THANK YOU Berkeley Breathed -or- Opus Wakes Up

“I will go to my grave in a state of abject endless fascination that we all have the capacity to become emotionally involved with a personality that doesn’t exist.”
Berkeley Breathed
found on BrainyQuotes.com

There are those of us stuck in a generational limbo, smushed between the loopy Baby Boomers and the entitled Gen-Xers, that  got a blast from our past with the return of Bloom County this week, yea!!!

#1   It's back!
1st strip of Bloom County 2015…    It’s back!

Twenty-five years ago Berkeley Breathed didn’t pass the comic on to a relative, like Family Circus or Blondie, neither did he have newspapers rerun his strips as we see with the beloved Peanuts. He just stopped, for his own reasons.

My kids have read all of the Bloom County comic strips; we own all of them. They are equally excited with this weeks reemergence, too. My son would read them on the half hour ride home from school, asking me about the period based humor that he didn’t get… he now knows who Jean Kirkpatrick is, and Mikhail Gorbachev, and he even knows what a Turnip Twaddler is and why late-night infomercials can be hazardous to your bank account.

Today I read through the fresh, first four 2015 comics that Breathed has shared on Facebook and man, oh, MAN. It sure took me back. Thanks, BB, I’ve missed Opus.

swiped from a comment left on Berkeley Breathed's Facebook page
swiped from a comment left on Berkeley Breathed’s Facebook page

Eleanor Roosevelt on Middle Age…

“Probably the happiest period in life most frequently is in middle age,
When the eager passions of youth are cooled, and the infirmities of age not yet begun;
As we see that the shadows, which are at morning and evening so large, almost entirely disappear at midday.”

Eleanor Roosevelt

In other words, if you are middle aged, you rock, should be carpeing your diems, and are basically in the best years of your life. Here’s to it, Eleanor! Thanks for putting so eloquently.

On God and Art- Marc Chagall Quote:

“When I am finishing a picture, I hold some God-made object up to it – a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand – as a final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there’s a clash between the two, it’s bad art.”
Read more quotes attributed to Chagall and boat-loads of other nifty people at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/marcchagal100782.html#XprZh1wmoOZjXeST.99

“Birthday” by Marc Chagall, 1915, MoMA

See more Chagall prints for purchase here: http://www.art.com/gallery/id–a60/marc-chagall-posters.htm