Hi Burt nice to hear from you again.
Just so happens I'm working on something remotely similar, my mrs's pyrography wood burner power controller.
A lot of designs use an opto, however you can do it with a transistor like I have (wit a diode to protect the base from inverse voltage), then you dont need a zener, and theres a low risk of the voltage going above vcc, of course a transistor doesnt give isolation, but then whats the point when my circuit is powered by a line transformerless supply?
One thing to bear in mind is the voltage rating of the resistors, might be ok in the US on 110, however here in the UK its better to use 2 47k resistors in series than 1 100k, if there was any kind of spike on the mains theres a risk of flashover.