Blog on, blog on.

Last night was hard for all the adults in the house, since an infant’s sleep is fragile. Instead of a solid slab of three or four hours' sleep between eruptions, sleep for her, and us, came in nickel-and-dime sizes, which makes for a long night. Fortunately, Sunday morning followed. The Church of the Holy Nativity had to do without us again.

Big news from this morning’s Tribune. Guaranteed to generate more irate mail than that paper’s coverage of the war-to-be. Four comic strips disappeared from the Sunday funnies, and I understand that in any given newspaper each strip, no matter how bad, has its fierce partisans. The Tribune axed two ancients, “Beetle Bailey” and “Hi and Lois,” plus two non-entities not so old, “The Fusco Brothers” and “The Buckets.” I won’t miss any of them, though “The Buckets” and even “Hi and Lois” had occasional charms. What I want to know is why “Broom Hilda” survived the purge. Who enjoys this strip? What demographic is amused? And why isn’t the Wiccan-American community outraged?

As I pondered these questions, reading the comics over my Sunday morning tea — a minor but long-standing pleasure — I devised a mean-spirited way to end “Broom Hilda.” Hand her over to the Inquisition. Some suitably gothic Inquisitors can be borrowed from the lame “Non Sequitur,” and Broom’s dim animal friends can be obliged to testify against her. The last Sunday strip can end with the little green witch at the stake.

Yes, that is mean. In the same league of taking Häger the Horrible out with a broadsword to the neck during a raid on an Irish monastery. Better to have Broom just disappear, to be replaced with “The Piranha Club,” if that’s still any good.