This old A&J is from October, 1995. Note the email address in the third panel. No, don’t write me there; it won’t do either of us any good. I called it to your attention, so I could mention that Arlo & Janis was one of the first strips out there to make use of email. Innovation was so easy back then! Speaking of innovation, I have seen the beta version of the new GoComics website, and you can, too. Go to the GoComics site and select “blog” from the menu there. Scroll down until you find the post about the new changes, and there’s a link there. It isn’t exactly what I was expecting, but I also was told this was to be a multi-phase project, so I will withhold comment. You, on the other hand, needn’t feel so constrained.
204 responses to “Good Bye Kiss”
Debbe 😉 Linda was a hippie girl, too. She was just a very rich one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stq4-99-J74
Brief report, Mark and I are OK. I was driving him to his mom’s funeral since his car was sold and he hasn’t bought new one yet. We were hit from rear in hit and run accident in North Mississippi at high speed by a woman who went off road doing over 80 according to witness.
I was driving, Mark had fallen asleep and she hit his side on rear right. She left scene of accident after rolling her car several times, came back onto highway from ditch, hitting us.
Trigger did fine, I never lost control, was doing 70 legally in right hand lane. Steered truck out of skid and straightened out gradually on far left lane, got out of lane onto shoulder.
My left arm banged and Mark’s head and knee because he is tall. Angel’s keep watch over me.
c ex-p, I am so sorry for the loss of your friend. I am sure these past two years of rediscovery with were important to her.
Jackie and Mark, I thank God you are both still alive after that! Did you go to hospital for xrays?
We just made it to motel in Tupelo, Mississippi a few minutes ago. Trigger is totaled. I told him goodbye and hugged wrecker driver for good measure. Really good looking Mississippi gentleman, owned company, sweetie.
Wrecker man gave me his plate and business card.
I will report accident to my insurance company in morning because driver who hit us abandoned her totalled car in middle of interstate with no lights! In lanes! She called someone to come get her and left. They are looking to arrest her for hit and run, leaving accident. I told her if she left she would be charged and arrested. She said why? It wasn’t her fault she fell asleep?
Claimed she needed medical care. I told her ambulance and police on way and I refused to discuss accident. She left and police can’t find her now.
We are in town with nearest hospital, Tupelo, where Elvis Presley was born. I have bruises where seat belts got me across middle, maybe hit left knee but it’s being replaced and left wrist. Broke a fingernail. Mark will see if he has bruises. He is asleep on sofa, I get suites for loyalty to LA Quinta.
Dickens got thrown from back seat to front and I ended up steering out of collision with ten pounds of dog in my lap.
He was shaking so hard he shook long after I stopped.
Plan is I rent a car and let Mark drive to Tuscaloosa for his mom’s funeral services while Dickens and I stay here and sleep. No, I never seem to have boring days.
The whole experience is surreal in truth. Yes, one of those mysterious and miraculous saves that make me keep asking “Why Me Lord?” and look for my purpose.
Oh my goodness! I am so glad you are ok, and hope everything works out with insurance. Mark, I haven’t been on for a few days, but I am so sorry for your loss. You are are in my thoughts and prayers.
Jackie, Mark {{{hugs}}}
Jackie and Mark: Out of respect for the sensibilities of those in the Village, I will not say what I am actually thinking about the circumstances of your accident and the person “driving” the other vehicle. Instead, I will say that I am so very glad the three of you survived the incident with no more apparent injuries than you did. Kudos to you for your driving skills. And kudos to your Guardian Angels.
The authorities will find Miss Demolition Derby. Try not to be shocked when it turns out to involve more than just “falling asleep at the wheel”.
Ghost & Smigz, thanks for the thoughts.
Jackie/Mark, I also give thanks for your survivals. Sometimes our lives have more excitement than desired.
2016 seems to be the embodiment of the supposedly Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times.
Told the wrecker driver I would appreciate a few boring days. I am stuck here in Tupelo for today at least. Allstate insurance computers are down and they cannot determine what coverage I have. Extensive and a guardian who was highly placed officer with Allstate. I will see what happens.
Yeah, Jackie, we would have to have the same auto insurer, wouldn’t we?
Ghost a long time ago you concluded you and I had a lot of things in common and I agreed. At times it is scary.
Mark is going to miss his mother’s funeral. I am going to miss my social and arts events and concerts this weekend. As you also say, no good deed goes unrewarded.
c x-p, Jackie, Mark, Debbe, and others.
An angel is a messenger from Elohim. The Hebrew Bible and the New Testament neglect the possibility that angels may be female, but society back then was even more patriarchal than it is now. You are all, in one capacity or another, angels.
Peace,
I do believe my existence and miraculous saves are because I am one of the messengers but I do not know my real purpose or destination so therefore I try to act toward all I meet as that reason or purpose.
Jackie: Your purpose is obviously to continue to be Jackie. You ask above, “Why me?” I wrote a column so titled in ’98, and just tried to post it. I hold the copyrights to these, so don’t anybody distribute it, either email, other online, or hard cc. It got rejected: “Your URL has been rejected” or some such. It contains no URL. I’ll try again, in a separate post. JJ’s site accepted another equally long post sometime back; I’ll go through the thing to excise whatever my be considered a URL. Peace,
Got rid of a suspicious line, but rejected again: “The requested URL was rejected. If you think this is an error, please contact the webmaster. Your support ID is: 2719994758130130167” Nuts!
Maybe just split it up: Why me? Copyright 1998, 2000, 2009 emb.
Imagine you are in 16th century Western Europe. Young and pious, you and your spouse have led blameless lives. After a year of marriage, your firstborn arrives, an apparently healthy daughter. You are not so poor that the child is in danger of malnourishment, and she seems to grow well enough. But, after a few months, she stops gaining weight, sickens, and dies.
Infant mortality was high then (and still is in many places), but that is no comfort: you have lost your firstborn (even if she was “only a girl”). You seek answers from the cleric who did the simple funeral. He cannot say why the child was “taken from you,” but assures you it was not a judgment on such a blameless couple. But, later that summer, as you leave Sunday chapel, a neighbor calls you aside. He repeats his sympathy over your loss, hopes you will have more children, and “perhaps the next one will be a son”.
Then he notes that five infant girls have died in the valley this year. Also, two young wives died in childbirth last spring, and crops are doing badly even though there has been enough rain. “Things weren’t this bad last year,” he complains, “before that woman from another valley moved into the hut at the edge of the forest. You know, that crone whose candle burns long after honest folk have gone to bed.” (How did he know?) One thing leads to another, and some weeks later, the poor woman is executed as a witch.
I have said nothing about the social or political system of your country. Maybe you were serfs, legally bound to the land. Maybe you two ran a small shop or inn in town. But, in that society, no one was really free. King, archbishop, magistrate, priest, landlord, tenant, innkeeper, peasant, and crone were all slaves: slaves to ignorance and superstition.
We don’t know what killed that fictional infant centuries ago. Today, however, we know about germs and childhood leukemia and such. So it’s better now: my grim scenario couldn’t happen today. Or could it?
Or could it? We are not as far from that mindset as we might think. First, we still remain slaves to ignorance to a degree, because we will never know everything. But there are at least two deeper reasons: we won’t accept an unfair universe, and we insist on being certain.
Rain is a blessing in the dry Middle East. It is written that it is sent to both the just and the unjust. If we believe that, how come we still ask, “Why me?” We know that many behaviors statistically decrease longevity: smoking, reckless driving, and drunkenness, to name three. Combining the latter two often kills innocent victims. But when a drunk driver kills, some still say, “She was such a good person; why her?” In 1993, a letter to the editor of Time suggested that the late summer’s disastrous Mississippi floods were punishment for commercial gambling on riverboats. I disapprove of all gambling, but I think the weather caused the floods. And I don’t find it particularly devout to blame God for the weather.
Scientists don’t know everything. But we have a good enough handle on nature to conclude that the universe works naturally. Nature does not care about us, one way or the other. We are, however, a part of nature that is capable of caring. I care enough about others to suggest that they obey traffic lights, not smoke or chew, and not build on the San Andreas Fault or on a flood plain.
But note the first sentence in the last paragraph. Scientists know that we don’t know. “I don’t know” may be the most important thing a scientist (as well as any teacher) learns to say. This annoys some people. They expect scientists to know, and to be certain. We believe we cannot be certain, that any scientific explanation is tentative, subject to revision in light of new information. Though we think certainty is unattainable by anyone, we also think doing science is the best way to understand nature.
What about those who claim to be certain? Certainty is absolute knowledge. But we are mere mortals. The Seven Deadly Sins are pride, gluttony, greed, sloth, lust, anger, and jealousy. Are not mortals who claim absolute knowledge guilty of the first Deadly Sin?
I often tell students that a goal of science in liberal education is not for them to become comfortable, but to learn what the choices are. That is, liberal-ed science may liberate them from their slavery to ignorance, and from the urge to burn witches. If rightly taught, lib-ed science may also help them accept uncertainty as a gift that combats the sin of pride. That’s one aspect of salvation.
*I thank Jerry Schnabel, BSU Emeritus Professor of History, for help in choosing an appropriate century.
emb: Excellent!
emb: Not bad!
Recall God’s reply to Paul’s pleading to be relieved of his “thorn in the flesh” – whatever that may have been. God informed Paul that “My grace is sufficient for you; My power is made perfect in weakness.” [“made perfect” = “completed”] One might say that Paul had to suffer [“be weak”] so as to appreciate God’s mercy, as well as to lessen the temptation towards pride.
And, yes, a true scientist knows that s/he does not know everything. I’ve been known to astound a class when, in reply to a reasonable question, I just said “Beats me.” What we regard as factual truth is always subject to verification and correction as needed.
Rented a car and taking Mark on to Tuscaloosa to place my flowers on her grave and pray short prayer for her sout.
I am hardly as heathen as I make myself to be. very ecumenical in fact.
Am equally comfortable in cathedrals, high church, Methodist, Lutheran, Baptist, mountain primitives as long as no snakes are involved and all denominations in between.
I wouldn’t mind if they were well-treated bull [= pine] snakes or other moderate sized constrictors, but they do rattlesnakes. Nuts! [different from the ‘Nuts!’ above.]
I’ve done horse skulls and other bones at ‘Children’s Time’ at BUMC, but it’s probably best I not do snakes. Anyway, don’t own any now. Did.
Ruth Anne, Trucker, c x-p: Thanks,
Peace,
We are on cemetery and cannot find grave site. I have placed hundreds of memorials as a florist so I am expert on finding graves. Frustrated.