Kathy Potter, 1960-2013

My youngest sister, Kathy Potter, suffered a sudden cerebral hemorrhage early Friday morning, and passed away Sunday, January 6, surrounded by family and many friends. Kathy was an amazing sister, mother, wife and daughter. Generous, caring, funny, extremely wise and immensely gifted, Kathy was the embodiment of our Dad’s humility and our Mom’s gentleness. She was the youngest of the six Hackett children, and the first to be reunited with our parents in Heaven. Kathy understood me like nobody else ever will, and she takes with her the million little in-jokes we had, as well as our shared hatred of poor font choices.

Kathy also shared my love/hate relationship with Funky Winkerbean. She returned to college later in life, majoring in Creative Writing and graduating summa cum laude from New Jersey City University in 2010. She helped form a poetry circle, and mentored, influenced and inspired many younger writers. I would be immensely flattered whenever she’d tell me she read one of my posts, and I wrote and edited SoSF always with the thought that she might be reading and secretly, gently critiquing.

Kathy’s generosity extends even beyond her time here with us, as the gift of her organs will improve and perhaps even save an untold number of lives. I ask that you keep Kathy, her husband Rae, her children Alannah and Garvey, and our extended family in your thoughts and prayers; consider being an organ donor; and most importantly, always be mindful that our time here is much, much too short. Thank you all for your well-wishes.

Wall Street Weak

I read the words “I’m like Wall Street…” and braced myself for one of TB’s ripped-from-last-year’s-headlines “topical” punchlines. Which probably would have been preferable to Holly telling us that she steps on the scale four times a year. I think when it comes to fitness goals, surely there’s a happy medium between weighing oneself daily or quarterly. And I don’t pretend to understand the financial world, but doesn’t “Wall Street” check to see how it’s doing like, every hour of every day? Isn’t that why they have those stock-ticker things?

So Funkin' Old

We can’t believe it either, especially those of us who ostensibly would be close in age to you. I’m starting to think that Tom Batiuk (born 1947) has decided to skew the ages of his main characters closer to his own, and realizes that even his most loyal fans aren’t going to let him get away with a third “time jump”. So he goes about it subtly: playing up Funky’s health woes, framing Crazy Harry’s termination as “retirement“, and just generally accelerating the aging process for the original cast (except Les, of course, who’s holding up relatively well), and most recently, tacking about a decade onto Funky’s sobriety streak. Still, the Funkman’s hip enough to quote John Mayer in panel 2!

(skip to 2:25)