1.20.09

January 20th, 2009

I was planning to have a normal work day, but it’s not going very well so far.

a short film about the weather

January 15th, 2009

I was just talking to a friend in San Francisco who said it’s been weirdly warm there. The magnolias are blooming and freaking her out. That makes me feel grateful for the very cold weather we’ve been having here in Vermont. But I was happy about it already. Here I am this morning. It looks like it might be even colder tomorrow.

this is not a real post

January 13th, 2009

…it’s just a query. I’ve been googling all day long to no avail trying to find something out, and it just occurred to me that the people of this blog might very well have the answer.

Does anyone remember a children’s educational tv program from probably 1970, where a guy in a suit and narrow tie would read a book to you? Actually, he would read the first chapter, and then urge you to finish it on your own. At my quasi-experimental school, we would actually watch this show–unheard of in those days to have kids watching tv in school. So it was on during the day. I kinda remember something about birds in the logo…or a mystery…maybe it was set up like, here’s the beginning of the book. Now you be the detective and find out how it ends. I remember watching The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe on this show. And My Side of the Mountain. And racing right out to the library to get the books.

It was probably on PBS, right? Hmm. PBS was founded in November of 1969, taking over the operations of NET, National Educational Television. Actually, NET kinda rings a bell.

Anyone?

Anyone?

the holland book

January 7th, 2009

Jeanette Winterson just wrote a very funny column in The Times (UK) about buying The Essential Dykes To Watch Out For at her local bookshop, The Borzoi, in Stow-On-The-Wold. That’s an actual place, not made up for effect. I just googled it. It’s in Gloucestershire, which is sort of interesting since I’m in the middle of reading The Tailor of Gloucester. You might think a person could get through the Tailor of Gloucester in ten minutes or so, but I’m on my third night now. It has great soporific powers.

Winterson also talks about being identified as the “homosexual authoress” in her small village. “I suppose I should be writing racy novels in a tweed skirt and brogues, but then everybody else around here wears those.” This calls to mind my own experience of lesbian rustication here in New England, where everyone dresses like a butch dyke, even the gay men, which is sometimes confusing.

But I digress. I think this is Winterson’s influence, as you will see if you read her piece.

2009?!

January 2nd, 2009

Whew! Thanks for all the menopausal remedies. I’m gonna go chug some Barlean’s flax seed oil, insert a hormone pellet in my, my, …you know, my noun, then massage some neutral Kiwi shoe polish into my scalp.

Look, I just got the latest issue of Granta. This is a very fancy schmancy literary journal, to which I have contributed a short graphic essay.

See my name on the cover? Right there with Siri Hustvedt and Ali Smith and Jonathan Lethem? There’s also a clever story inside by the wonderful and terrifyingly prolific Emma Donoghue.

Meanwhile, Holly decided we should move the birdfeeders closer to the house. Dr. Winnicott thinks this was a splendid idea. Click the below picture, it’s a video. I still haven’t figured out how to make my videos show up with that handsome, graphically lucid and self-explanatory “play” arrow on ’em, which would make this entire sentence, as well as the last one, unnecessary.

workaday logo appreciation, perimenopausal perversity

December 30th, 2008

I just bought these rawhide bootlaces, and they make such a beautiful little object wrapped up in their Kiwi bi-directional label band, I’m loathe to undo it. See the tiny little kiwi? Such an elegant, unpretentious logo, and so deeply familiar. I guess it’s emblazoned in my brain from childhood, when I had to polish my hideous red corrective shoes with Kiwi shoe polish–some kind of clear version, since they didn’t make any that was the exact hideous red color of my shoes. Read the rest of this entry »

gift of the magi

December 25th, 2008

I’m finally starting to miss my DTWOF characters a little bit. I checked in to see what they were up to today, and got this skimpy glimpse. Read the rest of this entry »

a lovely Dykes obit and a groovy video

December 17th, 2008

That’s my ex-assistant Cathy Resmer posing as Ginger almost ten years ago. And here’s a really wonderful piece she wrote this week about DTWOF for our local alt weekly Seven Days. And look! There’s also a very slick and smart video interview that the Seven Days vlogger extraordinare Eva Sollberger* did with me last weekend. She does this brilliant series called “Stuck in Vermont” for the Seven Days website.

*A Simon’s Rock alum, like me.

Portland women’s bookstore in trouble

December 16th, 2008

I’ve been getting emails about Portland’s women’s bookstore, In Other Words. They need a pile of money by the end of the year in order to survive. Go to their website to buy some holiday gifts or make a donation, okay? It sounds like people are really pitching in, like they did for the fictional Madwimmin Books.

It’s a cold world. Thank god this cord of wood got delivered today.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF83RWYk14I[/youtube]

I’m here!

December 16th, 2008

As I read the comments on the last post, I see that my protracted absence has alarmed some readers. No, the ice storm didn’t knock my power out. I’ve just been too scattered to blog. I went to Pennsylvania to visit my family last week, which always warps time in a disconcerting way. Then on the way home to Vermont, my girlfriend Holly and I had to drive through the ice storm. Click this picture to see how harrowing it was.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5pRp4siEkk[/youtube]
Read the rest of this entry »