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London

November 11th, 2012 | Other Projects

Today I visited Comiket, the alternative comics event associated with Comica, the London International Comics Festival. It was a lovely, small exhibition of independent, alternative cartoonists. I got to take part in the “live drawing parade,” where cartoonists draw for a half an hour while a video camera projects what they’re doing onto a large screen.

I created a superfast sketch-o-vision comic for the audience. That is to say, I quickly inked the pretty tight pencil I had spent a lot of time on beforehand. At first I thought the “drawing parade” meant totally spontaneous drawing for the audience, which I’ve never done before, and felt a lot of trepidation about. Then I learned that it was okay to work from a pencil sketch.

I drew a nine-panel strip about the slight mishap that befell Hol and me upon our arrival here Friday morning.

After Comiket, Hol and I made our way to Bloomsbury. Hol asked this squirrel to lead us to the bust of Virginia Woolf in Tavistock Square.

Then we went to Gay’s The Word for a booksigning. There was a big crowd of lovely people. Afterward we went for drinks with some of them, including Lenna Cumberbatch, who used to work on my website for me,

…and Pam Isherwood who comments frequently here on the blog.

In fact, Pam chided me a bit about how I’ve completely stopped blogging. So I am making this post to prove her wrong.

sundry news

November 2nd, 2012 | Other Projects

1. My family gets a nod in a Publisher’s Weekly article about The Most Dysfunctional Families in Literature. Also ranking: The Bennets, of Pride and Prejudice!

2. Here’s the kickstarter page for a cool movie about the current state of the LGBT community.

3. Here are some new books to check out. Urvashi Vaid’s Irresistible Revolution.

My childhood friend Ken Foster’s book about pit bulls.

And Dylan Edwards’ comic book Transposes tells the true stories of six queer transgender men.

4. Out Magazine has put me on their annual Out100 list. At the photo shoot they gave me an itty bitty boy’s suit which I could only fit into when they ripped open the waistband of the pants. Fortunately they used a close-up shot. For the set, they printed out all these comics from my website. A bunch of them were fanfic strips, though, like this one, that others submitted to this blog years ago.

Rich tribute

November 1st, 2012 | Other Projects

The Adrienne Rich tribute last Sunday was really great. Here are some of the people–that’s Joanie Seager, of the New Words Remnants Collective (members of the erstwhile Cambridge women’s bookstore, New Words, who came together to make this event happen), hugging Evelynn Hammonds, who was one of the readers (and also Dean of Harvard College, and also someone who worked at New Words). That’s poet Robin Becker in the red-orange pants. And me, talking to Adrienne Rich’s son, Pablo Conrad. He also spoke briefly, which was really moving. Gilda Bruckner is next to him, and Laura Zimmerman, both of New Words. Poet Kate Rushin and activist/academic Cynthia Enloe are out of the frame on the left–they were two of the other readers.

Adrienne Rich celebration & tribute in Cambridge Oct. 28

September 21st, 2012 | Other Projects

I’m taking part in this event that the women who used to run New Words Bookstore have organized.

Dear friends,

The death of Adrienne Rich a few months ago struck so many of us as the passing of a literary icon and also of a pivotal figure in forging the powerful fusion of literature and politics out of which so much feminist energy flowed. For multiple communities, Adrienne was a towering figure. This inspired some of us from New Words Bookstore to imagine that there should be a feminist tribute to Adrienne. So, we’ve reconstituted ourselves as the ‘New Words Remnants Collective’ and we’ve planned an Adrienne Rich tribute event. We hope you will join us there, and please help us spread the word:

“READING AND REMEMBERING ADRIENNE RICH: A CELEBRATION AND TRIBUTE”

with: ALISON BECHDEL, ROBIN BECKER, CYNTHIA ENLOE, EVELYNN HAMMONDS, & KATE RUSHIN

Coordinated by the New Words Remnants Collective;
Co-sponsored with Women, Action & the Media (WAM!) and the Graduate Consortium of Women’s Studies

SUNDAY OCT 28 4pm
Stata Center, MIT

(32 Vassar St; nearest subway Kendall/MIT; directions: http://whereis.mit.edu/)
open seating, free, no reserved seats, no tickets

doors open 3:30; wheelchair accessible

adriennerichevent@yahoo.com

Please come! Please spread the word.

Warmly,
Gilda, Joni, and Laura

out of print

September 14th, 2012 | Other Projects

Speaking of aging, there’s a great post up on Autostraddle about defunct lesbian publications. Really old-time ones like Vice Versa and The Ladder, but also The Furies, Dyke Magazine, Azalea, and Hot Wire. There are links to online archives of some of them!

turning 50

September 4th, 2012 | Other Projects

I’m about to turn 52, but 2 years ago this guy Rob Trucks interviewed me for a book he was writing of interviews with people turning 50. The one he did with me just got published on Jezebel. He caught me in the middle of my menopausal insanity phase, which I’m happy to say has more or less passed.

the doubtful seal?

August 31st, 2012 | Other Projects

Hol and I are on Cape Cod. On our way we stopped in at the Edward Gorey Museum.

Here I am with the sculpture of The Doubtful Guest.

A few days after this we trekked with friends out to see the seals who congregate on a quiet sandbar. There were hundreds of them lolling about in the sun.

A naturalist there explained that most of them were gray seals, and a few were harbor seals. The harbor seals are smaller and cuter, with “cocker spaniel faces,” while the gray seals can be distinguished by their Roman nose, or “horse face.” (photo below is not mine, I grabbed it from google image search.)

Holly was struck by the resemblance to The Doubtful Guest. And now we wonder if the seals were perhaps Gorey’s inspiration for that compelling character. He wrote TDG in 1957. I don’t know when he started coming to the Cape, or if he ever ventured out to look at seals. But it’s an interesting hypothesis.

On re-runs

August 15th, 2012 | Other Projects

How melancholy I would feel as a child when I sat down to watch The Brady Bunch or The Partridge Family, only to discover that the episode was a re-run. All hope and optimism drained out of me. Life suddenly seemed a stale, if not futile, proposition.

Of course I would watch the re-run anyway, and soon get caught up in the story all over again.

Yesterday I received the latest issue of Lesbian Connection in the mail. For some time now they have been reprinting old episodes of Dykes To Watch Out For. I have mixed feelings about this. I’m touched that they think the cartoons are still interesting. But mostly I feel mortified by these outdated and irrelevant strips seeing the light of day.

The episode in the latest issue is from 1989. It’s about Sparrow’s self-righteous friend Milkweed coming off the lesbian farm for a visit.

But just as I was rolling my eyes about this, Hol started reading me a letter on the preceding page of LC—a screed about the “animal industrial complex” by someone who lives on a queer vegan animal sanctuary in Southern Vermont.

Milkweed lives! I feel a flicker of hope.