A New York corner remembers the King of Comics, Indiana honors Red Skelton, and mothers persevere

Friday, May 8, 2026

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Image via Smithsonian Magazine

A Corner of New York Tips Its Hat to the King of Comics

New York City has named a street after Jack Kirby—the Lower East Side kid born Jacob Kurtzberg who grew up around pushcarts and tenements and went on to help build the very language of the modern superhero. Kirby didn’t just draw muscle and motion; he drew American grit, the idea that ordinary people can stand up straight in extraordinary times.

If you ever flipped through a comic rack in the drugstore—back when a few coins and a Saturday afternoon could buy you a whole new world—you’ve felt his fingerprints. Captain America, the Fantastic Four, the grand “mythology” of heroes and hard choices… it all carries that Kirby electricity. Now the neighborhood that raised him is putting his name where it belongs: on the map, in plain view.

✍ My Take: I like this kind of honoring—local, specific, and earned. Kirby’s story is the old American story: talent plus sweat plus a country that still had room for a kid to become a legend. Naming a street won’t tell the whole tale, but it does something important: it reminds the next generation that greatness often starts on an unglamorous block with a hardworking family.

📎 Smithsonian Magazine

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Image via Atlas Obscura

In Indiana, Red Skelton Still Gets the Last Laugh

Out in Vincennes, Indiana, the Red Skelton Museum of American Comedy keeps alive the spirit of a man who could make a whole living room feel lighter just by walking onstage. Red had a gift that doesn’t get enough respect today: he could be clean, silly, and heartfelt all at once—never needing to be cruel to get a laugh.

The museum highlights the characters many of us remember like old neighbors—Freddie the Freeloader, Clem Kadiddlehopper, Sheriff Deadeye, and the rest of that lovable gallery. It’s a reminder of the era when families could watch the same program together, and the biggest “edge” was a pie in the face and a well-timed grin.

✍ My Take: I’ve always believed laughter is a kind of civic virtue when it’s decent and shared. Red Skelton represented an America that didn’t need to sneer at itself to be funny—and we’re poorer when we forget that style of humor. If you’re passing through Indiana, this is the kind of stop that sends you home feeling steadier.

📎 Atlas Obscura

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The Mothers Who Traveled on Grief—and Love

With Mother’s Day approaching, "The Saturday Evening Post" turns our attention to the Gold Star mothers—women for whom the second Sunday in May has never been only flowers and brunch. For them it carries a shadow, too: the quiet, lifelong ache of a son lost to war, and the strange task of living on while the world moves forward.

The piece recalls the Gold Star Mothers who crossed the ocean to visit the graves of their fallen sons—journeys made in an age when travel was harder, slower, and often intimidating. These weren’t publicity tours; they were pilgrimages. In their dignity and sorrow, you can hear an older American language: duty, sacrifice, and the belief that a nation should remember its own.

✍ My Take: We do ourselves no favors when we treat remembrance as just another “holiday weekend.” Gold Star mothers carried a burden most of us can’t imagine, and they deserved—still deserve—more than a moment of polite applause. If we want to keep faith with the past, we start by honoring the families who paid the bill for our freedom.

📎 The Saturday Evening Post

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Until tomorrow night, keep the porch light on in your heart—America’s best days are still worth remembering, and still worth living up to.

— Jack Reynolds