[The following editorial appears in Shards #12, Hidden Years #25, New Blood #32, Kahvi #1, Two-Spear #1, Jink #8, and The Rebels #9. --MK]
It's just after Labor Day as I write these words, and the Mid-Hudson Valley has started to feel some of those exquisite days that are neither summer nor fall. Such days - warm, dry days and cool, dry nights - never fail to put me into a nostalgic frame of mind. I'm certain that "back to school" time is not a source of pleasure for anyone who still has to endure it, but right about now I get to reminiscing about my late summer college days up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, watching the leaves start to turn and feeling the coolth invade the air. (Of course I am deliberately forgetting or ignoring the stomach- turning feelings of desperation that used to accompany the onset of courses and problem sets.)
As depressing as wintertime darkness can get in this part of the world, I still fondly recall dusk in Harvard Square, with warm yellow light spilling out of dormitory windows. I can still conjure up the chill I felt on my arms, having forgotten to take along a jacket as I prowled the shops (it was probably warmer earlier in the day when I cut class to head into the Square, anyway). I still, whenever I get the chance to visit the old stomping grounds, enjoy the fact that the Harvard Coop stays open late on Thursdays, providing a friendly place to duck into on nippy evenings.
There's no other reason for this reminiscence than that's what the air felt like last night - that, and the realization that another year is sliding slowly into harvest time, blanket time, lights on early time. When you live in this part of the planet, where the seasonal changes are real and palpable things, you get like that. Well, I do.
So why these two drawings, that Wendy did years ago? Well, I guess I could say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Or that, since this is Nostalgia Month for Elfquest, they somehow seemed appropriate. Or perhaps, what they portray is precisely how this very moment makes me feel.
Richard A Pini
[ The original editorial includes two old sketches, one of which has been
published in the original Warp EQ #1 (and in the first Gatherum). --MK ]