Blogging Through

So Blogger has been having troubles lately. I've seen folks with Blogger blogs commenting about it, including how they were leaving Blogger, but I couldn't get in to blog about it, myself. And it took a while for anything about the problem to appear on the Blogger Status site. If you have a Blogger blog, you should know about this site. It has an rss feed, so you can get the updates come to you. Anyway, they said to try deleting your cookies if you're having trouble, and that's working for me, but I had to do it a few times while actually logged in to Blogger this morning.

And since I don't want to pay (I already pay for 2 LiveJournals and a website) for my blogs and I doubt any fee-based service will allow me as many blogs as I want for one fee, and I haven't found any free services I like as much, I'll be here. Anything computer based has problems now and then. Doesn't matter where you go. Odds are the problems will catch up to you eventually.

This has been a shitty year so far in that a lot of talented people, people who made their mark in the arts, have died. Cartooning and comics have been hit with the deaths of Wil Eisner and Kelly Freas, and now I just read in the NY Daily News that Dale Messick, the pioneering woman cartoonist who created Brenda Starr, has died. True, she was 98 and lived a long, full life, but still, it's sad to know that the person who opened doors for women cartoonists is gone. Brenda Starr was hardly a realistic comic, but I loved it when I was a kid and while I outgrew its silliness — it clearly was a comic that couldn't keep up with changing times, even after Ramona Fradon took over and did a good job after Messick retired from it — it will always have a soft spot in my heart, along with all the other comic strip dramas. There are so few good ones left anymore and the ones that are seem to be pale images of their former great selves. Dale Messick opened doors for women in cartooning and you don't get a better epitaph than being a positive role model, a person who helps bring about change simply by succeeding.