Archive for March, 2007
March 31st, 2007
I’m back from my vacation. I’m afraid I’m going to make a post without reading through all the comments on the last one because I have so many millions of things to do. But thank you all for carrying on in my absence. Whatever it is you were carrying on about.
In internet time, this post is several epochs late, but whatever. This was Memoir Week on Slate, They ran a bunch of reviews and essays focused on “the issue and aesthetics of writing memoirs.” They asked various memoirists, including me, to write about whether and how they let the people who appear in their books know about it. So here’s a short piece I wrote on that topic.
I’ll return after I’ve dealt with the backlog of things that built up in my absence. Why do people take vacations?
March 20th, 2007
Here’s the episode I wrote before leaving for Miami. Today I’m going to try and figure out how to do the next one on the road in Albuquerque. I have to go find art supplies, then a Kinko’s or some place that can scan the drawings when I’m done. I’m not sure whether I’m going to manage it before my vacation officially begins on Thursday. Is all this backstory annoying you? Maybe I should just post the cartoons and shut up.
Read the rest of this entry »
March 20th, 2007
If one has to be stranded, Charlotte was a nice enough place for it. But there was something deeply disturbing and disorienting about my forced sojourn there. I was starting to feel like Ishmael on the becalmed Pequod. Yesterday, thank god, the wind picked up, and I blew out of there. Read the rest of this entry »
March 17th, 2007
Thanks for all your kind advice about my predicament. But I think I’ve got a plan. I was going on vacation on Thursday anyway. An actual vacation, something I haven’t done in years. So I’ve decided to just go early, and fly to New Mexico directly from North Carolina on Monday, without going home first. I spent the whole day on the phone. It’s costing me a pile of money to change my flights, but then it’s costing me a pile of money to just stay put. So why not?
I’m sorry to have dragged you through my little drama.
March 17th, 2007
After getting a busy signal for five and a half hours straight, I finally got a human at US Airways. I was on the phone with him for an HOUR–that explains the long wait times, if it’s taking a #*$@ hour to re-book each of thousands of stranded passengers.
Maybe those weren’t computer keys I heard clicking, but some kind of abacus-based flight reservation system. At last the guy tells me, placidly, that the next flight out is on Tuesday. TUESDAY? I shrieked. Isn’t US Airways adding flights, or increasing plane size, to accommodate the backlog of stranded travelers? No, replied Mr. Placid.
I can’t quite believe this. I really can’t get home until Tuesday. I would rent a car in a second and just hit the road, but apparently everyone else thought of that before I did, and there are none left. I suppose I could start walking, but I left my coat in my car at the Burlington airport since I was going to Miami.
Oh, god. That reminds me. I also left a burrito in my car. I meant to bring it to eat on the plane, but forgot it in the last minute craziness. Now on top of everything else, I’ll have to fumigate my subaru.
March 17th, 2007
I’m still stranded in NC. I heard drums outside on the street and thought maybe it was a local anti-war demo, but it was just a St. Patrick’s Day parade. Thanks to Aunt Soozie for letting me know about the peace rally in Fayetteville, NC. I couldn’t get there even if I had time, because there are no rental cars to be had in Charlotte, for love or money. Amtrak is sold out too.
US Airways is still not answering the phone. And it’s hard to focus on anything else because I have to keep re-dialing them manually on my primitive hotel phone. What are the stranded people doing who can’t afford hotels? As it is, I’m spending all the money I made going to Florida in the first place. I just booked my room for another night, and did some laundry in the sink. Maybe I should start pricing real estate.
March 16th, 2007
My flight from Miami to Philadelphia got rerouted today. To Charlotte, NC. Where I have taken up residence in a hotel. There’s apparently some sort of weather event that has shut down the entire eastern seaboard. I keep calling US Airways to rebook but I just get a busy signal, I can’t even get put on hold.
Charlotte is quite lovely, though. I guess I might as well be here as anywhere. Does it really matter as long as I have my laptop and wifi? I’m feeling very virtual.
On a strange note, as I was leaving the Charlotte airport this afternoon, Dorothy Allison was being paged over the loudspeaker.
March 15th, 2007
I just finished a two-day visit to Miami Dade College, sponsored by the Florida Center for the Literary Arts, during which I talked about Fun Home to a staggering array of classes, from Art to English to Human Growth and Development to The Graphic Novel. Plus the Gay Straight Alliance. And a stopoff at the Broward County Public Library.
The library reading last night was really interesting. It was a small crowd of mostly older gay men who are about the age my dad (the subject of my memoir Fun Home) would be. I’ve been getting kind of burnt out reading from my book over and over to people—it’s increasingly difficult to feel connected to what I’m saying. But reading to these guys last night, it felt very immediate again. The most moving part was meeting a lesbian about my age who’d come with her gay dad.
Here I am with Leidy and Xio Fuentes at the GSA meeting. We had a rousing discussion about Harriet the Spy, among other things.
Tomorrow I fly home to VT. Here’s a movie of a big bird flying around my Miami hotel balcony this afternoon. What kind is it?
March 15th, 2007
The Marshall, Missouri Public Library Board of Trustees just voted to return both Fun Home and Craig Thompson’s graphic novel Blankets to the library’s shelves. Here’s an article about it in the Marshall Democrat-News.
March 14th, 2007
One upside of blogging is that it’s a curious kind of anchor, a way of locating myself. Since I’ve been traveling so much, I barely know where I am when I wake up. But the blog is always right here where it always is–everywhere and nowhere. Here I am right now in Miami, of all places. I’m getting ready to go to some classes at Miami Dade College today. And tonight I speak at the Broward County Library.
I only managed to get one comic strip done during my brief time at home last weekend. I guess I’ll do the next one when I get home next weekend.
