"a 17th-century ‘vampire child’..."

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Researchers have unearthed the remains of what they believe to be a 17th-century "vampire" child who was buried face down and padlocked to the earth in a likely effort to assuage villagers' fears that the child would not return from the dead, the lead archaeologist on the dig told Insider.

The skeletal remains of the child, who anthropologists believe was 5 to 7 years old, were discovered in an unmarked, mass cemetery in the Polish village of Pień, near Ostromecko.

The "necropolis," which literally translates from Greek into "city of the dead," is also where archaeologists discovered a "vampire" woman last year, who was buried with a padlock attached to her big toe and a sickle laying across her neck meant to sever her head should she try to rise from the dead.

rite in the rain index card wallet

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Since switching over from paper journals (and legal pads and whiteboards) to the reMarkable 2, I've shifted away from my still-beloved fountain pens (that the EMR I'm using is Lamy's EMR variation on their AL-Star fountain pen is a big help) to pencils for my non-digital notetakings and processings.

As such, I've been seeking a pocket notebook that both a.) could be used both during running and general leavings of the house, and, b.) didn't overstuff my already-stuffed pockets (read: Herbie the insulin pump). Happily, the Rite In The Rain Index Card Wallet, packed with their waterproof index cards and scribbled upon with my Kaweco Special S 0.7mm mechanical pencil, more than satisfies those requirements.

rite in the rain index wallet, open. index card and velcro.

One hiccup, though: the RIR cards are (more than) a bit expensive - $16-$20 per pack of 100 - so I'm going to do a test with one of the regular, $2/pack of 100 cards that I've got lying all over the place to see if the waterproof part really makes a difference: while I know full well that it does with paper, I'm not certain it matters with cards, especially since I'm using pencil.

Either way, very happy to have solved this particular long-standing quandary.

“New York was an adult portion…”

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One of my favorite bits from THE LAST WALTZ, in which two legends, both now gone, talk about falling in love with NYC.

WILL EISNER'S THE SPIRIT, No. 15 (Aragonés, Evanier / Smith; DC, 2008)

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Every Wednesday morning, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 20 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-)read it, write about it, and publish the resultant review/memory/whatever. Earlier installments live here.

(Box17): Another of the done-in-one titles that DC was publishing at the time (the superb Palmiotti / Grey JONAH HEX being the other), the only fault in this issue being that not only did the team of Aragonés, Evanier, and Smith have the unenviable task of following Darwyn Cooke's run on the title but that all were working under the shadow of Will Eisner's long and incalculably innovative pen.

As much as I love The Spirit and his world, I find it to be, in the hands of anyone other than Eisner, lacking: Cooke did an admirable job, as did Aragonés, Evanier, and Smith – though the less said about Frank Miller's monstrosity of a film version (that being said, I'd argue that, had Miller tried him in comics (though maybe not the Miller of the mid-late naughties), it would've been a different story: film is clearly not Miller's medium, something I think (and hope) he's come to recognize) the better.

The missing piece in those non-Eisnerian hands? Eisner himself and that spirit (yeah yeah) of innovation: it's as much a part of The Spirit's character as the cape and cowl are to Batman, the radioactive spider to Spidey, and the S-symbol to Superman: to simply tell stories, no matter how enjoyable and fun, isn't enough to make the character resonate. Nonetheless, this issue – and the whole of the DC series – was, if not resonant, then at least both enjoyable AND fun.