ON THE MATTER OF TIME & ETERNITY

The 19th C philosopher-historian Thomas Carlyle put it this way: "Speech is of time; silence is of eternity."

He made great good sense, and yet he and his fellow scholars did nothing but speak. And speak. In books and essays and lectures. Which is, of course, precisely what scholars -- and would-be scholars otherwise known as pundits -- do today. Only today they do it with an infinitely greater number of words, because of our infinitely greater number of talking tools in print and on line.

Harvard psychiatrist Arthur Stone has been talking a lot about old age lately. He and his colleagues have studied the West's aging populations, and have concluded: "Getting older makes most people happier, less stressed, and less worried than their younger counterparts....they also seem more likely to forget or let go of bad memories .... when you ask them if they would like to be 25 again, you don't get a lot of takers."

To be sure there are down-sides to aging. As Hollywood legend Bette Davis crustily warned: "Getting old ain't for sissies!" You begin losing so many things. Your hair, your energy, your body parts, oh and your peers. After 60 there are usually far more wakes than weddings!

Some wakes hurt more than others, although none are easy. What's more, they don't only include the people you knew. They also include the characters you knew. As in your pantheon of heroes and heroines on the screen...on the playing fields...and on the comics page.

Today's generation have more options therefore less interest in the daily comics page. But those who are of an age, will remember growing up with favorite comics characters like Dick Tracy, Mandrake the Magician, Blondie, the Katzenjammer Kids, Terry & the Pirates, Mutt & Jeff, Charlie Brown, Calvin & Hobbes, and scores of others whose little lives curled themselves around our little smiles each new breakfast.

Cue the bells....!

Two more wakes. Little Orphan Anne passed peacefully way June of this year. She was born in 1924 and appeared in hundreds of newspapers throughout all those years. Next, Brenda Starr: Reporter will appear for the final time January 2011, after a starring run which began back in 1940.

Thomas Carlyle didn't say it, but another Brit John Donne did: "Never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee."