can just try to move ahead as best I can.       I greatly enjoyed blogging back circa 2004 or so, then fell away from it. I know the audience for these is almost always very low, but I prefer to work in longer form, and in the end I'm doing this for my own focus, development, or at least amusement.

    Second Vatican Council formally concluded December 8, 1965, so I was one of the first wave of kids going through Catholic school from the start while the parishes were variously embracing and (the older members) often struggling with the implementation of the various changes to both the mass and doctrine, or at least what was to be emphasized and de-emphasized in said doctrine. It was all new to us, so we couldn't appreciate from personal experience how unsettling various aspects of it were for older generations who'd been raised in a comfortably compartmentalized structure of worship. The moves to modernize and humanize the experience, and to involve and engage the parishioners, were an affront to those who felt betrayed by a sudden, intrusive change in their contract with the God. They'd been raised to believe that their task was to follow the rules (some stricter than others, I've only ever known a sort of buffet style Catholicism to be in actual practice), sho...

  American actor and singer, Michael Dunn (born Gary Neil Miller) arrived on this date in 1934 in Shattuck, Oklahoma. When he was four, his family moved to Dearborn, Michigan. Parents Jewell and Fred championed his right to live and develop openly, as part of mainstream life, defying repeated pressures from school authorities to send him to a school for disabled children.   An early reader, he was a champion speller, showed an early aptitude for the piano, and developed a lyric baritone and was given to crowd-drawing impromptu public performances even while just waiting for a bus. He ice-skated and swam in childhood, remaining a skilled swimmer throughout his life.   He attended the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, but was seriously injured on a stairwell during a "student rush" and was hospitalized for three months. Transferring to the more forgiving climate and accessible campus of the University of Miami, he seemed to excel more in extracurricular efforts - sing...

   When Lost In Space debuted on CBS on September 15, 1965, I was four years old. I can't say I have a clear recollection of having watched it from the start -- it's entirely possible I came in a little while later and caught up on the earlier episodes during summer reruns. We were still living up in Rhode Island, in military base housing, that September when the show started. All of my clear recollections of the show were from once we were in Levittown, PA, in our first (and as it turned out last) family home, where we moved the following June.   There was much about the show (and this only became increasingly so) that was geared toward a young audience. Goofiness and flash and occasionally mawkishnes that had I been a little older and self-conscious possibly would have put me off. The timing was what it was, though, and I was an unashamed fan, despite how most of the aliens were either wearing green or silver body paint, historical costumes from the prop department, or ...

Looking into June and beyond.     As of yesterday, May 22nd, this is how the official map of Pennsylvania stands with respect to phased "reopening".     I'm in Montgomery County, near the center of that block of red counties, bottom right. We had the dubious distinction of being the early peak point of verified infection for the state, when back in early March we had more than half of all such official cases in the state. As such, we were the first county to have (mostly voluntary) restrictions strongly suggested by Governor Wolf on March 12th.    By one week later, the mixed results of the request and the rising threat led to  more forceful, and then broader restrictions.   This past Friday, May 22nd, the governor updated the reopening plans, such that out county will be transitioning to Yellow come June 5th. (Presumably this will be up to revision if an upswing in the infection/hospitalization/daily death toll manifests.  ...