A Comic Strip Sense of Place



For Better or For Worse (8/26/05) by Lynn Johnston.

Cleaning out some previously cut-and-pasted image files, I came across the For Better or For Worse comic strip above from August 26, 2005. Though I haven't taken the opportunity to read the most recent "re-worded" strips by Lynn Johnston, I always enjoyed checking them out in the local newspaper during the strip's original run.

I recall saving this particular one because it evoked how I felt about the West during my visits there, in particular Wyoming. When the character (April, I believe) notes in the last panel: "Do you think the word 'prairie' comes from word 'prayer'?" I couldn't help but recall walking with my wife in Wyoming at dusk, in the middle of an open plain, as a lightning storm approached.

Truth is, any environment, regardless of the perceived impressiveness of the forms that cover it, can be "beautiful." I just felt (and continue to draw on these memories) a connection to that open prairie during the time we were there. For me, Johnston's strip captures for me a recognition of the sacred connection one can feel when in the right place at the right time.

A picture taken during our 2005 trip to Cheyenne, Wyoming.