Fanartist Stu Shiffman’s recovery from last June’s stroke has entered a new phase. Tom Whitmore reported on Stu’s CaringBridge page that he’s managing to talk for several minutes at a time (despite still having a trache in place) –

 A bit over a week ago when I was visiting, he managed clearly to say the number 6 while counting to 10 — according to Andi, he can now manage a lot of words in a row. We’re all very excited about this. His speech and respiratory therapists are continuing to spend more time with him just because he’s so responsive.