Musings: Passing the torch

Since age six, I have always read the daily paper's opinion and comics pages -- the St. Paul Dispatch and Pioneer Press until 1997, the Houston Chronicle since then. There have been stretches when I did not get the Chronicle for reasons of time and, let's face it, it's about as light on news as the Pioneer Press (published in a city 1/16th of Houston's size) but with fewer Pulitzers. When traveling, I always steep myself in the local journalistic fare. Newspapers are in my blood.

My youngest son and I have been reading Far Side cartoons in book form for a while. Last Friday, I ran across a Rubes cartoon that tickled my fancy since it portrays a small canine-American with some of the same chutzpah that I see in Twerpette. My son got the joke and even drew a 12-panel cartoon riff of his own. This morning, he asked for the funnies so he could read them on the way to school. He likes Vikings so we discussed Hagar the Horrible's premise (husbands and wives argue -- but only if they don't listen to each other). Suffice it to say, I think he's caught the bug and the torch has been passed.