On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

I suspect that we're not going to see much of our soldier-spy heroes for a while, given some of the antics going on across the real world of late. Despite the feeling that anti-fascist soldier-spies may be exactly what we want or need among our fictional and real heroes right now. It all just looks too shady.

This may also explain why DC's reorganizing Checkmate from its previous roles as first a US government intel shop and later a United Nations-attached organization into a loose band of four solo heroes (including Lois Lane).

If I said that I consider Jo Cox and Paweł Adamowicz as martyrs...?

Michael Enright meditated briefly on the meaning and qualifications of heroism this morning on The Sunday Edition.

Seeing as I hope to keep making at least part of my living through other forms of thought experiments, it seemed proper to pass along a linkage to the essay he put forth for consideration.

http://www.cbc.ca/thesundayedition/essays/2011/01/23/who-is-a-hero/

Unlike Michael Okuda and many others around the world, I was still too young to remember anything I might have seen that day, somewhere in upper Alberta, two or three time zones away from all the excitement. What I do remember is reading through the Collier's Encyclopedia entry on Space Exploration in the years that followed.

The edition my parents had bought was published at a point where the Apollo program had not yet run the course laid out for it by the Nixon administration in spite of the hopes of many across the world. In fact, the end of it had not yet been written officially when Collier's went to press. The projected mission schedule's forecast still maintained that Apollo flights would number into the 20's before they stopped in favour of the preferred form of space shuttle then expected to succeed Apollo.

I remember the fascination - obsession? - that began with the photography and technical illustrations in that book. It was fed by the Apollo-Soyuz Test Program that ended up being the true last gasp of the first space age. By Space: 1999, by Star Wars, the original Galactica, and eventually Star Trek itself to keep me going until the first of the shuttle launches.

We've been through a lot of flights, good and bad, since then.

And now on this anniversary, we have another first: two Canadians together with eleven others from four nations: the United States, Russia, Belgium, and Japan. One of those is the 500th human to go Up There Into the Black.

From Yuri Gagarin to Christopher Cassidy: only 500 so far.

There should have been much more than this by now. We ought to have done much more than this.

That we've managed this much despite our best and worst instincts is still a miracle when you look at it carefully.

To everyone involved, whether you recognize that involvement for what it is or not: thank you.

Thank you.

One of the shows I really got a kick and a half out of as a kid was Kolchak: the Night Stalker.

It starred Mr. McGavin as Carl Kolchak, a reporter just this side of permanent residence on the unemployment line, and a man whose life would be a lot less complicated if he hadn't kept running into everything from vampires to ETs to military robotics experiments to mad magicians ranging from the Greek to the First National in origins. All running amuck, all unknown to the public despite Kolchak's best efforts to get the word out on these most unusual threats to public safety.

I just learned a few minutes ago that Mr. McGavin has stalked his last night in any role at all. He was 83. He had a very long and storied career that people from at least four generations have enjoyed the fruits of thus far. Many will remember him for roles I've never seen him play, or that I gave less attention to than I should have.

I'm sorry we won't see anything new from him.

Mr. McGavin, my too-belated thanks.

For everything, but from me, especially for the face you gave Jeff Rice's Carl Kolchak.