Resuscitating Supergirl

    Those of you who know me in RL know I've got a little mileage. I've done this, I've done that, I've bought lots and lots of T-shirts.

      Not that I'm a dilletante; I stuck at those endeavors for many years, sometimes satisfyingly so. The first T-shirt I acquired was Girl Reporter.

Superman got the snazzy red cape and kickin' crimson knee-high boots.  Lois Lane got the mousy gray suit.

(As it turned out, I would wear many, many gray suits with regard to the next T-shirt plucked from the Careers 'r' Us box.  Not going there today.  Let's just say it wasn't The Practice or Ally McBeal or ABC's newest entry, The Deep End.  Although some aspects of The Deep End are close. But, as usual, I digress.)

           Never did wear a mousy gray suit as Girl Reporter. Sometimes just the opposite. People tend to tell you things they might not otherwise impart if they're looking down the front of your shirt.

      I bought into Girl Reporter hook, line and sinker. My parents were ink-stained and silver-halide exposed wretches, so it seemed the natural thing to do. I'd learned early in life that a press pass could get you into interesting events for free. Sometimes even a good parking space. Also, I liked to write. Also, I was good at it.
      Sometimes we need reminding of those things we like and those things we're good at, especially if those things begin to become just a job (as Girl Reporter World eventually became for me) or, worse yet, a chore (if somehow a tornado uproots your house and sets it down on the set of The Practice, where you find yourself slogging through briefs and motions that suck all the juice out of your marrow). Oh. Wait.  I'm digressing again. And depressing, too.
      But newspapers are dying. Killed by the combined kryptonite of Cable, TV, the internet, lack of advertisers and production costs.

So I asked a friend who's still toiling with pad and pen to see if she could scrounge up any of my old stories or columns before all goes the way of the dodo.

       I was shocked, SHOCKED! that a couple of hundred are still floating around the archival ether. And when she sent me a few of those, I was shocked, SHOCKED! to discover: Damn, once upon a time, I really knew how to write. With style. And flair. And occasionally even substance.

      Have to learn to get back to that. No kidding.