August 31st, 2012
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.
August 15th, 2012
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 But mostly I feel mortified by these outdated and irrelevant strips seeing the light of day.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.
