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National Jewel Day 2024

Of all things, today is National Jewel Day and I can think of no jewel that shines brighter or has more intrinsic value than my beloved wife, Kelly.

More Than Rubies

A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies. ~Proverbs 31:10

It’s a funny coincidence that Kelly and I have July birthdays, so our birthstone is the Ruby. Her engagement ring is a ruby instead of the standard, trite, run-of-the-mill diamond that everyone else gets.

Somebody in the 10th Century BC kindly gave us this particular bit of biblical wisdom. Kelly is definitely worth far more than rubies to me.

I cannot extol her virtues with adequate vigor. She is more than I ever knew I wanted or needed. She is my greatest blessing.

What do I do? I open the pickle jar. She’d probably insist that I am more than a pickle jar opener, but that’s the primary skill I bring to the table these days.

Fortunately, she’s a woman of simple needs.

Would I love to drape her in bejeweled finery and take her on lavish vacations? Absolutely.

If I can ever get above water, we might even pull that off. Who knows? Right now, I’m desperately treading water like many people. #ThanksJoe

Shinies

National Jewel Day (March 13), Activities and How to Celebrate National Jewel Day

Some rocks are nicer than others. Way back in the day, I had a subscription to Rock & Gem magazine.

Some people are dazzled by diamonds, rubies and sapphires. Fair enough. They’re fancy when they’re well cut and put into jewelry.

I always found other rocks just as dazzling. Malachite, lapis lazuli and several variations of quartz have a glistening charm all their own.

That being said, they’re rocks. Pretty rocks, to be sure, but ultimately they’re just rocks.

It’s the creativity of the jeweler that makes them really come to life and have more value than when they’re found in nature.

Jewel?

“Jewel is a great superhero name!”
“Jewel is a stripper’s name. A really slutty stripper, and if I wear that thing you’re going to have to call me Camel Toe.” ~Trish Walker and Jessica Jones

I remember when the Netflix Marvel series first came out. I remember being disappointed that they started off with Jessica Jones.

I mean, who the heck is Jessica Jones? She doesn’t even have a superhero name or a costume, for Pete’s sake.

History Of Jessica Jones

And yet, it was really good. Daredevil is far more iconic and familiar to me, but the Jessica Jones series dropped before the M-She-U became a problem.

She’s got super strength, but she’s not the typical Mary Sue girl boss that we’re being overwhelmed with these days. Jessica has depth and flaws and comes across as a believable character.

She comes across as a bitter, jerky character. That’s so rare. In context, it makes perfect sense for her to be so acerbic. The poor girl has been through so much.

You really don’t see that in the superhero genre. Female superheroes are typically similar to their male counterparts. Put on a costume. Engage in some vigilantism. Acquire some archenemies. Save your community.

We think of Wonder Woman, Batgirl, Wasp and Black Widow as typical examples. While they have different backstories and power sets, these ladies fit the standard superhero mold.

Not so with Jessica.

Like Daredevil, her powers come from exposure to chemicals in a tragic accident. Right from the get-go, she’s traumatized.

She’s the only survivor of the accident that claims her birth family. This is typical superhero fare. Peter Parker loses his Uncle Ben. Bruce Wayne loses both of his parents.

Tragedy often informs the hero’s personal mission and motivation.

Not so with Jessica.

Like a normal person, losing her family doesn’t put her on some existential crusade for justice. It hurts. It scars her in ways that no kid should have to endure. That’s how people really are.

Sure, it’s neat having super strength but she’d gladly give it back to have her family alive. This is a far more reasonable reaction to a dreadful situation.

She was adopted by a hardcore stage mom with massive issues of her own, but she made a lifelong friend in her adoptive sister, Trish Walker.

As a victim of her mother’s unrealistically high expectations and outright exploitation as a child TV star, Trish was glad to have a built-in friend her age.

It turns out that there’s much more to Trish than the Jessica Jones series lets on. She goes all the way back to Timely Comics and was pre-Marvel Comics’ alternative to Archie.

They tried to convert their version of Archie over to a superhero in the character of Hellcat, but she never really caught on.

Patsy Walker is Weird! (Hellcat) [Jessica Jones]

So, it’s interesting that they leaned into that in the reinvention of the character for the TV series.

As you might expect, a child star who was being ruthlessly stage-mommed by her domineering mother. It gave her a sense of powerlessness and lack of personal autonomy.

That her new sister had super powers gave her mixed feelings. She could live vicariously through Jessica’s strength, but still feel jealous. She was also confused about why Jessica wouldn’t lean into the whole superhero thing.

This is phenomenal character work. The reluctant superhero and her former TV child star best friend / sister who is her biggest fan. It’s a wonderful dynamic.

Trish sees superheroism in the standard mold. It’s all theoretical to her. She lives in a fancy high rise apartment and has a radio talk show.

Jessica sees superheroism for what it is. Dangerous. Going around, looking for trouble is a great way to find it. She’s a very reluctant hero, but she’s also a basically decent person.

We see in the series how she tries to help someone in trouble only to find herself captured by the mind-control pheromones of Zebediah Killgrave, The Purple Man.

This is absolutely dreadful for Jessica. Despite her super strength, she doesn’t have the strength to break free from his mind control. She just wants to be normal and Killgrave makes that impossible.

When she does finally escape his control, she has to live with the trauma of what he made her do and feeling responsible for killing him. When he turns out not to be dead, she’s even more traumatized.

Equally, Trish feels powerless because she’s not a superhero, because even though Jessica is a superhuman she was unable to escape his grip and because she has seen how dangerous and ugly the world can be through her sister’s experiences.

You don’t typically see this level of complexity and real world reactions to things that regular superheroes handwave away.

Getting shot at really sucks. Even if you’re bulletproof like Luke Cage or Ben Grimm, have a shield like Captain America or an advanced healing factor like Wolverine or the Hulk, it still sucks getting shot at. Nobody in their right mind wants to be downrange of someone else’s firearms.

Spidey can dodge. Superman shoos bullets away like raindrops. Iron Man has his armor and his own weaponry.

If you’re not in possession of such an advantage, you’ve got to be supremely confident in your martial skill like Batman or Daredevil.

In reality, you’ve got to be some kind of a nut. Unless you’ve got a forcefield like Sue Richards or bulletproof jammies, you really don’t want to be on the receiving end of gunfire. It’s a really good way to wind up dead.

That’s something that this series seems to hone in on.

Daredevil is raw and gritty. Luke Cage is just trying to lay low and live his life, but trouble comes to find him. Iron Fist is on a mission to find the culprits of his parents’ murder. That’s all standard superhero stuff.

Jessica doesn’t do that. Life is a bit too real for her. We meet a grumpy private investigator who drowns her pain in gallons of alcohol, but it’s precisely because she feels every traumatic blow that life has thrown her that makes the comparatively low key things she does feel just as heroic as the Avengers facing down an alien invasion.

She just wants to be normal and, as a comic book character, that is simply not in the cards for her. She has to try to cope with the low blows that keep coming her way. It would be easy for her to just give up and tune out.

It’s because she continues trying to do what seems like the right thing to her in a world that seems to be spiraling around the toilet bowl that she embodies her own style of heroism. It’s a lot more grounded and accessible, while still having that comic book edge.

Jessica Jones: Making Death Matter