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Comics, bravery and Dickens

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The Bush House  (E) Two girls and a teddybear have a sleepover #2097179 by WakeUpAndLive️~🚬🚭2024

Fun Fact Friday! On this day in 1928, Walt Disney's "Steamboat Willie" starring Mickey Mouse was the first successful sound-synchronized animated cartoon. What is your favorite cartoon?(30-Day BC)

Fritz the Cat (1965-1972). Fritz the Cat is a comic strip created by Robert Crumb. Set in a "super city" of anthropomorphic animals, the strip focuses on Fritz, a feline con artist who frequently goes on wild adventures that sometimes involve sexual escapades. It had somewhat of a cult status in my teens.

"Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it, I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave...to make ourselves useful. It allows us to be generous, which is another way of saying exactly the same thing." ~ Marilynne Robinson. Explore the connection between courage and generosity. What do you find are the greatest emotional challenges to doing something so bravely useful?(BC)

Fear and the self. If it is rescuing someone else from a house on fire you have to put aside your fear of getting burned yourself. In all other cases involving bravery, the self is mostly the factor that stands in your way. You have to be able to put someone else’s life or well-being before your own. In normal everyday life that is not something that is taught, in the military, though, they still have those values of honor and courage and bravery.

What do we mean when we call a story Dickensian? Choose a memorable character from a Dickens story, such as Tiny Tim, Ebenezer Scrooge, Oliver Twist, the Artful Dodger, Miss Havisham, or Abel Magwitch. Write a short story or poem in which this character has been inserted into un-Dickensian circumstances--perhaps a solitary exploration of the wilderness, a contemporary technology-filled existence, or a supernatural landscape. How do you maintain a Dickensian feel while ensuring that this piece reflects your unique creative voice?(BCoFs)

We call a story Dickensian when the emphasis is still on the poor social conditions. Tiny Tim in 2016? Dickens did not explicitly say what Tiny Tim's illness was. A possibility is rickets, a disease of children caused by vitamin D deficiency, characterized by imperfect calcification, softening, and distortion of the bones typically resulting in bow legs. Appropriate supplementation with calcium and vitamin D will lead to healing of the bony defects within days to months. Severe bowing, seen in longer-standing cases of rickets, may also resolve over a number years without requiring surgical intervention.

In this time and age, there would have been treatment for Tiny Tim if he was born in the Netherlands. Everybody here has a medical insurance and has access to health care. In this case, better food would do the trick, with vitamins supplements. If he was born in a third world country, however, the odds would still be against him.