The Comics Are Magic for The Mind and The Heart

When everything seems to be falling apart in the world there is one place I can go a laugh, or simply escape. It's the world of crazy animals, kids, families, and people at work called the comic page.

My husband always has called those pages the educational pages. To him they were always the place to begin in any paper and the place to end as well and he would often read them to all of the kids around the table during homework time as I worked on dinner week nights. I considered myself too much of an intellectual to begin there when I read the paper, but gradually over the years it has also become my own start page as well. Sometimes - well honestly most of the time the news is too much crap and very little that is either interesting or uplifting.

What saddens me is as newspapers die on the printed page and move online, they seem to be losing much that made them a source for the everyday person. The local news and events, and that section that held the best in humor as well as a wonderful observation of our American culture. You can look up those daily comics individually, but it just does not hold the same wonder and awe that occurred when I opened the paper to those who populated the many boxes on the comic page.

I hope we don't lose the comics, because those are the pages that are really the heart of any newspaper. They are gifts of thought as well as laughter, and despite all the important news found in those few paper pages, they're the items that most people look to every day to lighten their mood and share with someone across the daily breakfast or dinner table. This could end up being one of the worst losses imaginable.

Those Summer Memories...

I’m enjoying those last few days of summer as the new school year rolls into our lives. The funny thing is, I don’t have kids at home anymore but so much of what Fall is centered around school starting again and life returning to that daily grind.

Summer has many words and ideas to describe it, but fall has one – the end of freedom. It’s funny because though we only have a few weeks as vacation we adults fall easily into that “back to school,” mentality. It’s like the warmer weather sets the brain clock to slow with visions of beaches and slower and more laid back and lazy days that are reminiscent of our youth.

Life at this pace is set for that ever present summer beach read and I try to get lots read during this slower time of the year...but is it really slower or are we captured by an image that is pure memory and become the more relaxed, and less productive person simply because we want that time off like we had? Those endless summer days and weeks can be filled with memories, but I think what makes them what we strive for is our image of what has to be perfect in the rest of the year. We seem to be stuck in this, “I have to be and do perfection in my life; marriage; school; college or what ever drives your life.

Summer is that glimpse of the dream where you can fish, read that great summer book, or hike that ultimate spot. So, now that summer has only one more day – what are you going to do to make those last few moments the best memories ever?