Thanks, Jim Dawson, for the humorous acknowledgement.
Jim has taken up the radio reins on Luxuria Music that he shared for many years with the late Ian Whitcomb.
Ian’s stroke caused a marked change in his voice, as heard in this clip from a few years ago, during a pledge drive. Go to 32:00 minutes to hear my request for my sister Liz, who was delighted to hear this recording.
The gang’s all here! Dr. Paul Armstrong and his wife Betty! Kro-Bar and Lattis! Dr. Roger Fleming! Ranger Brad and the Farmer! The lovely Animala! The Mutant and, of course, that nefarious post-cadaver creation, THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA!
The alluring Animala explains the problem with my name.
Thank you, Animala!
Some Kind of Heaven is quite different from what I expected. Unlike the NY Times article, it ignores the conservative politics held by most residents of The Villages. After some very brief historical background, with no axes to grind, the documentary is a focused character study of a few residents.
One of them is a homeless con man, pretending to be a resident and searching for “a nice looking lady with some money” to take him in. Another is the long-suffering wife of a self-medicating, mentally ill man. Then there is the lonely widow from Boston who is having trouble finding her place among the fun-loving retirees.
The Villages in Florida may be America’s biggest retirement community, but it is not unique. I am very familiar with Sun City West in Arizona, and while watching the documentary I felt much of it could have been produced there. Here’s a conversation between the director and a couple living in The Villages.
The Sunday Boston Globe magazine celebrated the paper’s 150th anniversary. Two pages were devoted to a bit of comic page history. I was amused to see the Globe had a local comic strip drawn by a William J. Sinnott.
Yesterday a friend was telling me about retirement living in Florida. From my extensive exposure to Arizona, I learned that neither its sun nor the politics are good for me. I’m certain Florida would be the same. Today I read a piece in The New York Times about Florida’s largest retirement community, The Villages, that further cements my feeling about Florida.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/03/opinion/florida-the-villages.html
The article mentions a documentary the Times co-produced, called Some Kind of Heaven. Being made sufficiently curious by the article, for a couple of bucks I have rented it on Amazon Prime.
Laurel Goodwin has passed away. A couple of years after appearing in Girls! Girls! Girls! with Elvis, Laurel was Yeoman Colt in “The Cage”, the first Star Trek pilot. I saw it as part of “The Menagerie” when it first aired.
Laurel’s character was the subject of a memorably embarrassing revelation made by a telepathic alien. I was just old enough to have an inkling of what was implied by, “The factors in her favor are youth and strength, plus… unusually strong female drives.”
Laurel was one of quite a few crossovers between Elvis and Trek.
