“She called herself Bat-Girl! Gosh, I wonder who she is?”

- Robin, Batman #139, April 1961

Swooshing through an open window, Bat-Girl crashed the DC Comics clique in 1961. Resembling 1930s Norwegian, Olympic ice-skater Sonia Henie, she was more Madame Alexander doll than superhero. The first Bat-Girl, a.k.a. Betty Kane, was little more than a pretty, teenage nuisance and, according to Robin, “an inexperienced girl bound to get hurt pursuing crooks”.

On her Fiftieth, Batgirl, and we, might reflect on her personal transformations. Along her journey, she has refashioned not only her hair colour, costumes and careers, but her secret identities. Batgirl's personalities number so many, a PhD candidate might deconstruct her mythology as a dissertation on “Dissociative Identity Disorder in Pop-Culture”. However deconstructed, Batgirl's only constant is her utility belt.

As San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC) doth approach, Yours Truly is awash in all the final, frivolus tweaks and adjustments which inevitably occur three weeks out from the Granddaddy of Cons: cosplay details, SyFy-interviews schedule, social commitments (a.k.a. après-Con good times) and a plethora of so many things Geek & Fundry. Whilst I plan my best Con, to cover it all for you, dear reader, enjoy some puppies, via Warner Bros., highlighting their ~ahem~ doggone ~sorry~ inimitable slate of panels for SDCC 2017. Puppies!!!

In its earliest incarnation Savannah of Williamsburg was nothing more than a simple, contemporary, twenty-page children's book titled The Capital Squirrel . Set in Washington, D.C., it was the wee adventure of a wee squirrel living on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol building and exploring the country's capital city from within the pocket of a friend, the fictitious Senator Sheridan. My Miss Savannah Prudence Squirrel didn't even have a name back then!

That wee tale I sent to Mrs. Barbara Bush as a simple thank you to her for past years of grace, manners and kindness to the country as our first lady. It was nothing more than a little gift from an admiring, American girl. In keeping with said-grace and -manners, this is what she sent back to me. Today, well into finishing the fourth book of what evolved into my Savannah of Williamsburg series of historical-fiction novels, I still cherish this note and use it as inspiration when the details and subject matter of an oncoming American Revolution prove almost too much to which my brain and tenacity can attend. Thank you, Mrs. Bush!